Blog – Page 9 – IMT3b Observatory

Calibration of AAG Weather Station – IMT3

Today has been wet, windy and cloudy, which for once is a blessing! Why I hear you ask? Well simply put, to calibrate the hell out of the AAG one needs inclement weather and today has provided that in spades 🙂

So after monitoring the AAG all day here are the final settings. I have changed the limits for the wind only today, but I have extended the time period for the graph from 10mins to 1 hour. The wind has recorded over 1.1 m/s which may not seem a lot but at times has blown garden furniture around and the bins.

Viewing Report 22nd May 2020 – IMT3

23:09 – 00:57

A gusty night, tried M101 but after a few frames it was cloudy. Used the Tak FS102 taking 5 minutes unguided as M101 was at the meridian. Gain 7 and Offset 30 which worked well but this is a faint galaxy.

I was joined by Bob remotely and also tried to get Venus alongside Mercury as they were close together, in the Esprit 120ED on the travel setup and Bob tried through the Tak in IMT3. However I could not locate in the Esprit on the travel setup due to cloud then the roof of the neighbours house. Bob on the other hand could fit either Mercury or Venus in but not both due to the rotation of the camera. It is currently sat at 118 degrees whereas the OS is set to 187. Once both cameras have been cleaned we will set these along with the Esprit on the Paramount MEII to the same field rotation.

AllSkyEye – 0.9.17.1 Pro

So for a short period of time we had settled on using AllSkyEye. Recently we noticed that the author had issued a Kerogram and stretched horizon generate of the latest image but only available in a new Pro Edition.

The Pro edition was only £20 for a 3 user license, the author gives this purchase as a donation to the charity of his choice – good man ! So now we have AllSkyEye Pro in use at the IMT2 and IMT3 domes.

A Keogram is an image composed of slices taken from images in a sequential time order.The slices (which are always taken from the same location and with the same shape) are stitched together to form an image displaying a timeline of the selected part of the image as shown below.

We still have the dark map to take to remove the hot pixels from the image but at the moment it gives us a nice view remotely before we decide to open the dome – that’s if the AAG Cloudwatcher limits agree and it thinks it’s safe to do so of course !

Bob noticed we had our local security guard aka Fluffy watching over his night’s imaging and turning to watch an ISS pass.

Fluffy stands guard at the weather station as the ISS passes over

Viewing Report 15th May 2020 – IMT3

21:58 – 02:02

Just setting up for an imaging run and to test imaging without temp compensation to see if the 12″ keeps focus without it. I started by myself then was joining by GingerGeek and then Bob.

Performed a SGPro autofocus run on Mag 7 star produced focus position of 71,828 @ 4.6 HFR at 14.47℃.

Resulting M98 image from 1st autofocus run

The resulting image was good with good star shapes. Although I suspected at this point the seeing was not excellent.

I let the sequence run for a bit imaging M98 through LRGB and then decided the HFR was gradually getting larger so I performed a 2nd Autofocus run which came in at position 72,215 HFR 5.7 at 13.97℃.

Again I let the sequence continue for at least 4 images and the performed another Autofocus run, note all the time this was on M98 and not slewing away to another star. This came in at focus position 72,697 @HFR 5.7 at 13.82℃.

I continued this routine again and performed another Autofocus run on M98 focus position 73,441 HFR 5.4 at 12.98℃.

I then decided, due to struggling to get a good HFR on focus runs to see if the autofocus was introducing an issue so I changed the autofocus setting from 9 data points to 11 data points to try and get fuller deeper curve. The resulting curve was better and more complete on both sides of the U shape. I then imaged further and then attempted an autofocus with the settings change for the step size from 2500 to 1500 and data points from 11 to 15. This was because I felt we always have a flatfish bottom to the autofocus which at this focal length of 2.5m shows the quality of the seeing with a narrower flat bottom being better seeing. The new autofocus came in at position 73,534 HFR 5.1 at 12.66℃. Meanwhile we kept noticing satellites going across the ASC which I now believe are potentially StarLink so very annoying.

The new autofocus settings seem to work better. Anything less than 1500 step size would be less than the seeing, as proved tonight so I may find that 2000 is ideal, a test for another night. Also noted that Red filter was showing the worst HFR changes due to seeing and humidity was around 75%, again worthy of note to see how good the seeing is. The guiding was all over the place tonight, again another indicator of poor seeing. So all these things are not poor setup or poor software but poor seeing!

This I believe was the ISS going over captured in the ASC.

I was really pleased GingerGeek and I had spent time a week or so ago when the Moon was around working out the location of the Field of View (FoV) indicator on TSX, it makes it much easier to find a guide star, although tonight M98 had a couple strategically placed which was great.

FoV for Off Axis Guider and the OS main camera

By 2pm the cloud had started to appear, first at South Winston with Steve’s setup, then at Mil Dave’s at Tadley and finally here some 15 minutes later. The guide star was lost by PHD and SGPro in a well ordered fashion did what it is really good at and stopped imaging.

SGPro can’t continue imaging due to guide star loss 🙂

Here is where I got up to so LRGB on M98 for the night with 15 x Luminance and 12 x Red, Green and Blue was the original first image for each was there wrong exposure time, so RGB at 2mins and Luminance at 5mins. Very happy for an evening testing and gathering data at the same time.

Here is a set of image statistics charts for each filter for the HFR changing over the evening whilst I refocused. Next time I will focus once and not refocus and see what happens with the temperature drop.

Final look at the AAG weather station as the cloud sensor which is Infrared makes the dome unsafe and shuts it.

Here is the final view from the ASC

and of course to finish the evening off another satellite!

Viewing Report 14th May 2020 – IMT3

21:00 – 23:00

Imaging M99 and Bob did M12 later. Some of the luminance for M12 will need to be thrown as it was too bright, however the RGB data is good. We managed to bag 24 x 5 minutes luminance for M99 and a set of 12 x 2 minutes RGB.

This is a stacked version of the Luminance data.

This is the final imaged that I then processed for M12 on 5th December 2021! This was a combination of 62 x 1min Luminance and 7 x 1min for RGB channels. I need to bring out more of the data from the luminance in retrospect.

Viewing Report – 9th May 2020 – IMT3 – Dark frames, filter

22:05 Frame and focus on 9.26 and 7.64 magnitude stars used before moving to M61 to capture some Lum frames for calibration of flats to solve the doughnut embossing.

22:18 Slewed to M61, performed Solve ‘n’ sync, slew here for centring the object, ran four Luminance subs of 300 seconds each (Bin1x1) at Gain 139 and Offset 21. This was completed by 22:38.

22:45 Chief TOSA then warmed up the CMOS camera, set the filter wheel to the empty slot position, powered off and disconnected the camera and filter wheel. This was so the ASI1600MM and filter wheel could be detached and a blanking filter installed into the empty filter wheel slot position without having to open up the filter wheel. The idea is that we move to the blank filter position when taking Dark subs to prevent light leakage on the Officina Stellare 12-inch.

22:55 Everything was back online and the SGPro profiles were modified to reflect the new blank filter location.

23:13 Unfortunately a dust mote was introduced onto the CMOS sensor window so we sent Chief TOSA back out to the dome to do the job properly this time 🙂 This meant parking the mount, warming up the camera, powering off the camera, remove it, clean the sensor and reattach the camera.

23:24 All reassembled and powered back on, slewed to NGC 4147 (Globular cluster) ready for a a 60 second Lum filter test which showed that a decent cleaning job had been done ….. about time too !

23:40 As it was getting hazy/cloudy it was decided to collect some calibration frames, in this case 25×10 minute dark subs at Gain 39 Offset 21 using the new blank filter.

23:50 We logged off from the remote session and left the dark frame sequence running until it was due to finish in the early morning.

AAG CloudWatcher Installation

We recently decided to replace our existing weather station with one that had better ASCOM integration. I had previously looked at the AAG CloudWatcher but at the time felt it offered more than we need but that turned out to not be the correct choice.

We ordered the AAG with an internal humidity sensor, the optional anemometer, mounting kit and 10 meter communications cable. Due to the ongoing human malware situation it took two weeks for it to arrive from Spain and was delivered to the IMT3 chief TOSA.

Once the new PSU arrived the Chief TOSA then set about removing the existing weather station and installing the AAG cloudwatcher.

All Sky Camera, AAG CloudWatcher, Unihedron SQM and another rain sensor

This also meant connecting the safety relay circuit wires to the Pulsar Dome, installing the AAG software, downloading the ASCOM boltwood driver and configuring SGPro. Within SGPro we have set the safety status set to be “OK to image” where the required conditions are more stringent than the conditions for the dome to open. The reason being that we want the dome to open as the light begins fade and allow the scopes to cool down but not be okay to image until it is dark.

On the first night of operation we ran into a problem. Unlike the other sensor readings and graphs we would see the temperature and cloud readings have an expected shape but the sky brightness sensors kept going up and down at a regular interval then gave the graph a saw-tooth shape.

Unfortunately this resulted in the safety status going on and off until we overrode it. We sent a quick email to Lunatico reporting the symptoms and asking for advice. It didn’t take long for Jaime to reply informing us that another customer reported the same issue and asked for a few days to investigate.

Good to his word we received an email from Jaime explaining the issue and asking if we could perform a firmware upgrade. Now due to the current lockdown restrictions this meant that I had to co-ordinate over the phone with the resident Chief TOSA to physically disconnect and reconnect the power whilst I remotely set the firmware update. The initial issues encountered were due to PEBCAK (Problem Exists Between Chair And Keyboard) as I had not read the documentation correctly !

That evening we watched and the Sky Brightness line graph was now as expected and not looking like a cog shaped wheel. Well done Jaime@Lunatico.es for the quick response and fix, Chief TOSA was a happy dome dwarf again and that’s what counts !

At the moment we are trying to get the cloud sensor to be more accurate to what we visually observe, this is an ongoing effort. We decided to record the AAG Sky Brightness sensor readings at various times and compare with our SQM readings :

Event	SQM	AAG Brightness Value
Civil Darkness	13.08	949
Chief TOSA setting OK to open	13.89	2100
Nautical Darkness	18.92	28588
Astronomical Darkness	19.03	28588

Using the above values it looks like we could reduce our chosen threshold level of 2100 to 1000 in order to allow the dome to open and the scopes to cool down. The Sky Brightness does not appear to change beyond Nautical Darkness. We are now investigating the correct value for the early morning from the AAG logs. This is so we know what the Sky Brightness value should be at which to stop imaging and close the dome in the early morning when unattended.

We still have at lot to configure and read up about using the AAG CloudWatcher but at the moment our initial experience is a positive one. Obviously we will be chatting to Lunatico about our level settings and make some suggestions regarding the software.

Viewing Report 7th May 2020 – IMT3

22:00 -01:00

Bob, GingerGeek and I rationalised the SGPro Profiles and created a smaller set to account for the fact we could now dynamically change the guider in SGPro and also simplify the Gain, Offset and the sensor set temperature within the profiles.

Before we did this GingerGeek recorded the Brightness value from the AAG weather station and the SQM reading as nautical twilight occurred

AAG and SQM readings at Nautical Twilight

We agreed on the following basic parameters for imaging. 3 profiles for the OS OTA at 3 different Gains and Offsets. 1 profile for the Tak with the need to change the parameters of the camera to one of the 3 correct Gain and Offsets now documented in the TOSA manual. Finally 1 profile for the Tak and as it is a CCD then there is no Gain or Offset. We also agreed the premise of exposure times for the 3 OTAs to make calibration frames simpler – 1, 2 minute for RGB on the OS, 5 minutes for Luminance and 10 minutes for narrowband. For the Tak as it is a OSC we agreed on 1, 2 and 5 minutes. For the Sky-Watcher Esprit 1, 2 and 5 minutes for Luminance and 10 minutes for narrowband. We also agreed on the temperature of the scopes to be run at as suggested by Dave Boddington, we have gone for semi-simple. So for the OS and Esprit we will image at -15℃ in Summer and -25℃ in Winter. For the Tak we will image at -20℃ all year round. Note the new Flats are at the new lower 23k ADU setting.

So now all the profiles were changed and setup, we set a sequence running for OS Gain 139 Offset 21 for Flat Darks and Darks 1, 2 and 5 minutes. We will need to do 10 minutes tomorrow night. The Flats incidentally for this set of calibration frames was then completed the following morning by 11am before the Sun got too high and the camera failed to cool to -15℃.

Finally I saved the sequence as calibration frames for OS Gain 139 Offset 21 so that it is now easy to pull this up and redo if needed. I also took Bob’s advice and separated out the Flat Darks, Darks and Flats into different tasks. So tomorrow nights job is narrowband darks using this gain and offset followed by starting the new run for gain 75 and offset 12.

Viewing Report 7th May 2020 – IMT3

20:01 – 01:00

Opened dome early switching the safety for the brightness on the new AAG. The first thing to do tonight was to calibrate a little but more the infrared sensor which informs the cloud coverage. This was suggesting it was Cloudy, borderline Overcast and given it was very clear with a hint at wisps of cloud I adjusted the couple of figures for the sensor, from -17 for Clear to -14 and from -14 for Cloudy to -12.

I then set about taping up the USB and power for the SX camera on the Esprit. This is because the connectors supplied are clearly not in tolerance as I have tried many cables and they call fall out. The tape should suffice for the moment and now the camera reconnects to the NUC computer running SGPro.

GingerGeek and I started to have a look at the sky around 9pm. The sky was not totally clear with some wisps of cloud. We tried to get to a point where we could test guiding the 12″ through the Esprit, however as ever the clouds rolled in. However, during setting up the SX814 camera on the Esprit as the guider and performing a darks calibration run we got an error on the USB bus again (we get lots of USB errors) which not only kicked out the SX814 but also the AAG weather station. The problem was it almost killed the AAG software and we had to cancel the process running to resolve. This meant we lost all the settings in the AAG so we have tried to rebuild as per the new screen shots below.

So instead we re-ran the Flats Calibration Wizard for the OS with the camera set to Gain 139 Offset 21 and also another run at Gain 75 Offset 12. The reason for re-running is that I suspect the flats we have are ever so slightly over exposed at 30-32k rather I prefer them to be at 22-23k.

We also created 2 new profiles that were simply named so we can see them in the list and simplify the naming convention and amount of profiles needed. We will choose the guider on the night within one of the two profiles created. We will also look to review and simply the other profiles for the two additional OTAs tomorrow and delete the remains profiles given the large number we now have.

Viewing Report – 6th May 2020 – IMT3

The plan for the night (to try using the Esprit120 as the guider for the OS 12″ if it is on the West side of the Mount) was scuppered as we couldn’t connect to GingerGeek’s SX814 camera. GingerGeek checked in device manager and COM7 is missing so we suspect the USB cable has dropped out again.

Following on the the news earlier in the day of the SN in M61, I slew to it and grabbed some 300s unguided subs ( which also proves that it is the guiding that is moving the mount unnecessarily … but we knew that already !). Thare was a suggesting on the evenings group Zoom call that the drift might be due to ‘Cone Error’, but I found several posts stating that ‘Cone error does not affect guiding’. After M61 dropped into the weeds I slewed to M3 and grabbed some Luminance frames shutting down very tired at around 4am.

Viewing Report – Cinco de Mayo 2020

Moon 96% Waning.

Our TOSA Manual needs updating now that we have replaced the HiTechAstro Deluxe Cloud Sensor with the Lunático AAG CloudWatcher cloud detector.

New Screens to get familiar with:

Initially I was unable to open the shutter of the dome. Thinking I’d forgotten to reset the HiTechAstro relay I soon realised I had to figure out why the AAG_Cloudwatcher software was reporting Unsafe. GingerGeek spotted that the Brightness level looked like a sawtooth and should settle after a few minutes, which it appeared to do and the dome shutter opened successfully.

Following on from my previous observing session on 1st May when clouds interrupted play just as I was completing a Guiding Assistant run in PHD2, I started tonight’s session with a quick look at Venus before it set below our horizon and then had another go at running the Guiding Assistant in PHD2 for the OS 12″ / Tak FS-102 combination, with the Tak as the guider for the Officina Stellare.

Venus in Ha (because it’s so bright).

Crop

As the Tak has an Alnitak Flip Flat attached to it I added it to the profile I’ve created for the OS12 and Tak combination so that the panel can be opened to allow light through to the camera 🙂

Guiding Assistant completed successfully and values applied for RA MnMo, Dec MnMo and Dec Backlash compensation.

Y scale = 2, Target Radius = 1.5

Sequence running for 2, 5, 7, 10, 12 and 15minutes.

2, 5,& 7 minutes exposures ok but trailing beginning to show at 10 minutes, quite evident at 12 minutes and very evident at 15 minutes.

Added 8 and 9 minutes to sequence, but both of these show signs of stars trailing.

Started a sequence of 24 x 5 minute exposures.

Aborted at frame 20 as the NGC3628 was now below the horizon.

The image has drifted and NGC 3628 has not remained fixed in the frame, so we still have issues with guiding as that is almost certainly the source of the drift.

02:22 Slew to M5, just off centre.

Slew to HIP 74975 to centre and focus.

De-selected guider.

02:57 Slewed to M5 and started a sequence of 24 x Lum and 8 x R,G,B 120s frames.

Sample Luminance frame:

04:08 SQM graph has started to droop. Was 18.2 before 4am, now down to 18

04:10 ASC image brightening quickly

04:15 SQM 17.54

04:24 Camera Warming Up

Disconnected Guider

Telescope Parked and disconnected.

Dome Parked (shutter closed) and disconnected

De-humidifier on.

Camera Power Off

04:30 I’m off to bed

Viewing Report 2nd May 2020 – IMT3

22:00 – 23:59

This evening GingerGeek and I simply set out to align the off axis guider of the OS on TSX. We did this buy focusing on the Moon and adjusting the off axis guider for he crater we were seeing. The resulting image is not very good which give rise to a though that the OAG should move it’s position in the imaging train to give better star renditions, the issue is I think it is as far back as it can go due to the filter wheel.

Viewing Report 1st May 2020 – IMT3

On opening the dome I slewed to Venus hoping to catch it before it disappeared below the horizon. I took a 1s Frame and Focus image just to confirm it was in the centre of the FoV and was puzzled by the resulting image.

At first I thought the 12″ was still covered so called Dave to check. He didn’t think the cover was in place as the last thing he’d done was to take some Flats. Dave confirmed that the cover was not in place but reported that I might be trying to view Venus through the trellis on the fence so I abandoned Venus and slewed to NGC3628 in Leo as it had just crossed the Meridian and I wanted to try and setup a profile to use my Tak FS-102 as a guide scope for Dave’s OS12″.

Previous attempts at guiding the OS with the QHY5 and MiniGuideScope combination had proved worse than imaging with the mount unguided.

Although I suspected we knew the root cause we hadn’t our research 🙁 which soon became apparent. I found a couple of rules of thumb, the first stated that ‘image scale in arc-seconds x 400 = max exposure time is seconds when guiding with a separate guide scope’.

For the ZWO ASI1600MM (3.8um pixel size) on the OS 12″ (2500mm fl)

((3.8/2500) x 206.265) x 400 = 125s

We can do better than that unguided.

The second ‘rule of thumb’ I found stated that the ‘Guide to Main train pixel ratio should not exceed 10:1.

Unfortunately the QHY5 MiniGuideScope to OS12″ ratio is close to 17.8:1, not good.

The QHY5 + MiniGuideScope scale is (3.75/130) x 206.265 = 5.95 arc-sec / pixel.

The OS 12″ + ZWO ASI1600MM scale is (3.8/2500) x 206.265 = 0.31 arc-sec/pixel.

The Tak FS-102 with the QHY168C scale is (3.75/820) x 206.265 = 0.94 arc-sec/pixel

So if we try the OS 12″ with the Tak as the guide scope the ratio is closer to 2.8:1 which sounds like a better proposition.

to be continued …

Viewing Report – 26th April 2020 – Travel Setup

22:20 – 01:32

I have placed new filter, Baader IR-Pass 685nm from Mark Radice on the ZWO tonight and aimed to go after Venus on the Mak180 and capture another phase of the planet. I recorded several sets of data although noticed the filter does produce a somewhat pinky image.

Viewing Report 24th April 2020 – IMT3

21:23 – 01:29

NGC2903, focus point 73,602 for Lum HFR 5.46 Temp 18.13

NGC4565 @ 00:59

did not work straight away due to centring issues after reading in old image to plate solve and use as basis for slewing scope with SGPro. Finally just did this with TSX and worked.

@01:29 started Lum sequence for NGC4565 at -23℃ and 300 seconds

Viewing Report – 26th April 2020 – IMT3

21:30 Slew to M85

Camera -23°C, focus point 74534, temperature 15.81℃

Frame & Focus / Plate Solved / Centred

21:38 Autofocus Run – Failed.

21:50 Integrating M85 Event 1 Frame 1 for 300 seconds
Lost guide Star

22:13 Switch Guider to SW Lodestar

Integrating M85 Event 1 frame 1 for 300 seconds. Aborted run as M85 approaching the meridian and guiding graph was not looking good. Guider not calibrated.

Meridian flip to Chertan in Leo, Tak FS-102 now on top of configuration, Esprit below the OS 12″ so will be the better to guide with the QHY5 MiniGuideScope attached to the FS-102.

22:51 Slewed to a star field near Chertan for Auto Focus run. Start focuser position 72885, final focuser position 72178 ….. nice graph.

22:56 Calibrated QHY5 MiniGuideScope guider

Review calibration

23:08 Calibration suceeded, guiding.

Stoped guider and slewed to M85 which had just crossed the meridian.

Frame & Focus / Plate Solved / Centred

23:21 Integrating M85 Event 1 Frame 1

23:44 Telescope connection lost due to poor communication

23:48 SGPro reported USB error – lost FLI Focuser. FLI connects Ok in The Sky X.

Fix is to click on the spanner in SGPro for the Focuser and Rescan, Focuser now reconnects.

00:01 Re-centered M85

PHD2 restarted as it appeared to have hung.

00:12 Integration new Luminance sequence Event 1: 180s, Event 2: 300 seconds.

Viewing Report 25th April 2020 – IMT3

22:20 – 01:32

Imaging M85 LRGB through the OS12 at 300 seconds, Gain 139 Offset 12, temperature -23℃

Went off to bed and left Bob with scope imaging until morning light.

Viewing Report 22nd April 2020 – IMT3

22:10 – 03:00

22:10 Bob – Took over operating IMT3 from Dave

The plan was to capture data of NGC 4565 with the OS RiDK 305mm after the testing I’d done the previous night attempting to determine how long we could go with unguided exposures. As NGC4565 was due to transit at 23:36 I thought I’d wait until I could slew to it without performing a meridian flip so went chasing Comet C/2019 Y4 ATLAS to see what remains of it. However, judging by the horizon it was about to disappear from view but I grabbed a few frames anyway. Unlike previous attempts where it was clearly visible in a 60 seconds exposure I was now exposing for 180 seconds to make out the fuzzy remains.

23:15 Slewing to NGC 4565 would still require a meridian flip so I went to NGC 2903 which I’d looked at recently. set a sequence going to get 30mins of data with 5 minute subs. Auto focus succeeded at the start of the run.

00:05 Slewed to NGC 4565.

Solve and Sync then slewed the framing to try and include NGC 4562 in the FoV.

Plate Solved result for the centre of this frame:

12h36m06.94s Angle 185
25° 57′ 42.16″ Scale 0.325

Started sequence to gather 12x 300 seconds Lum, 6x 300 seconds R, G, B and 6x 600 seconds Ha subs.

SGPro failed to start the Guider and aborted.

PHD2 started manually and 5 frames of Luminance gathered before the guide star was lost and the sequence aborted. Profile does not have ‘Recovery’ set. Need to discuss this with DSW and GingerGeek. While looking at the option found in Tools > Options > Sequence I also noticed that ‘Pause Guiding during autofocus’ is not set.

Mil Dave showed me a procedure he believes is documented in the manual to centre the telescope on a previous image, but this failed to move the mount as expected. I later realized it may have been because we did a ‘Solve and Sync’ followed by a ‘Centre Here’ ( which hasn’t worked for me before). I need to see if I had done a ‘Solve and Sync’ followed by a ‘Slew Here’ whether that would have had the desired effect. Using ‘Slew here’ I was able to reasonably match the coordinates of the original frames (after unsuccessfully trying to ‘Slew to coordinates’ in the Sky).

Update 23Apr20:

Having discussed the above with Dave, I believe we identified where I was going wrong but also discovered some points along the way.

We noticed that the RA and Dec I had recorded from the SGPro Plate solve of the image did not match the numbers recorded in the FITS header of the image and using the SkyX to Slew to the coordinates recorded was off because I hadn’t selected Epoch J2000.0 (used by SGPro) but had used the default Sky ‘Apparent (i.e. current)’ setting for the Equinox.

Additionally, after performing a ‘solve and Sync’ in SGPro, I should have gone to The SkyX and syncronized the Telescope.

Turned off the guided and finally resume a sequence

03:00 Of to bed for me, leaving the sequence to run for a further 1hr30.

Viewing Report 21st April 2020 – IMT3

Viewing time period – 22:05 – 03:36

Update on viewing with Bob running IMT3 for the night.

So after joining the BAS Zoom session I asked what others were imaging and got a spiral galaxy NGC4535 from Trevor and the Needle NGC4565 from Mil Dave.

I slewed to NGC4535 which included a meridian flip and found it pretty much in the centre of the fov. Started a sequence of 3, 5, 10, 12, 15, 20 minute subs but aborted after the 15min subs as trailing was evident. Focus could also have been improved.

NGC4535 and NGC4565 were approaching the meridian so I did a flip to Praecipua in Leo Minor and then a slew to some nearby fainter stars to do a focus run. Start Focus position was 75542 at a temp of 14.14. After focus run the new focus position was 73335 HFR 4.7 98%.

Now slewed to NGC4565 and set a sequence of 12.5m (750s), 13.5m (810s), 14.5m (870s) subs going trying to establish where the limit is for unguided in these conditions. The first 750s sub was fine but the 810s was just showing a little elongation. I aborted the 870s sub and started a run of 12.5m (750s) subs going to see how consistent the results are … will need to look at these in the morning but I think this is about the limit and would probably back off to just 10m subs to provide a bit of a buffer.

Viewing Report 20th April 2020 – IMT3

Viewing time period – 20:15 – 23:46

TONIGHTS TARGETS

H56-1 / NGC2903-OS-Ha-300s x 12 – Done

NGC3395-OS-Ha-300s x 24 – no Ha so aborted

M94-OS-Ha-300s x 8 – Done

M85-OS-Ha-300s x 24 – no Ha so ignoring

Flats () Darks () FlatDarks ()

Camera Temp -26℃

WORKFLOW

Cool down scope and dome – done
Turn off Dehumidifier – done
Turn off fans on scope – done
Find home – done
Slew to nearby star to target – done
Select filter and focus – done 74,517 Ha – done
Slew to target and take a test image using Frame and Focus – done
Solve and Sync and then right mouse click on object and Slew Here – done
Setup SGPro Sequence with details – done
Make sure guider connected and calibrate – done
When guiding run sequence – done

Tonight we will take a bunch of Ha images for 4 targets we have been imaging recently with Ha data being provided through the 12″. I have selected the 4 objects in order of passing across the Meridian first. We should aim to get 2hrs of Ha in each, in which case we may need to take the rest tomorrow.

Auto focus run before dark on Ha using 20s subs @ 21:00 focus position is now 74,517 at focuser temp 15.84℃

Autoguiding on 10s with one of the 2 stars in the FoV of the guider for OS12.

@21:17 started taking the first image. Noticed quickly the guiding in Dec went up, so stopped and recalibrated guider. Then started guiding on 8 second subs.

So the sequence is now running and taking frames of the first target in Ha NGC2903 aka H56-1.

After 12 x 300 seconds on NGC2903 I slewed to NGC3395 and took the first Ha image, but unfortunately it was very dim so not worth pursuing. Instead I have now switched to M94 which is currently on the East side of the Meridian. I will take 24 x 300 seconds Ha with no guiding. It will require a meridian flip in about 90 minutes. I will then leave Bob to complete the Ha on M94 for the rest of the night as M85 does not have any Ha within it.

Bob continued and had a little success, cloud rolled in at 23:46 so frame 9 onwards are no good so we got 8 frames in total for M94, we will continue another night. The shutter was closed as Bob did the meridian flip due to cloud.

I tried to take calibration frames the following day at 7pm when the outside temp was 15.5℃, the inside was 18.5℃ but the ASI camera on the OS12 would not get lower than -25℃. I now concur for with Bob and GingerGeek that we should lower the cooling temp to -20℃ for the remainder of the Spring and Summer returning to closer to -30℃ in the Autumn / Winter. For now I had to wait for the temperature to drop outside and thus inside to cool down the final 1℃ to take the calibration frames. By 20:22 the temp outside had dropped to 12℃ and the internal temp to 15.8℃ which was enough to cool the camera to -26℃.