Oportet ut imago rēs vērā repraesentet
AstroDMx Capture was used with an SV605CC OSC camera and an Altair Starwave ASCENT 60ED doublet refractor with 0.8 reducer/flattener and a Pegasus Focuscube v2. An Altair 2” magnetic filter holder version 2 containing an Altair 6nm Ha/OIII dualband filter was placed in the optical train.
The equipment used
The equipment was mounted on a Celestron AVX GOTO mount. An SVBONY SV165 guide-scope fitted with a QHY-5II-M guide camera was mounted on the imaging scope. An INDI server was running on the imaging Linux computer indoors. The guide camera was connected by USB to another Linux computer indoors running PHD2 autoguiding software via the INDI serever. Both the imaging scope and the guide scope were fitted with dew heater strips. The mount and the focuser were controlled by AstroDMx Capture via the INDI server.
Screenshot of the PHD2 autoguiding
AstroDMx Capture slewed the scope to Altair and plate solved to centre it. A Bahtinov mask was used to enable Altair to be brought into sharp focus.
Then AstroDMx Capture plate solved and sent the scope to SH2-91, a region of filamentous nebulosity in the vecinity of Albireo; a region containing 9 Cyg, 12 Cyg and the very red Campbell's Hydrogen star.
AstroDMx Capture was used to capture 3.5 hours worth of 5-minute RAW exposures of SH2-91 with an assisted meridian flip after 1 hour of capturing.
Screenshot of AstroDMx Capture saving RAW FITS files. Live stacking was used to improve the preview of this faint object
The data were calibrated and part processed in PixInsight and further processed in GraXpert and Gimp.
SH2-91
Annotated image
New, more challenging targets are being explored whilst Nicola is refactoring and re-writing the code-base of AstroDMx Capture, migrating from wxWidgets to Qt 6 which will allow the software to function properly in a Wayland desktop environment. It is a huge job and has delayed the introduction of new features in the road-map for the software's development. However, this is absolutely essential in view of the fact that many Linux distributions are dropping support for X11 during 2026.
