Uncooled, magnified, deep sky imaging

For uncooled, magnified, deep sky imaging we used an Askar 71F quadruplet apochromatic astrograph refractor paired with a Player One Mars-C II OSC camera. The scope was fitted with an iOptron iEAF motor focuser and an Altair V2 magnetic 2” filter holder containing an Altair Quadband filter. An SVBONY SV165 guide-scope fitted with a QHY-5II-M guide camera was mounted on the imaging scope. The whole rig was mounted on a Celestron AVX GOTO EQ mount.

The Player One Mars-C II camera pairs excellently with the Askar 71F quadruplet apochromatic refractor. 

Because the Mars-C II features a small 1/2.8-inch Sony IMX662 sensor (5.6mm x 3.2mm), it will heavily crop the telescope’s native field of view. This configuration turns the wide-field telescope into a high-magnification setup suitable for small targets. 

The Askar 71F has a focal length of F=490 mm and an f ratio of f/6.9

The Player One Mars-C II camera with 2.9µm pixels at 1.22 arcseconds per pixel fits perfectly into the ideal sampling range (0.67"–2.0") for average atmospheric seeing with this telescope.

The field of View (FOV) of 0.66° x 0.37° is ideal for framing small deep-sky objects.

The Askar 71F provides a 44mm flat image circle. Since the Mars-C II sensor uses only the centre of the image circle (6.44mm diagonal), stars are perfectly pinpoint and aberration-free from corner to corner. 

The Mars-C II features STARVIS 2 technology with a 54ke- full-well capacity. This allows for long exposures during imaging without clipping star cores. The IMX662 sensor has zero amp-glow.

AstroDMx Capture for Linux x86_64 was used to capture the image data as FITS images with flats and matching darks.

53 x 1 minute exposures of M16 were used. The data were stacked and part processed in PixInsight and further processed in GraXpert, SetiAstroSuitePro and Gimp3.

Screenshot of AstroDMx Capture capturing M16 data

M16 HOO rendering

M16 RGB rendering

The 'pillars of creation' were magnified with this setup providing a good close-up of this feature.

45 x 1 minute exposures on each of M3 and M13 were used. The data were stacked and part processed in PixInsight and further processed in GraXpert and Gimp3.

AstroDMx Capture capturing M3 data

M3

AstroDMx Capture capturing M13 data

M13

The combination of the Askar 71F quadruplet apochromatic astrograph refractor and the Player One Mars-C II OSC camera proved to be a good combination for imaging small objects.

 

First light for a Windows ARM, Snapdragon powered laptop for astronomical imaging

 

Nicola has implemented AstroDMx Capture for Windows ARM natively on a Snapdragon powered laptop.

 The computer used was a Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3x 15in Snapdragon X1-26-100 powered Windows ARM computer.

The imaging equipment used

For deep sky imaging we used an Askar 71F quadruplet apochromatic astrograph refractor paired with an SVBONY SV605CC OSC camera. The scope was fitted with an Altair V2 magnetic 2” filter holder containing an IR/UV cut filter and an iOptron iEAF motor focuser. An SVBONY SV165 guide-scope fitted with a QHY-5II-M guide camera was mounted on the imaging scope

Snapdragon X1-26-100 specifications

• Core Count: 8 Oryon CPU cores
• Clock Speed: Up to 2.97 GHz - 3.0 GHz
• Graphics:  Qualcomm Adreno GPU (1.7 TFLOPS)
• AI Performance:  45 TOPS Hexagon NPU

At the time of writing, the Snapdragon ARM processors have started to gain traction in the laptop and mini computer markets. Snapdragon laptops are characterised by being very power efficient and by being able to run for extended periods on battery power. From the astronomical imaging point of view, this is new technology and very few camera manufacturers have produced Windows ARM drivers or SDKs. This situation is bound to improve as these computers become more popular. 

For deep sky imaging we used an Askar 71F quadruplet apochromatic astrograph refractor paired with an SVBONY SV605CC OSC camera. The scope was fitted with an Altair V2 magnetic 2” filter holder containing an IR/UV cut filter.

In our deep sky imaging experiments we used AstroDMx Capture on the Snapdragon Windows laptop and controlled the SV605CC OSC camera as well as the mount and iEAF focuser via an INDI server running on a Fedora mini computer. Guiding was done by PHD2 autoguiding running on a separate Fedora Linux laptop. In our H-alpha solar imaging experiment we used a Touptek GPCMOS01200KPF OSC camera running natively and a Coronado Solarmax II 60, BF 15, H-alpha telescope.

Deep Sky Imaging

Screenshots of AstroDMx Capture imaging deep sky objects

Markarian's chain

M3

One hour's worth of 3 minute exposures was captured on each of the objects as FITS files. The data were processed in PixInsight, SetiAstroSuitePro, GraXpert and Gimp3

Markarian's Chain

M3

Solar H-alpha imaging

Lenovo Snapdragon powered laptop connected to the H-alpha imaging equipment

H-alpha scope and Touptek camera mounted on a Skywatcher Solar Quest solar finding and tracking mount.

Screenshot of AstroDMx Capture streaming H-alpha solar data

Two overlapping 1000-frame SER file panes were captured. The best 50% of the frames were debayered and stacked in Autostakkert!4, wavelet processed in waveSharp 3 and finished in Gimp3

The Solar disk in H-alpha

In conclusion, the first light tests of the Snapdragon powered Windows 11 computer were successful and showed that these relatively low cost, powerful and energy efficient laptops are very suitable for astronomical imaging, and would be very useful for imaging in the field. It seems to us that the future of laptop computing could lie with ARM powered machines. When astronomical camera manufacturers produce ARM drivers and SDKs it is likely that more astronomical imagers will switch to these types of machines as they upgrade their computing equipment.

First light for a Macbook Neo laptop for astronomical imaging

The Macbook Neo laptop (Running AstroDMx Capture)

The Apple MacBook Neo 13-inch Laptop with A18 Pro chip has a Liquid Retina Display, 8GB of Unified Memory, 256GB SSD Storage

The Apple A18 is a 3nm (TSMC N3E) 6-core System on a Chip. It features 2 performance cores (4.04--4.05 GHz) and 4 efficiency cores, a 5-core GPU, and a 16-core Neural Engine capable of 35 Trillion Operations Per Second (TOPS). It supports 8GB of LPDDR5X RAM on-package with 17% more memory bandwidth than previous generations, offers high energy efficiency (3-4W sustained), and is designed for on-device AI.

It has the same CPU performance as the A16 Bionic while consuming 30% less power. Due to its power efficiency the Macbook Neo has an extremely long battery life before requiring re-charging.

Single-Core Performance:

The A18 Pro often outperforming the most powerful x86 desktop processors. In Geekbench 6 tests, it achieves single-core scores around 3,400–3,500. This puts it ahead of top-tier desktop CPUs like the Intel Core i9-14900KS and the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X as well as The snapdragon ARM SOC in single-threaded tasks .

Multi-Core Performance:

Due to its 6-core architecture (2 performance, 4 efficiency cores), the A18 Pro falls behind high-end x86 desktop and laptop processors as well as the Snapdragon SOC in heavy multi-threaded workloads. With a multi-core score of approximately 8,500–9,100, its performance is comparable to mid-range mobile or older desktop x86_64 CPUs:

The Macbook Neo is the lowest cost laptop that Apple has ever released, but it retains the usual Apple build quality.

All of these factors make the Macbook Neo very suitable for astronomical imaging.

The Macbook Neo was used with two telescopes and two cameras to make initial tests of different aspects of astronomical imaging.

For deep sky imaging we used an Askar 71F quadruplet apochromatic astrograph refractor paired with an SVBONY SV405CC OSC camera. The scope was fitted with an Altair V2 magnetic 2” filter holder containing an IR/UV cut filter.

For lunar imaging we used a Skymax 127 Maksutov Cassegrain paired with an SVBONY SV505C OSC camera fitted with an IR/UV cut filter.

Deep Sky imaging

The equipment used

Screenshot of AstroDMx Capture capturing FITS images of M5

The data were debayered, stacked and part processed in PixInsight and further processed in GraXpert, SetiAstroSuitePro and Gimp3. This was the procedure followed for each of the three deep sky objects tested: M5, M3 and the Leo Triplet.

M5

M3

Screenshot of AstroDMx Capture capturing FITS images of The Leo Triplet

The Leo Triplet

Lunar imaging with a Skymax 127 Maksutov Cassegrain paired with an SV505C OSC camera.

1000 frame RAW 8 bit SER files were captured of 9 overlapping panes of the Moon.

AstroDMx Capture capturing RAW lunar SER files

An eight pane mosaic of the 68.5% waxing Moon was captured (we later found that only 8 panes were necessary). Each pane was a 1000 frame SER file captured by AstroDMx Capture running on the Macbook Neo through a Skymax 127 Maksutov using an SV705C OSC camera fitted with an IR/UV cut filter. Initially the SER files were transferred to another computer for stacking and processing. Each pane was a stack of the best 90% of the frames in the SER, stacked in Autostakkert!3. The 9 panes were stitched in MS ICE, wavelet processed in Registax6 and finished in Gimp3.

The final mosaic of the Moon

We then decided to find out how much of the data processing could have been done directly on the Macbook Neo. These were important tests, but it is normally our practice to transfer data to a desktop mini computer for processing and posting.

Planet Stacker X

Planet Stacker X is a native Apple silicon stacking and processing program.

Screenshot of a SER file loaded into Planet Stacker X

Stacking

Screenshot showing the stacking is completed and the opportunity to take the stacked image directly into the processing part of the program or be save to be loaded into this software later

Screenshot of the processing part of the software doing wavelet sharpening

The processed image exported as a 16 bit TIFF file

Planet Stacker X is a modern, native macOS successor to PlanetarySystemStacker (PSS), and was developed by Rain City Astro.

The relationship between the two is defined by their shared purpose and architectural evolution: The developer created Planet Stacker X out of frustration with running PSS on Apple Silicon (M1/M2/M3) Macs. Because PSS is a Python-based application, it requires complex dependency management and often relies on x64 emulation, which can be fragile and slow on newer Macs.

Planet Stacker X shares all the core features of PlanetarySystemStacker, and was built "from the ground up" specifically for macOS frameworks.

Unlike PSS, Planet Stacker X runs natively on Apple Silicon without emulation and utilises GPU acceleration and the Apple Neural Engine to significantly speed up analysis and stacking pipelines.

Planet Stacker X also includes image processing tools.

While PlanetarySystemStacker remains a powerful open-source tool for Windows, Linux, and older Macs, Planet Stacker X is a more user-friendly, high-performance alternative for the modern Mac Apple Silicon devices.

Panorama Stitcher

Panorama Stitcher was developed by Olga Kacher for macOS and iOS. It runs natively on Apple silicon. It is built on its own propitiatory engine and is not derived from other stitching software. It uses its own algorithms for automatic alignment and exposure levelling and it features fully automatic drag and drop for loading images.

Screenshot of Panorama Stitcher stitching two overlapping panes of lunar images

The images were stitched using planar motion and were saved as a 16 bit TIFF file.

All eight unprocessed panes were similarly stitched with Panorama Stitcher

The stitched image was processed in the Planet Stacker X image processor

Solar imaging

Equipment used

A William Optics ZenithStar 66 SD Apochromatic refractor fitted with an ICE ND 100000 solar filter was mounted on a Skywatcher Solar Quest solar finding and tracking mount. A Touptek Toupcam GPCMOS01200KPF OSC camera fitted with a UV/IR cut filter was used to capture the data.

Two overlapping panes of 1000-frame SER files were captured by AstroDMx Capture with the MacbookNeo.

For each pane, the best 50% of the frames in the SER file were stacked and wavelet processed in Planet Stacker X.

The two resulting panes were stitched as a panorama and cropped in Affinity

Deep Sky processing with Apple silicon

We installed and tested various software that is native Apple silicon.

Deep sky stacking and processing software

Affinity

Screenshot of Affinity stacking the M5 data

Affinity processing the stacked image

Affinity derives from the Serif Affinity Photo software. This was acquired by Canva and is now freeware. It retains the functionality of the original Serif software and has an Apple silicon version.

Siril

Screenshot of Siril processing the stacked M3 image

ASI Studio

Screenshot of ASI studio ASIDeepStack stacking the M3 data

PixInsight will also run on Apple silicon but we did not install it here.

Starnet++

Starnet++ can be installed as a command line version for macOS and works exactly as it does in Windows

Screenshot of Starnet++ running at the command line

Screenshot showing the starless version of the mono 16 bit test image

CosmicClaritySuite_apple_silicon standalone.

We tested three important functions of this software:

SetiAstroCosmicClarity_denoisemac

SetiAstroCosmicClaritymac for sharpening stellar and non-stellar parts of an image

Animation showing the normal and sharpened versions of an image

SetiAstroCosmicClarity_superres for upscaling an image 

General image processing software

GIMP3

Pinta 

We shall continue to test the Macbook Neo for astronomical imaging. However, so far, it has performed perfectly. This article was written on the Macbook Neo using Libre Office Writer which is an open source alternative to Apple's Pages, and runs natively on Apple silicon.