#Zwo Asi Cameras Full Sized Versions

To put a stop to this practice I decided to bring along some of my hiking kit!Bringing the tent provided many advantages.Firstly it gave me a place to catch up on ZzzвЂ™s immediately after the drive there. This meant that once again, I had to create my own artificial flats at home:On my previous astronomical excursions, I would head off to Exmoor, do a spot of imaging and then drive home as soon as the imaging was complete.However, I didnвЂ™t really like to do this as I felt that I was pushing my endurance limits a little too far. The colour data was taken at 1x binning, so IвЂ™m kind of hoping I can add these to the luminance channel to help with the signal to noise ratio.In terms of colour, I will just take 22 minutes from each channel to keep the channels balanced вЂ“ hopefully it will be enough.When the mount stopped operating due to low power, I immediately decided to take some sky flats as these can be done with a powered down mount, but alas, I was thwarted by the laptop refusing to work in the sub-zero conditions.

My first concern was that the telescope was going to get driven into the mount. I wonвЂ™t spoil things by naming it for you! рџ›Things seemed to be going swimmingly well, until all of a sudden, out of nowhere, the mount started slewing all by itself!I made a bee-line straight for the mount. Deep space galaxy imaging was strictly off the menu due to the moon.Other than Orion, this is probably one of the most recognisable constellations in the northern hemisphere. Both of these are narrow band targets. The bonus side effect being that I would miss the morning rush hour traffic in Bristol!For tonight I had two potential plans lined upвЂ¦Plan number one was to image the Cygnus Wall, with plan number two targeting the Dumb bell Nebula (M27) instead. The second advantage is that I could also sleep after the imaging run, thus ensuring that I would be fresh for the drive back.

This will allow the mount to carry on following the target whilst avoiding any further contact with the mount.Normally, this is a right royal pain to do.Firstly, you have to manually centre the object again. The weights are now to the West and the telescope is now to the East. Compare and contrast with the previous photoвЂ¦Notice how the telescope and weights have switched position. ItвЂ™s a tough job to ask of any software, but somehow, Sequence Generator Pro delivered!It switched the scope to the other side of the mount, automatically re-centered it perfectly on to M27, then it went on to pick a guide star and carry on, all without breaking into a sweat!I have never seen this level of automation before, I just stood there stunned and incredulous.Many non-astronomy readers are probably thinking what is a meridian flip?Well, take a close look at the photo below, pre-flip:The scope post meridian flip. In the old days, meridian flips had to be performed by hand. I didnвЂ™t have the time for these mount shenanigans as the night was literally running out!However, out of morbid curiosity I decided to monitor the whole thing very closely.

Zwo Asi Cameras Full Sized Versions

There are many obstacles to overcome, any one of which can trip up the unwary and result in a poor image, or worse still, no image at all!Alas, there is no off-the-shelf system that can be bought to allow one to start imaging.Instead, one has to diligently research equipment and software to make sure that they can all be connected together into a symbiotic whole that will allow great pictures to be produced.The above diagram shows a simplified schematic of my imaging system as it is/was on June 2018. Full sized versions of the updated diagrams can be found under this siteвЂ™s schematics tab.Taking great images of the night sky is difficult. Let us just say it was quite cold having to remove it pre-dawnвЂ¦Edit: Please ignore all references to Sequence Generator Pro вЂ“ it has since been replaced with N.I.N.A. Talk about cutting things fine!After the imaging run, I set about taking the sky flats using the T-Shirt method вЂ“ or in this specific case, the-t-shirt-that-I-was-actually-wearing-method, as I had forgotten to bring one for this very purpose. It was all very touch and go, yet the last image got taken with literally no time to spare. In addition, if the object is not precisely centered you end up having to crop away a large part of the combined image frames.To add further complication, the guider commands are now back to front, yet somehow, Sequence Generator Pro dealt with all of this in a fuss free manner.I had originally planned to do an automated meridian flip under more controlled test conditions, but I guess thatвЂ™s one test I can skip now рџ™‚With the dawn creeping in, there was in a real danger of having to cut the imaging session short.

In the case of imaging sensors, this noise tends to be proportional to the ambient temperature. This is a rare view of the 17.7Г—13.4mm MN34230 CMOS sensor.All electronics produce signal noise. This is your one chance to become a systems engineer!Rather than take you through the large and rather complicated diagram above, I will, instead, take you on a tour of each sub-systemвЂ¦ PowerThe main camera, the star of the show.

This is why astronomical cameras are cooled down to such very low temperatures.A big part of this sub-system is the optical train. Without temperature control, the images would be swamped with sensor noise. These subjects present a very high signal to noise ratio which is unlikely to be affected by sensor noise.However, in Astronomy, we take pictures over many hours, at targets that are very faint. This duration is short enough that sensor noise does not present a problem.In addition, terrestrial cameras tend to take photos of well lit subjects.

The light splitting is achieved by a prism in a device called the Off-Axis-Guider вЂ“ or OAG for short. To get around this the whole system has to be polar aligned with the EarthвЂ™s rotational axis.The problem is that polar alignments are never exact, nor are the engineering tolerances of a mount good enough to allow for long trail-free images.To get around this issue, a second camera is deployed whose sole job is to keep an eye on just one star and its relative position.If the star moves, the system will command the mount to recenter the star back to its original position вЂ“ in this way the system is always precisely centred on the targeted object.In my system, the star light comes in through the telescope, and is then split off to go to two separate cameras. The end result is that the stars appear to whizz by when viewed at any kind of magnification. Auto-GuidingWe live on a planet that spins rather fast. One that I will leave the discussion for another day рџ™‚All IвЂ™ll say right now is that PixInsight is my tool of choice, with Affinity Photo being used for any final touching up.