ASI 2600MC DUO - Guiding cam

[fwm891]

Last night I tried my ASI 2600MC DUO with no filters, an Askar 6nm (Ha/OIII) and an IDAS NBZ filter to see what changes I would need to make to the guide settings when swapping between filters.

Scope used: Orion Optics (UK) VX10 with a TS 1x coma corrector fitted, ZWO filter drawer. Scope is f4.8, 1200mm focal length.

Captures were also made on NGC6888 (3x300s for each instance), the guide camera gain remained the same throughout (as did the main sensor gain). Captures made via NINA with guiding via PHD2. No settings were changed in PHD2 apart from exposure length as required. My usual unfiltered guide exposure is 2 seconds.

No filter:  2 seconds, guide stars easily visible 8+ stars selected for guiding.

Askar 6nm: 2 seconds, guide stars visible but fainter, 8+ stars selected for guiding.

IDAS NBZ: 2.5 seconds, guide stars faint, 8+ guide stars selected for guiding.

** I had made a dark frame library for the guide camera to minimise background noise.

I could have changed the gain for the different filters but left alone for this test.

Hopefully the images will upload with the no filter in the middle so easier to compare up/down against the others.

All filters were auto focused through NINA.

Cheers

 

Edited August 16, 2023 by fwm891
Text added

[Dr_Ju_ju]

I'm sorely tempted, & envy you....

[fwm891]

1 hour ago, Dr_Ju_ju said:

I'm sorely tempted, & envy you....

I was toying with getting the asi2600MC Pro but thought the internal guider 'might' be a bonus. It's helped already with removing cables from the set-up. As yet the guide scope remains attached but I think that will be removed at some stage allowing a smaller counterweight to be removed too.

What I was surprised at last night was the small differences between the three filter sets. Without the captions I think it would be difficult to tell the difference. I haven't split the channels yet to see what differences there are in those. Will look at that later...

[fwm891]

Managed to get this from the 3x 300s Askar image. Took way longer to process than capture...