Further test of Deep sky imaging with a Skymax 127

In this session all of the plate solving was done by AstroDMx Capture in the cloud using the Astrometry.net method that Nicola has implemented.

An SV605CC 14 bit CMOS camera was placed at the focus of a Skymax 127 Maksutov telescope and an SV305 CMOS camera was placed at the focus of an F=190mm, 50mm guidescope for guiding with PHD2.

The equipment used

The imaging was done on a Windows 11 computer which was running an INDI server in a Linux VirtualBox virtual machine on a different virtual desktop. The INDI server was used by AstroDMx Capture for Windows to control the AVX GOTO mount. 

AstroDMx Capture unparked the mount and sent it to Regulus. The field of view was solved by AstroDMx Capture using the cloud plate solver, Astrometry.net. Focus was checked on the Skymax 127 imaging scope and the guide scope using Bahtinov masks.

PHD2 auto-guiding was done during plate solving and turned off only for slewing. The mount/scope was then sent by AstroDMx Capture to the globular cluster M53, plate solving and centring of the object.

Screenshot of the PHD2 auto-guiding. M53 is visible in the centre of the guidescope field of view.

AstroDMx Capture was used to capture a total of 1 hour 26 minutes worth of 2 minute FITS exposures of M53 and matching dark-frames

Demonstration of the negative preview option in AstroDMx Capture

The data were dark and flat frame calibrated, stacked and partially processed in Siril

A slight gradient due to the rising Moon was removed by background extraction in GraExpert

The resulting image was post processed in the Gimp 2.10 and Neat Image.

M53 globular cluster

This session was a further demonstration that with good auto-guiding it is possible to use a Skymax 127 to image small deep sky objects in conjunction with a suitable camera such as the SV605CC OSC cooled CMOS camera used successfully here.