Tutorial for ASI Studio and photography basics

[Scubayorp]

Hi folks,

I'm very unfamiliar with astrophotography and electronics, so please be gentle.
I have a new ZWO ASI 120 MC-S and I'm running ASIStudio from my MacBook Pro with Catalina 10.15.7.
I'm an astronomy outreach professional and NOT interested in astrophotography per se, but rather want to use the ASI camera to capture live sky views that I will project onto a cinema screen for an audience who will be listening to me talk about the targets as I remotely move my scope across the sky.
My main problem is understanding the basics of how to simply get an image to appear in the software! I don't even know if I should use Planetary Imaging, Deep Sky Imaging, Live Stacking or Deep Sky Stacking?

What settings should I enter and in what order?
Can someone please point me to an appropriate tutorial?
Thank you

[AstroNebulee]

Hi

I don't use asi studio for anything but viewing my astrophotography fits files to check them. So I dont know a lot about it. But I came across this video on YouTube if it helps at all.

 

Another option could be sharpcap software maybe. I'm sure others who have used software for outreach purposes will be along shortly. 

Cheers 

Lee 

[Scubayorp]

tnx heaps, Lee

[The Lazy Astronomer]

For the sorts of things you want to do, you'd definitely want to be using some live stacking software - maybe swing on over to the EEVA section of the forums as that's where you'll find the experts in this sort of thing. 

[Scubayorp]

Tnx Lazy Astronomer, I'll do that but can I ask why I would want to stack anything if I'm just panning across the sky in order to settle on a target for discussion?

[bomberbaz]

31 minutes ago, Scubayorp said:

Tnx Lazy Astronomer, I'll do that but can I ask why I would want to stack anything if I'm just panning across the sky in order to settle on a target for discussion?

You would be stacking to get a more detailed picture of what you looking at.

However you mention a remote controlled scope, do you have further detail on that, it will help a lot to kno2 more about your equipment 

[The Lazy Astronomer]

2 hours ago, Scubayorp said:

Tnx Lazy Astronomer, I'll do that but can I ask why I would want to stack anything if I'm just panning across the sky in order to settle on a target for discussion?

Once you've settled on a target, you'd begin exposing for something in the region of say, 5 - 30 seconds to get an image up on the screen.  You'd then continue to loop those exposures and live stacking would combine them to build up a more detailed image. This would all be happening automatically, so as you were talking about it, a better and better image would gradually be appearing, and most likely revealing more of the fainter detail which you could build in to the talk.

I'm not au fait with the precise details of it, as I'm pretty exclusively a long exposure astrophotography guy, but the EEVA forums will have loads of info for you. 

[Scubayorp]

9 hours ago, bomberbaz said:

You would be stacking to get a more detailed picture of what you looking at.

However you mention a remote controlled scope, do you have further detail on that, it will help a lot to kno2 more about your equipment 

Hmmmm, thank you so much, bomberbaz. I'm staring at a steep learning curve and now not sure I haven't bought the wrong thing. Problem is cost - I'm a low income earner on a pension.

My audience is the general public. This is what I'm hoping to present to 300 ppl from a rooftop on the 6th floor of a city carpark ...
My scope is a 14" alt-az Go-To Dob which I can slew remotely, with my iPhone, while I wander amongst the punters, some meters away.
After initial alignment at the scope, I'm hoping to use SynScan Pro on my iPhone to remotely go to a target and then centre that target from my iPhone as I waffle on about what we're all seeing on the cinema screen. Targets are typically sparkly things like the Moon, planets, Messiers, globular clusters, multiple stars etc.
I'll also be carrying my iPad tethered wirelessly to my MacBook Pro which is at the scope taking the camera feed by cable. I guess I'll use something like TeamViewer to control the laptop screen from the iPad.
Via HDMI cable, the laptop will output the ASIStudio image to the cinema's system and onto the big screen so I and the audience can watch it together as I wow them with my prattle.
Then I want to be able to remotely G0-To my second target and do the same all over again.
Seems complicated but I can't think of an alternative.

[bomberbaz]

5 hours ago, Scubayorp said:

Hmmmm, thank you so much, bomberbaz. I'm staring at a steep learning curve and now not sure I haven't bought the wrong thing. Problem is cost - I'm a low income earner on a pension.

My audience is the general public. This is what I'm hoping to present to 300 ppl from a rooftop on the 6th floor of a city carpark ...
My scope is a 14" alt-az Go-To Dob which I can slew remotely, with my iPhone, while I wander amongst the punters, some meters away.
After initial alignment at the scope, I'm hoping to use SynScan Pro on my iPhone to remotely go to a target and then centre that target from my iPhone as I waffle on about what we're all seeing on the cinema screen. Targets are typically sparkly things like the Moon, planets, Messiers, globular clusters, multiple stars etc.
I'll also be carrying my iPad tethered wirelessly to my MacBook Pro which is at the scope taking the camera feed by cable. I guess I'll use something like TeamViewer to control the laptop screen from the iPad.
Via HDMI cable, the laptop will output the ASIStudio image to the cinema's system and onto the big screen so I and the audience can watch it together as I wow them with my prattle.
Then I want to be able to remotely G0-To my second target and do the same all over again.
Seems complicated but I can't think of an alternative.

Ok, it's az which isn't ideal, and your taking pictures of differing levels of bright objects which itself brings it's own problems. (Potentially different exposure lengths, different gain etc)

However a good thing is your light bucket like the 14" isn't going to need long to get a half decent image of the things but really your going to need more help from the EEVA section, this is more their territory.

What your looking to do seems doable though, although think it is more involved than perhaps you may have thought as this is not really imaging but EEVA as mentioned already.

[Scubayorp]

8 hours ago, bomberbaz said:

Ok, it's az which isn't ideal, and your taking pictures of differing levels of bright objects which itself brings it's own problems. (Potentially different exposure lengths, different gain etc)

However a good thing is your light bucket like the 14" isn't going to need long to get a half decent image of the things but really your going to need more help from the EEVA section, this is more their territory.

What your looking to do seems doable though, although think it is more involved than perhaps you may have thought as this is not really imaging but EEVA as mentioned already.

Thanks BomberBaz, you're right on all counts. I appreciate your thoughtfulness.

[bomberbaz]

Lets look at your big positive, your aperture. As long as your not trying to get very faint DSO's, you will probably get a decent enough image of most bright objects with minimal exposure time, say up to 10 seconds single with something like the Triffid Nebula. With the Moon and planets, a quick blast of video stacked and bing, your there.

However your going to have to put in a fair bit of legwork finding out what length of exposure and gain you need and make a log because your going to be needing to change it if your making a varied number of objects the subjects of your presentations.

I would say however it would be far better if someone were with you to set the exposure and gain settings as per your presentation menu and pre prepared settings guide. This is more for the purposes of continuity whilst you present than any other reason. To be honest a second person doing all this and vetting your image before broadcasting it might be something to consider.

I have actually run my dob remotely once albeit from the conservatory and although it worked, my issue became the image size. To show you what i mean see the image demo image below.

Your camera in the 14" SW flextube is the small blue one, the larger yellow is the ZWO 183mc and then the zwo183 with a 0.5 reducer to broaden the image size. (Be aware of focus issues with the reducer)

 

So in short there is a lot to figure out but it is doable but as you are finding out, and there is a little more to it than perhaps you first thought.

Hope this helps.

Steve

 

[Scubayorp]

FAB. Thank you very much. I reckoned I'd be up for some fancy footwork!

[w84it]

hi i have zwo asi camera and use the app for similar use just try each setting and use deepsky 10 to 20 seconds with the play pn the preview tabs button dont go to capture and that way you get the images live updating every 10 secs.  tbut each update will be 10 + 10 +10 seconds exposure show imprved detail of the area very handy to bring up the fainter stars. i use a 127 mak f11 so if your dob is f4 to f8 your time might work out to be eve lower that 10 secs and the planet capture will work giving a video stream. preview not capture is the way to go eastern sky has some great fiews at the mo.

[w84it]

pps have a [ractice on the moon  with plantery.

[AstroMuni]

On 29/05/2022 at 14:06, Scubayorp said:

I'm an astronomy outreach professional and NOT interested in astrophotography per se, but rather want to use the ASI camera to capture live sky views that I will project onto a cinema screen for an audience who will be listening to me talk about the targets as I remotely move my scope across the sky.

Thats a great idea. I dont know about the weather in your part of the world, but here in the UK, that would be my biggest concern so would need to prepare backup images etc., incase the clouds roll in.

The other thing to watch out for are the technical hitches that can happen when you are far away from the scope, so would be a good idea to get someone to stay around the scope while you are presenting, to fix any glitches.

[rickwayne]

ASIStudio worked reasonably well out of the box for me with live stacking, which is precisely what you want for this application. My concern is that the long focal length of your scope, coupled with the 120MC-S's tiny sensor, will yield such a small field of view that finding targets will be very challenging. 

[rickwayne]

I should note that by the time I tried ASIStudio, I'd already accumulated several years of traditional deep sky experience that probably smoothed the road a lot for me without my even realizing it. Just checking my privilege here. 

[Dan Sheppard]

Hi, I’m new here. So far what I’ve seen, ASI Studio works great for me, on my Macbook Pro.  All my images of the sun are being done through ASICap. It is great, flexible, and gives me a nice, sharp image.

Now I am working on figuring out how to get the best, sharpest stack of my selected image. There is a slider on the video stacker part of the program, which allows you to enter any percentage. The wording does not make it clear, whether 20% gives better sharp image, or whether 80% gives you the image. Any of you know?

Thank you.