This is a summary of a number of imaging sessions designed to test the SVBONY SV571CC 16 bit camera, the Askar 71F Quadruplet ED APO flatfield astrograph refractor, the SVBONY UV/IR cut filter, the Altair quadband, and the Askar Colour Magic dualband HaO3 and S2O3 filters; and how all of these components work together.
The first finding was that the SVBONY UV/IR cut filter, and the Askar Colour Magic dualband HaO3 and S2O3 filters were all parfocal, a very useful fact.
An Askar 71F quadruplet apochromatic astrograph refractor was used, paired with an SVBONY SC571CC 16 bit OSC cooled camera. The scope was fitted with an iOptron iEAF motor focuser and an Altair V2 magnetic 2” filter holder fitted with a variety of 2" filters: An Altair Quadband, SVBONY UVIR cut, Askar Colour Magic dualband HaO3 and S2O3 filters. AstroDMx Capture for Linux x86_64 running on an Ubuntu Linux mini computer was used to capture the image data as FITS images with matching darks, flats and dark-flats. 5 minute subs of the Lagoon nebula were captured. The data were stacked and part processed in PixInsight and further processed in GraXpert, SetiAstroSuitePro and Gimp3 and presented in various palettes.
The Lagoon nebula
All of the equipment tested here is very affordable and in these tests under Bortle 4 skies has proved to be first rate.
These tests were made using Version 2 of AstroDMx Capture whilst future testing will be done with a pre-release Version 3 of the software which is fully Wayland compatible. There is still a way to go, but the way is getting shorter. In the meantime Nicola is maintaining the two codebases for all platforms, but as soon as Version 3 is released, all further development will be on Version 3 which will enable quicker updates than have been possible during the past 16 months.
