A William Optics Zenithstar 66, apochromatic refractor was mounted on an aluminium plate at the side of a short guidescope with a QHY 5L-II M monochrome CMOS camera which was attached by the ST4 guideport to the Autoguiding port of the Celestron AVX mount on which everything was mounted. The PHD2 auto-guiding was done with a Fedora Linux Laptop.
A ZWO ASI178MC 14-bit CMOS colour camera was placed at the focus of the apochromatic refractor.
The AVX mount was slewed to Rigel so that a Bahtinov mask could be used to achieve optimum focus.
Screenshot of AstroDMx Capture for macOS showing the Bahtinov mask focusing of Rigel.
There was only opportunity to capture 4 x 7min FITS exposures of the Christmas Tree Cluster before it moved into an unfavourable position .
The images were dark-frame corrected and Stacked in Affinity Photo, and post processed in Affinity Photo, The Gimp 2.10, FastStone and Neat Image.
The Christmas Tree cluster and nebula.
The scope was slewed to the Leo Triplet of galaxies and PHD2 auto-guiding commenced, using a Fedora Linux laptop.
12 x 5 minute auto-guided FITS exposures of the Leo Triplet were captured by Astrodmx Capture for macOS with matching dark-frames.
The images were tacked in Affinity Photo and post processed in Affinity Photo, the Gimp 2.10, Fitswork4 and Neat Image.
The Leo Triplet galaxies
