Nicola has been working hard for some time, introducing new functionality into AstroDMx Capture. The various new functions will come online when we consider them ready for release. There are a number of functions and they may not be released piecemeal, other than the native implementation of new cameras.
Our internal build of AstroDMx Capture has control of the mount and can send the scope to selected objects. It then captures an image of the star-field, solves the star-field and then, on command, centres the object in the camera’s field of view. This will facilitate the rapid acquisition of objects, suitably placed for imaging. Tightly linked to auto-guiding, the positioning of dim objects requiring particularly long exposures plus auto-guiding, will now take less time to set up.
The experiment reported here used a Skywatcher Esprit 80 ED Super APO Triplet refractor mounted on a Celestron AVX mount. A Player-One Mars-C II (IMX662) OSC uncooled camera was placed at the focus. AstroDMx Capture for Linux was used to capture the image data. The mount was given a simple two-star alignment before it was sent to the first test object. The scope was focused using a Bahtinov mask and a bright star.
The following objects were the test subjects for the experiment:
Globular clusters
M13; M92; M3
Planetary nebulae
M57; M27
Open cluster
IC 0665, the Summer beehive cluster
Although the Celestron AVX mount is reasonably well polar aligned, using a simple two-star alignment is likely to result in some slight error in the GOTO function; which is what we required for this experiment.
AstroDMx Capture was used to send the mount to an object and an image was captured. In most cases the object was somewhere in the field of view of the camera sensor, but not centred. (It would not matter however, if the object had missed the camera sensor altogether). The captured image was then used to solve the star field and AstroDMx Capture was then able to move the mount precisely, to centre the required object on the camera sensor.
Click on an image to get a closer view
Example screenshots before and after AstroDMx Capture has centred the test object on the camera sensor
M92 after AstroDMx Capture sent the scope to the object.
It can be seen that M92 is in the field of view of the camera sensor, but requires centring.
M92 after AstroDMx Capture centred the object
M57 after AstroDMx Capture sent the scope to the object.
M57 after AstroDMx Capture centred the object
In all six cases AstroDMx Capture was able to send the scope (mount) to the required object and then centre the object ready for imaging. Exposures just long enough to see the star field are all that are required. Also in these cases the objects were required to be just visible for the purposes of this experiment.
The experiment was a success, and the new functionality will eventually make its way into a release of AstroDMx Capture. The functionality will be present in all platforms. This will not be rushed and will be released as a new version when it is ready.
