A Player One Mars-C II OSC camera fitted with an Optalong L-eNhance filter was placed at the focus of an f/5.5 80mm ED refractor fitted with a Pegasus FocusCube v2 motor focuser, an SVBONY SV165 guide-scope fitted with a QHY-5II-M camera and a Raspberry Pi computer running an INDI server along with its rechargeable power supply. The Raspberry Pi was connected to the AVX mount's hand-controller and to the FocusCube. AstroDMx Capture communicated with the Raspberry Pi and INDI server over WiFi.
Click on an image to get a closer view
The equipment used
The mount/scope was given a two star alignment and focused on the star Vega using a Bahtinov mask. Using AstroDMx Capture, with a previously saved preset for this camera/scope combination, the star came to a perfect focus as judged by the Bahtinov diffraction spikes.
Bahtinov Mask which was placed at the front of the scope
The grid produces characteristic diffraction spikes with bright stars
In focus star
When the star is perfectly in focus, the central diffraction spike is positioned half way between the outer two spikes.
AstroDMx was used to send the mount/scope to the Helix nebula, plate solve and centre the Helix nebula.
PHD2 multi-star pulse-autoguiding was used, using a separate computer to control the auto-guiding. However, this could just as easily have been done all on one computer using separate desktops.
AstroDMx Capture was set to capture 2 min 30s FITS exposures. Some clouds spoiled some of the captured images, but 20 usable images were captured, which amounted to 50 minutes of exposure time. Although the camera produces zero amp glow, matching dark frames were also captured.
The FITS files were calibrated, stacked and partly processed independently in Deep Sky Stacker and Siril, the results eventually being combined. The stacked images were post processed in the Gimp 2.10 and Neat image.
Final image of The Helix nebula
Again, the Player One Mars-C II OSC camera proved to be a very capable deep sky imager in combination with AstroDMx Capture.
