Imaging Session – 12th Jan 2022

First full session using N.I.N.A on M81 Bode’s Galaxy with the Esprit 120 and more data gathering with the William Optics 61mm on the Elephants Trunk Nebula.

Setup 1: Esprit 120/ZWO ASI 533 on the SW EQ6R looking at M81 Bodes Galaxy

Spent yesterday trying to get to grips with connecting all of my equipment, which went surprisingly smoothly, and setting up autofocus and platesolvng which went less so…

Finally got sorted using Platesolve2, which seemed to work very quickly with little input in terms of equipment spec. (SGP needs all the specs inputting whereas N.I.N.A seems to pick it up from the single telescope settings.

Autofocus needed a bit of tweaking and initially struggled with the L-Extreme filter and 15sec exposures – eventually changed to Baader Neo filter and 7 sec exposures. Also got it focusing every 10 frames in place.

Interestingly the focus changed quite a bit during the evening:

• 18:00 – Focus = 62566 (HFR 3.21)
• 20:00 – Focus = 61847 (HFR 1.76)
• 23:30 – Focus = 61210 (HFR 1.71)

Also took some flats using the Flats Assistant – again the system seemed to auto populate with the gear specs, so it was a case of setting the number of flats and run.

Eventually got just over 3.5 hrs (53 frames of 4min) of Bode’s Galaxy:

Setup 2: WO Z61/ZWO ASI 183 on the IOptron CEM25P looking at NGC 6992 Elephants Trunk Nebula

Autofocus =3465

Managed to get an additional 136 frames @ 120, however some late evening mist and satellites reduced the usable frames by about a third.

This time I used the network cable with the ASIAir and it linked up to the home network nicely – no connection issues!

Image of Elephants Trunk Nebula with combined data from 2 nights – Total 6hrs 2min (181 frames)