Mike Lewis
Staff Member
So shortly after my first night out with my new portable astro setup, the camera that I was always intending to get for this setup showed up. It is the highly integrated ASI2600MC-Air, combining the main sensor, the guide sensor, and the ASIAIR controller all in one package. It greatly simplifies the cabling and makes for a more compact setup. Shown here against the very cluttered backdrop of my hobby room:
This also brings a much more capable set of sensors for both the main imaging and the guiding. So on Saturday night I headed up to Rocky Mountain National Park to dodge the visitors and the Elk to try things out. It was a beautiful night, and I managed to find a nice location right by the side of a little used road near a campground that is currently shut down for renovations. I only had about 3 hours to image. I picked the same area of the sky as I had shot the last time, which included not only the Bubble Nebula but also the Lobster Claw Nebula, thanks to the wider FOV of the APS-C sensor in the new camera. The new camera also has about an order of magnitude greater well depth for the pixels, so I pushed my exposures up to 10 minutes for the nebulae, still taking 10 short 30 second images to use for just the stars. I could have used a lot more data (isn't that pretty much ALWAYS the case?
) but still got some decent signal. After a few hours of fiddling with palette mixes I remembered the Foraxx palette, and liked that result. The colors are dramatic with that one, and really not much enhanced from how they came out of the script. In the case of using a 250mm refractor like this, the stars are almost too small (this system is definitely undersampled) so I drizzled it up to 2x with good results. Here is a reduced size version for FocalWorld display.
The original size version is shown larger here on Astrobin:
https://www.astrobin.com/kw8fnv/
I still have progress to make on post processing OSC data but as a proof of concept, this is a success, as I now feel like I can get decent results with this setup. I do not see it replacing my full size mono setups, but it is going to be fun to use I think.
As always, comments and critiques most welcome, and thanks for looking!
Equipment:
ASI2600MC-Air 'Smart' Camera @ -10C and Gain:100
ZWO AM5N harmonic Drive Mount
Williams Optics Redcat III, 250mm @ f/4.9
Altair Dual Band 6nm Filters (NB), Optolong L-Pro (RGB)
Software:
Pixinsight Commercial Version 1.8
Lightroom CC
Photoshop CC
ZWO ASIAIR Control Software
BlurXTerminator (Russell Croman)
Star XTerminator (Russell Croman)
Noise XTerminator (Russell Croman)
Light Frames:
Ha/Oiii - 8 x 600 secs (1 hr 20 mins)
Sii/Oiii - 8 x 600 secs (1 hr 20 mins)
RGB (Stars): 10 x 30 secs (5 mins)
2 hrs 45 mins total
Dark Frames:
10 x 30 secs (5 mins)
10 x 600 secs (1 hr 20 mins)
Bias Frames:
60
ML
This also brings a much more capable set of sensors for both the main imaging and the guiding. So on Saturday night I headed up to Rocky Mountain National Park to dodge the visitors and the Elk to try things out. It was a beautiful night, and I managed to find a nice location right by the side of a little used road near a campground that is currently shut down for renovations. I only had about 3 hours to image. I picked the same area of the sky as I had shot the last time, which included not only the Bubble Nebula but also the Lobster Claw Nebula, thanks to the wider FOV of the APS-C sensor in the new camera. The new camera also has about an order of magnitude greater well depth for the pixels, so I pushed my exposures up to 10 minutes for the nebulae, still taking 10 short 30 second images to use for just the stars. I could have used a lot more data (isn't that pretty much ALWAYS the case?
) but still got some decent signal. After a few hours of fiddling with palette mixes I remembered the Foraxx palette, and liked that result. The colors are dramatic with that one, and really not much enhanced from how they came out of the script. In the case of using a 250mm refractor like this, the stars are almost too small (this system is definitely undersampled) so I drizzled it up to 2x with good results. Here is a reduced size version for FocalWorld display. The original size version is shown larger here on Astrobin:
https://www.astrobin.com/kw8fnv/
I still have progress to make on post processing OSC data but as a proof of concept, this is a success, as I now feel like I can get decent results with this setup. I do not see it replacing my full size mono setups, but it is going to be fun to use I think.
As always, comments and critiques most welcome, and thanks for looking!
Equipment:
ASI2600MC-Air 'Smart' Camera @ -10C and Gain:100
ZWO AM5N harmonic Drive Mount
Williams Optics Redcat III, 250mm @ f/4.9
Altair Dual Band 6nm Filters (NB), Optolong L-Pro (RGB)
Software:
Pixinsight Commercial Version 1.8
Lightroom CC
Photoshop CC
ZWO ASIAIR Control Software
BlurXTerminator (Russell Croman)
Star XTerminator (Russell Croman)
Noise XTerminator (Russell Croman)
Light Frames:
Ha/Oiii - 8 x 600 secs (1 hr 20 mins)
Sii/Oiii - 8 x 600 secs (1 hr 20 mins)
RGB (Stars): 10 x 30 secs (5 mins)
2 hrs 45 mins total
Dark Frames:
10 x 30 secs (5 mins)
10 x 600 secs (1 hr 20 mins)
Bias Frames:
60
ML
