Background / Goal
I have been slowly Buying Gear in 2022 to replace my original setup.
I upgraded to a dedicated camera instead of a DSLR, I got a guide camera, and my favorite toy is the ASIAir. The one big thing I’m still waiting for is the Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer GTi which I ordered months ago and is still on back-order. I’ve gotten some emails from High Point Scientific about the delays. I know they are doing their best and I just need to be patient.
However, I wanted to see how things worked with what I had. I wanted to test out simple things like focusing controlling the camera with the ASIAir software.
Backyard
I got everything set up. It is basically all the equipment in 2022 Gear Overview except for I used the SkyGuider Pro instead of the Star Adventurer GTI. I also did not have a cable to connect the tracker to the ASIAir. Without that, the guide camera did not have a job. I actually didn’t even take the lens cap off.
I got my old SkyGuider Pro tracker polar-aligned and then went to focus the cameras. Using the focus feature on the ASIAir made it so much easier than before. No more trying to see the Bahtinov mask pattern on the tiny DSLR screen. It was great!
But then I tried to point to a specific point in the sky. I didn’t really care what point, but I saw some bright stars I thought would be good test. Trying to get my scope aimed in the exact spot was frustrating. This is where the GTi mount will be my savior. But until then I kept trying to manually look down the barrel of the telescope until I thought I was close, and then try to use the preview function on the ASIAir app. It is hard to fine-tune everything.
Eventually I just gave up and pointed it at a random point in the sky. Then I was able to at least try out some of the features of the ASIAir. From inside my house, I was able to schedule/plan exposures and counts of images to take. I love it!
As images started coming in, I realized I was capturing part of a nebula.
I didn’t take any calibration images, just 10 light frames at 120 seconds each. My goal was just to use the camera, not to get a great shot.
Processing
I got Siril set up again and had to refresh my memory on how to use it. I only took 10 light frames, so I just stacked those and then did a bunch of color correction and stretching. Once I was done I used Astrometry.net to figure out what I was looking at.
It turns out I was looking at part of the Veil Nebula.
Output
Since this was just a trial run, I did not spend much time on this. However, I’ll hopefully come back to it and spend more than 20 minutes capturing and have better framing. But, I want to share what I did come up with.
