Horse Head Nebula with new Hypercam 294c fan cooled camera

[Quatermass]

It has been quite a journey for me to finally reach the stage of getting a dedicated astro camera and I went for the Altair Astro Hypercam 294c fan cooled camera last month after much consideration. This is an image of the Horse Head nebula taken a few nights ago combining 50 3min subs in H-Alpha and the same with just RGB data. The Filter is the astronomic 12nm H-Alpha filter used before in my Canon 450d and I did a diy adaption to get it in front of the new cameras sensor so no need to get a 2 inch filter. Setting were a gain of 900 binning at 1x1 and offset at 100 using APT to managed the camera. Might try NINA one day but for now happy to carry on with the set up I have. Mount is the Sky watcher eq5 with the synscan up grade and a sky watcher  130pds  brilliant little telescope after using the 200p for many years this little gem is proving itself to be a fantastic bit of kit. Clear skies everyone QM

The Horse head Nebula.psd

Edited November 27, 2022 by Quatermass

[knobby]

Really nice, well done 👍🏻

[Stu Wilson]

Nice shot well done, myself and a friend recently got the same cameras. Weve both come to the conclusion that 901 and 10 are the best settings for now.

Try them and see if it makes difference for you. youll have to match darks and lights obviously though.

i originally started with 901 and 100.

The 901 instead of 900 is to bring it over some threshhold point.......

[Stu Wilson]

Just realised something..... you have fan cooled or TEC cooled?

[MonsterMagnet]

That's superb, the head itself is incredibly clear and defined.

MM

 

 

[Quatermass]

On 27/11/2022 at 20:38, Stu Wilson said:

Just realised something..... you have fan cooled or TEC cooled?

I have the fan cooled one but it does not seem to make a significant difference to be honest.

[Quatermass]

It would be helpful to hear from others who have this camera as to what settings they use for Gain Offset and Binning. I have only used a set of darks far when stacking my images and to be honest they are coming out so clean compared to my old Canon 450d it makes processing them pain free. You can see more of the images I have taken with the Altair Astro Hypercam 294c fan cooled camera on my blog www.astrocasto.blogspot.com if your thinking of getting one and want to see the images I am getting with my eq5 pro and my sky watcher 130pds. I use a zwo ISI 120mc on a sky watcher finder scope for my guiding. I'm also using my Astronomic 12nm H-Alpha Filter that I rigged up so I can use it with the camera by making my own adapter for it as this filter was the clip in one for the Canon 450d. Combining the images in Ha with RGB data worked great with the dslr but is even better with the new 294c.

[Stu Wilson]

On 27/11/2022 at 20:38, Stu Wilson said:

Just realised something..... you have fan cooled or TEC cooled?

TEC cooled

 

[tich]

You're certainly having fun with your new camera Mark & getting some nice results to, the 269C & 26C I run those at a gain of 282 with the offset at 47 (I think) but that's in NINA, I do find the settings to be very confusing at times but those settings seemed to work for me ok.