The configuration of the equipment
This is essentially our test rig. It has a Pegasus FocusCube 2 motorised focuser, a ZWO EFW Mini 5 position filter wheel, A TS-Optics T2 Thread 360° Rotation and Quick Changer, an SV705C uncooled CMOS camera. The Raspberry Pi computer attaches firmly to the body of the scope with heavy duty Velcro. The Pi runs an INDI server and communicates via WiFi with the imaging computer indoors running AstroDMx Capture, to control the Mount, Focuser and Filter wheel.
In operation, an SVBONY SV165 guide-scope fitted with a QHY-5II-M guide camera was mounted on the imaging scope.
The experiments in this session were to test the PHD2 auto guiding integration into AstroDMx Capture for automatically turning guiding off when the mount slews and turning guiding back on as soon as the slew finishes so that image capture and plate solving are done whilst auto guiding is active. The plate solving and slewing are done repeatedly until the object is centred with a user specified accuracy or until a user defined number of solves has occurred.
Also part of the test was to test these automatic PHD2 controlling actions during an assisted meridian flip.
These functions worked well during the testing and will work their way into the next feature release of AstroDMx Capture.
AstroDMx Capture controlled the Filter wheel, via the INDI server running on the Raspberry Pi, to put the UV/IR cut filter in the optical path.
AstroDMx Capture sent the scope/mount to Arcturus, missed, plate-solved and iteratively refined the centring of the star. A Bahtinov mask was used to achieve perfect focus with AstroDMx Capture controlling the Pegasus FocusCube 2.
Scope with the Bahtinov mask in place
Auto guiding was started and AstroDMx Capture was then used to send the mount/scope to M17, the Omega or Swan nebula, then plate solve and iteratively refine the centring of the object. Using the integrated PHD2 control to maintain auto guiding when the mount was not in motion.
Click on an image to get a closer view.
AstroDMx Capture captured 60 x 90s FITS exposures of the Omega nebula
Negative preview mode
Fifteen matching dark frames were captured along with Fifty Flat fields
Capturing Flats using an illuminated, variable brightness tracing pad.
The images were calibrated, registered and stacked in Siril. The resulting image was partly stretched in the Gimp 2.10 and using the Starnet+ plugin for The Gimp the stars were removed and retained. The background was extracted and gradient removed from the starless image using GraXpert and the resulting image was denoised in Neat Image. The starless image was then further stretched in the Gimp, denoised again and the stars put back in the Gimp. The final post processing was done in PhotoScape X Pro.
Background extraction and gradient removal of the starless image with GraXpert
Starsback M17, the Omega nebula
