M27 Dumbbell Nebula - First light with asi2600mc

[powerlord]

Well, didn't start well last night. Got asi2600mc from FLO, and decided to setup the SW 300p monster.

After straightforward PA, it decided to play funny with gotos - going totally wrong way. Took numerous restarts of mount to sort out.

Then I started to have issued with my asiair - it kept randomly restarting itself. The only change to the setup is the new camera. weird. It kept doing this all night, so I'd setup an autorun, and then find hours later it had restarted and nothing imaged.

In the end I managed to get 10x180 second images of M27. So 30 mins.

I didn't expect much to be honest, but I'm pretty amazed to see it has started to bring out the outer Oiii clouds.

This was all with 2" L-extreme filter.

I've swapped the camera power now to not go through asiair, but direct to my power distro box and kicked off a session of dark frames to see if it's any more stable.

If it's sorted the restart issue, I hope to get some more data over the next few sessions.

I know it's crazy overkill - asi2600 + 300p (0.5"x0.5" per pixel). My guiding was good (around 0.3-0.5") but seeing isn't gonna be that good.

However, I like the results and reckon I'll leave this setup for a few sessions and try more M27 and other targets. I did hope to get an hour in on M16, but by the time I'd sorted all the above out, it had disappeared behind my neighbour's tree.

 

[Elp]

Pretty great result for such a short time.

Is it the asiair which restarts or the camera disconnects? I had an issue where everything would run okay whilst I was by the scope, when I went inside I'd find checking up on it the plan had stopped due to the camera disconnecting (the camera icon up top would be off). I think the asiair has issues if there's too much power draw, my issue was down to a WiFi extender drawing too much via one of the usb ports, once I powered that separately it works fine (zwo didn't help me with this issue at all, had to figure it out myself). The asiair still powers the mount, two cameras and astro cam cooling.

Edited July 29, 2022 by Elp

[simmo39]

As said above, nice image for a short run. Luv my ASI2600 mc.

[powerlord]

16 minutes ago, Elp said:

Pretty great result for such a short time.

Is it the asiair which restarts or the camera disconnects? I had an issue where everything would run okay whilst I was by the scope, when I went inside I'd find checking up on it the plan had stopped due to the camera disconnecting (the camera icon up top would be off). I think the asiair has issues if there's too much power draw, my issue was down to a WiFi extender drawing too much via one of the usb ports, once I powered that separately it works fine (zwo didn't help me with this issue at all, had to figure it out myself). The asiair still powers the mount, two cameras and astro cam cooling.

asiair restarts. i get a 'reconnecting' on my tablet, then I hear the asiair beep.

Yeh, that was my only idea - but the only things I have powered by asiair is a fan (0.1a), and the camera. So even it was drawing 3a max it should still be fine.

Nothing has changed usb ports wise - well unless the asi2600 is taking too much power there, but you were seeing disconnects not restarts there in that case, so doubt it's that.

But so far, a few hours in to shooting darks, moving the camera to direct power, and the mount instead to the asiair power seems to have sorted restarts. Maybe there is some sort of spike the asi2600 needs that the asiair can't provide or something. frankly - IF it has fixed it, it's no skin of my nose where it gets it's power.. so fingers crossed.

[powerlord]

hmm I'm noticing that the outer rings are far less obvious on my cheaper work monitor here, than on my imac 5k extended gamut. Maybe I need to pull the data up a bit so it is more visible on regular monitors/screens.

This is a pic of what I see on my screen (if this works)

 

Edited July 29, 2022 by powerlord

[powerlord]

here's a stretch that looks ok when I change my monitor profile to be a regular one

[powerlord]

and a test of the original file, with the profile only changed to be my mac profile.

Edited July 29, 2022 by powerlord

[KP82]

Excellent result with only 30min integration time. The IMX577 is so good that it makes my panasonic sensor based QHY163 like a prehistoric device.