Advice requested for capturing milky way, etc with asi224 and allsky lens

[powerlord]

Hi chaps, I'm going to a campsite friday and friday night looks good for imaging.  bortle 4 vs my usual bortle 6.

While doing my imaging lark with my eq5, 80ed, etc I thought I would also try and setup my as224mc with the allsky lens it came with on top of the motorhome all night and capture.

firstly, android would be easier as could just use a tablet phone, but app seems to get poor reviews - anyone use it or is it too unreliable ?

If pc, I assume Id setup sharpcap pro - try to get focus as good as I can in daylight on distant object, and setup for 30 sec subs (that about max for no trails?), and repeat all night.

then I can choose to stack or animate or both. Am I missing anything or a better way of doing it ?

I think unity gain in 12 bit is 135, so set gain to 135 and 16 mit capture ?

I thought also I might put a wee tube around camera sitting on roof, so lower lights not in FOV don't cause glow.

It's one of those 'don't get a chance to do this very often' things, so want to get it right.

[FenlandPaul]

Looking forward to seeing your results; unfortunately as a DSLR-only person I’m no help here whatsoever!! Good luck!

[Elp]

As long as you keep the subs fairly short as the 224mc suffers serious amp/hot pixel glow (I couldn't do anything like 1 min as it just flooded a green hue), with the all sky lens it is also very easy to focus. You can shroud around the lens but you'll also limit the field of view as it's such a wide angle lens.

[happy-kat]

I use allskeye on a 7' window 10 tablet lasts 4 hours on battery. I've not tried the asicap app for all sky camera options but for general use when I first had the ASI it worked fine. 25 seconds is what I used with the 462. Focus wasn't so easy to get right as I hadn't got a IRUV filter I could use with the lens.

Enjoy your darker sky trip

Edited April 27, 2022 by happy-kat

[powerlord]

ah, forgot about uvir. doubt I can do anything about that then.

i think i'll use the laptop. I tried last night pointed at ceiling, creating 120x30sec ser files. so one every hour. and that seemed to work ok in sharpcap pro.

oh.. gain wise, just set to  0 in smartcap as doesn't display zwo gain, and that seemed to work ?

[happy-kat]

I use a gain of 120 with 25 second exposures ASI462 allskeye and in Sharpcap pro when testing DSO was using gain 300 and 10 second exposures though I'd used the Brain feature and can't recall if the gain value was displayed on the gain slider.

 

[powerlord]

thanks - I'll looks again - the gain didn't seem to be in the same units as zwo gain so wasn't sure what to set in sharpcap.

[aStone]

This is how I did it a couple of days ago. The capture details are in the video description  

 

[happy-kat]

Those stars are well shaped and quite a few lyrids caught, nice video. 

[powerlord]

Well unfortunately even though all forecasts were adament that it was a clear sky.. It was not. I kept checking and at 1am it cleared up, looked great.. I PAed main mount, focused, trained guiding, took one test shot.. Then couldn't see a star in the sky. Arg

Stayed that way. Bummer.

For the brief time it was clear I was surprised by the visual difference between bortle 6 at home and 4 here. And it's only 11 miles away as the crow (or me on my paramotor) flies. I will be back