Following our tests of the Touptek GS-100 PAPO, A=25mm, F=100 mini quadruplet as an imaging scope, we set it up as a guide-scope in conjunction with an Altair 462M2 monochrome guide camera fitted with an IR/UV cut filter.
The guide-scope/camera setup
The guided rig in action
The scope was brought to focus on a bright star using a Bahtinov mask and then both the camera and the focuser were glued with a small amount of epoxy resin glue to prevent any movement of the camera or focuser during use. It should be noted that the epoxy resin can, with care, be removed should that become necessary.
AstroDMx Capture for Linux pre-release version 3 was running on an Ubuntu Linux computer and PHD2 for Linux was running on a separate Fedora Linux computer. The mount and focuser were controlled via an INDI server running on a Fedora mini computer.
We discovering that PHD2 for Linux surprisingly didn’t have Altair camera support. Nicola checked out the latest source code from github (https://github.com/OpenPHDGuiding/phd2) and built again but, this failed to add Altair camera support.
At this point, She looked through the source code and found cam_altair.cpp. On inspection of this source file she found that all the SDK calls were in place and essentially cross-platform but there was no implementation for POSIX dynamic library loading for Linux.
She defined struct SDKLib using <dlfcn.h> so that libaltaircam.so would be dynamically loaded and then rebuilt the source code. After building the source, we were able to connect PHD2 to the Altair camera in Linux and could calibrate the guider in the usual way. Guiding performed perfectly during the imaging session.
AstroDMx Capture for Linux running on an Ubuntu mini computer was used to capture an hour's worth of 2 minute exposures through each of a Askar Colour Magic HaO3 and S2O3 dualband filters, along with calibration frames.
Screenshot of PHD2 auto-guiding on a Fedora Linux computer
Screenshot of AstroDMx Capture for Linux capturing HaO3 data
Screenshot of AstroDMx Capture for Linux capturing S2O3 data
The data were stacked and part processed in PixInsight and further processed in GraXpert, SetiAstroSuitePro and GIMP 3.
(Ha+S2)OO rendering
Hubble Palette
(Ha+S2)OO - Hubble palette blend
HOS (Canada, France Hawaii Telescope palette)
OHS palette
The ZWO ASI585MC uncooled OSC camera performed well as a deep sky imaging device. The GS-100 mini scope proved its versatility as a guide scope (as well as previously, an imaging scope) and paired with the Altair 462M2 monochrome camera provided a wide field of sharply focused stars for PHD2 for Linux to guide with once the lack of Altair camera support had been resolved.
Nicola will submit her solution to PHD2 via the appropriate channels when she has written it up.
Again, these tests allowed us to uncover issues in the pre-release version 3 of AstroDMx Capture which will help the final release to be stable and feature rich.
