Four from last night (26-27_07_2022) using AstroArt 8 Sp1.

[fwm891]

First all nighter for weeks. Patchy seeing due to high cloud but it gave me a chance to try out AstroArt 8 Sp1 for both image capture and scope control. Very pleased with the program too.

M27 was shot as 15x 300s subs with 4 being dropped as the background sky was just too bright. Captures were to an ASI533 MC Pro OSC via a Baader UV/IR cut filter.

NGC6960 used the same camera but with an IDAS NBZ filter being used. Here 9x 300s subs were captured and all used. NGC 7331 group taken through the Baader UV/IR cut filter with all 7x 300s subs used.

The Bubble neb (NGC7635) was taken with the IDAS NBZ and 9x 300s subs taken with 2 being dropped due to too many bright trails across the frames.

Scope used: a TS/GSO clone RC8 @ f8 (1624mm fl) on an iOptron CEM60 mount.

Processing of the subs was done in PI with the M27 and NGC7635 images being further tweaked in PS.

This was my first chance to do more than play with the AA8 tutorials (very good they are) and I played first with just getting some images to plate solve and find other targets. I tried guiding on a single star first but found the full frame guiding to be superb giving fractional pixel errors - better than I've had with PHD2 for ages. Initially the goto was a little off but the more targets sync'd to the better it became. (Even better after I updated the CEM60 handset and boards with new firmware).

I've not tried the image processing side of AA8 yet but the subs from these images will give me a good chance to play with that side of things.

I've had a few issues with SGP in recent times so that was my reason for trying AA8. I used a very old version of AA years ago (on an windows XP machine!) it's certainly changed, although the uncluttered screen area and tool layout seemed quite familiar.

 

I even got time during the captures to play with the 16 inch Dob so a successful night all round

 

Edited July 27, 2022 by fwm891
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[simmo39]

Nice bunch of images.

[peter shah]

thats a lot to get done in one go....great set of images