Cleaning dust from telescope and camera

Following the last imaging session with my SW Esprit120 and ASI 533 and noticing the mass of dust marks or dust motes that needed calibrating out, I decided to give the setup a clean.

I took flats after each step of cleaning and started working my way down the imaging train from the telescope lens, to the reducer, then the filter – all of which had specs of dust but appeared to have little effect. It wasn’t until I cleaned the camera sensor window, which didn’t look too bad, that I noticed quite a bit of black dust on the cleaning pad.

This had a dramatic effect, removing almost all of the dust marks.

To clean the sensor window I simply wiped it a couple of times with a lens cleaning swab.