Fortitudo in diversitate et stabilitate
A ZWO ASI178MC camera with a 2" adapter was placed at the Newtonian focus of a 130mm, F=650 mm Newtonian telescope fitted with a coma corrector. The scope was mounted on a Celestron AVX GOTO mount.
The hand controller was connected to a Raspberry Pi computer running an INDI server for controlling the mount. The camera was also connected to the Raspberry Pi for INDI camera control.
The raspberry Pi was connected by a CAT 6 Ethernet cable to the network.
The mount was given a 2 star alignment and AstroDMx Capture with added control features was connected via Ethernet to the Raspberry Pi.
A Bahtinov mask was used to finely focus the scope on the last alignment star, using AstroDMx Capture to view the Bahtinov diffraction spikes.
The mount was controlled via AstroDMx Capture and PHD2 for auto-guiding via Ethernet. The Guide-scope was an SVBONY SV165 fitted with a QHY-5II-M camera. The guide computer was also connected to the Raspberry Pi computer via Ethernet.
AstroDMx Capture was then used to send the mount to M27, the Dumbbell nebula, plate solve and then centre M27 in the field of view. To test the nudge controls, the object was moved a very small amount from the centre and it was not re-centred for imaging.
AstroDMx Capture was then used to capture 13 x 2 min FITS exposures of M27 with matching dark-frames.
Screenshot of AstroDMx Capture saving FITS files of M27
The FITS images were registered and stacked in Deep Sky Stacker and post-processed in the Gimp 2.10.
M27 the Dumbbell nebula with a A ZWO ASI178MC as an INDI camera
This experiment, along with an earlier one reported HERE with a Player One camera and HERE with an Atik camera, are indicators that Nicola’s implementation of INDI cameras in AstroDMx Capture is coming along well.
However, when AstroDMx Capture is released with enhanced capabilities, INDI camera support will not be included. The reason for this is so that delays in release will not happen while INDI camera support is being finalised. The release with enhanced capability support will feature INDI mount control, plate-solving, motor-focusers and filter wheels.
There will be an interim maintenance release finalising support for the SVBONY SV705C camera.
