I started off with M46 open cluster tonight which has a planetary nebula, NGC 2438 within it. The waning Moon rose at 22:17, 88% illuminated and then started to affect my viewing, however I persisted.
M46 Open Cluster 2 Hours
Next I slewed to NGC 2403, a lovely spiral galaxy in Camelopardalis and let that run for 2 hours whilst I slept.
NGC 2403 1 x 300s
I also set the scope to then automatically slew to M66 and the Trio in Leo. However I woke around 3am and noticed that the sky was very bright with the Moon and there was some cloud around. I turned off the scope and went back to bed. None of the data for NGC 2403 and M66 was usable.
M66, NGC 3628 1 x 300s
I did take 300s darks for the previous night at -15℃ and some Flats.
I have decided tonight to start to retake the 6 objects from the previous two nights. The Moon definitely had a massive effect and so did the cloud. I want to see what it’s like imaging without the Moon and clear skies. The Moon comes up at 11:16pm so I will image from when it is dark until then.
I have had a few intermittent problems with focusing over the last few nights. I have now realised it is worse when their scope is pointing directly up so the ratchet focuser must be slipping. I have taken it to pieces this evening and then reattached the EAF ZWO electronic focuser and bracket. It now seems to be working fine. Due to this issue I lost the first 90 mins of imaging this evening. It’s now 9:30pm and I’m back up and running, but will need to delete the first 7 or so images from this evening that are out of focus.
I started with M38 the open cluster in Auriga and managed to capture around 1 hours worth of 120s subs.
120s M38
It’s worth noting that there is a large black circle on the flats, I thought this was due to a smudge on the filter, however I have now cleaned that and it is still there. Therefore it must be on the corrector plate so I will look tomorrow.
Also I had some problems tonight with the guiding suddenly jumping. I put this down to the stretchy USB cable running to the mount getting caught, however on changing how it was connected I still had the issue so I need to further investigate. I will change the cable tomorrow to using WiFi which I have just found out I can do.
I took flats and darks.
By way of an update, it transpired that some of my problem with the guiding jumping was the 4s exposure I was using, reducing this to 0.5s-1.0s resolved the problem in the main. The only time I saw this again was then when the scope was pointing low to the North Western horizon possibly being effected by the street lights.
Following on from last nights cloudy weather, I have setup again tonight, and it is looking clear. I am imaging M38 again, I will use 120s subs and take the appropriate Flats at the shorter exposure as with the Triband filter it suggested 750ms on Auto however these are far to bright so I will reduce back to 500ms.
After 3 hours I had not only gathered much better data for M38, but also the clouds once again on this mountain had formed. I waited until 1:20am and then packed up as it was not clearing.
Setup in the light polluted Adeje town north of the TF1. We are staying in a 3 story townhouse and I am imaging from the 2nd floor terrace.
New Camera
I have brought with me for the first time the ZWO ASI2600MC AIR and I am imaging with that using the small 220 built in guide chip for guiding and imaging through the Esprit 100 whilst trying to cut down the light pollution using the Antlia Triband RGB filter.
Light polluted Adeje
Focusing on completing my Messier collection, given the full moon, I am imaging M38 an open cluster. Taking 60s exposures to try and keep the chance of over exposing the stars, I am also West of the Meridian and at a starting imaging altitude of 55 degrees thus limiting the ingress of light into the telescope.
M38 Stacked and Annotated 101 x 60s
After 2 hours I moved on to M48 another open cluster. Again it was reasonably high at 42 degrees to allow for 2 hours of imaging before I hit the lights of the buildings. Imaging overhead is clearly what is needed after looking at the last few images of M38.
M48 Stacked and Annotated 102 x 60s
Another 2 hours completed and I then had a hard choice of what to image past the meridian, away from the Moon but before the lights of the buildings. I landed up targeting M109 to the left, along with NGC 3953 to the right of centre and NGC 391 to the far right. One of the stars making up the constellation of Ursa Major, 64 Gamma Uma can be seen. I went back to sleep and woke up around 7am to shut down the imaging run. A good first night.
After 2 nights of cloud tonight, night 4, it is lovely and clear. I am suffering from a cold, however I have setup and been imaging since 7:45pm. I have started with the 100 Esprit and placed the new Askar C1 (Ha +OIII) filter in place. I slewed to the California nebula and rotated the camera to fit the object diagonally across the chip as it is larger than my field of view. I plan on taking 2 hours with the C1 filter before I switch to the C2 (SII + OII) filter
Above is a single exposure of 300s
I managed to complete the imaging run then I tried to process but not with much luck. Fortunately I have a good set of friends who can process narrowband images and here is what they did!
This image above from Tim Powell
This image above from Dave Boddington
This image above also from Dave Boddington
This image above from Nigel Davison
This image above also from Nigel Davison
They are all great and I am so happy with what my friends have done with my data
By the time I had eaten and unpacked and built the telescopes on the mount it was 11:30pm, it then took another 30mins to decide where image from as Polaris was round the front of the property so not visible from the patio. it the. took me another 1.5 hours to sort out and calibrate the scopes and setup an image run on IC434. I had a problem with the focal length of the SharpStar 61 which turned out to be 275mm and then plate solving worked. I finally at 1:30am set about imaging and 30mins later Orion crossed the meridian. It then started imaging again.
The temperature tonight was around 6℃. I went to sleep at 3:30am and left it running but it lost connection to the mount and did not send guiding information to it so all my images from that point were no good. I will try again tonight on the same object.
My second night at the villa with the family. I’ve taken my Sharpstar 61 refractor with me this time with an effective focal length of 272mm. I normally use this a my guider for the Esprit 100 or 120. And I’ve placed it on the AM5 and have attached the trusty 50mm Skywatcher guide scope to it.
Ready to image
Luke has helped me setup this evening after managing to have an accident yesterday which caused me to have butterfly stitches to my shin 🤦♂️
So after about an hour of setting up, finding focus, working out the focal length and polar aligning we have set off to test the first image from this little setup. The FoV is 4.94 x 3.30 degrees.
Plate solve of the first image
NGC 7000 the North American Nebula that is almost overhead, thus removing problems with the pool lights that I have not yet worked out how to turn off.
We are taking 12 x 5mins with the ZWO ASI2600MC colour camera, cooled to -10℃ as the temperature outside is a balmy 21℃.
Single 5min exposure
Once done I will call it a night as I really need to turn off those pool lights.
Very windy night with 1.6’ seeing! I started with NGC 5982 Draco triplet but the wind was too high at 48.25 km/s! Trailing stars everywhere and guiding was useless at 36”!! So paused imaging until the wind dropped slightly. I continued to monitor the situation from the Teide Observatory Grafana dashboard page here;
Back up in my room I can hear the wind whistling past my window. After another hour the conditions were no better so I set the mount to run all night across 3 objects and went to bed crossing my fingers the ASIAIR and AM5 mount behaved well.
I was then delighted by sunrise that I had captured some useful data, not as much as I had hoped but good news enough. I had captured ok data for M11 of 12 x 300s subs.
M11 single 5 min sub
I also grabbed 19 semi successful images of M22,
M22 single 5 min sub
and lastly only 8 not great frame of M30 at the beginning of the night which quite frankly need to be taken again.
Tonight started with 0.7’ seeing. I was going to start imaging on the Dragons of Ara, however when I slewed I realised it was behind the mountain to the South. So instead I moved slightly up to M19 to finish my run on that glob from yesterday for around an hour in the hope the Dragons would clear the mountain by then and still be West of the Meridian.
M19 single 5 min sub
So by 11:30pm the 🐉 nebula had cleared the mountain and so I started imaging it at some 10 degrees altitude. I was not going to bother capturing more data on other nights as it is very low and the stars are bloated to about 6 pixels rather than 3 pixels. That said, once stacked and Blur Exterminator process was run it was very pleasing. So I may try to capture some more data.
NGC 6188 Dragons of Art – 5 min sub
After 2 hours it was a mere 5 degrees above the horizon and the star size had increased from 3.32 pixels to 6.01 pixels so I decided to call it a day and move to the globular cluster M28 at the top of the lid of the teapot.🫖
M28 single 5 min sub
After that I went on to grab 10 frames of the glob M30 before twilight.
A beautiful night with 0.8’ seeing. Started with a set of globs, namely more data for M62,
M62 single 5 min sub
a new globular cluster M80
M80 single 5 min sub
and globular cluster M19,
M19 single 5 min sub
then finally the Crescent nebula which I managed to grab just shy of 3 hours on. I ran all the way to twilight at around 6am and then packed up for bed by 7am.
Very calm night 0.7’ seeing and at the start little to no wind. The temperature was around 16-17℃ all night.
Started with Markarian’s chain again to gather better data than yesterday’s. Captured 15 x 300s tonight. I’ll do another final set tomorrow.
At 23:45 I moved on to M4 a globular cluster in Scorpius. I will continue with this again tomorrow night as I landed up with about 1.5 hours of usable data.
M4 Globular Cluster – stacked only
At around 2am I moved to M55 as M4 had got fairly low in the sky so I will come back to that tomorrow night. I did find there was too much time spent refocusing so I have now changed this to only as the temperature changes and at the start of a new image rather than every 30mins as well.
M55 Globular Cluster – Stacked only
I captured 3 hours on this lovely globular cluster.
Beautiful night slightly windy 0.9’ seeing at first but then changed dramatically later to around 2.2’
Markarian’s Chain suffered from many satellite trails, more so early on.
View from the iPad
12 x 300s so 1 hour of Markarian’s chain
By the time I started to image M39 the wind had started to pick up and I found even guiding at 60s was causing star trails.
M39 single 5 mins sub
So about 3am I started taking darks and then by 4:15am the seeing which was really the problem had settled down from 2.2 arc secs to 0.9! I went back and took 30 x 60s subs for M55 and then another 30 x 60s for M39 before heading off to bed.
So given it was a non-work night and predicted to be clear Dave invited me over to test the gear/setup prior to the BASEG Tenerife 2024 trip.
Given we are fast approaching the summer solstice, the nights are getting shorter and lighter. The Annual Darkness chart for IMT3 shows that we currently have no astronomical darkness and the nautical darkness lasts only for some 3.5hrs (left image) and now compare that the darkness graph for Mount Teide in Tenerife (right image) and although we lose some dark hours around the Summer Solstice it’s not as much as is lost being located at 52°N.
Setup – added BlueAstro stick station to measure pressure as Pegasus have not exposed the pressure measurement from the NYX101 mount to the ASCOM layer … why not ? Added weight bag to NYX-101 and GL.inet travel router to top of the scope as MS Windows keeps messing up the Wi-Fi hotspot on the Mele Quieter3C if it does not detect a internet connection ….. how stupid is that. Now I have a permanent hotspot thanks to the instructions given by Cuiv the Lazy Geek on his YouTube channel.
When attempting to polar align when using the QHY PoleMaster I noticed that the sky brightness below 15 mag2/sec (measured by a Unihedron SQM) produced a white screen due to over exposure – the minimal exposure in the now aged the QHY PoleMaster software (> 4yrs since last release) was 50ms which is too long even though I could eyeball Polaris in the early evening sky.
NINA 3.0 start up had not detected the QHY native driver and after I shutdown and restarted the app it then was able to detect the QHY 268C camera. However, it disconnected when it could not cool to -10℃ which I’ve never encountered before. I did eventually managed to get it cool and stay connected.
During guiding calibration OpenPHD2 would constantly complain about losing the star. Again the star was clearly visible on the PHD display and after downgrading from 2.6.13dev4 to dev3 and then I suddenly realised the value the error was referring to. I changed the minimal star HFD down to 1.0 from 1.5, also recreated the dark library to remove the possibility of the guider attempting to guide on a hot pixel.
Once guiding, the guide graphs were reporting 0.08 – 0.19 arcsec total polar alignment error. Hopefully I will learn to improve that and maybe repeat the polar alignment procedure or use PHD drift align to refine it.
I also forgot to change filter at the start of the evening from the Antila Quad Band filter to the Baader UV/IR filter. I noticed a halo from the bright star Arcturus in the constellation Bootes which I was testing autofocus on but I decided to continue regardless as I was only testing.
The goal for the night was to grab a base image of T Coronae Borealis (“The Blaze Star”) before it goes nova – it’s a reoccurring nova with a 80 year cycle. The star is currently hovering around 10.2 magnitude and it is predicted based on previous eruptions to reach around magnitude 2. As I ultimately wanted to perform some photometry on the star using the UV/IR cut filter I did want to blow out the cores of any bright star so I opted to use the ExtendedFullWell2CMS mode at gain 0, offset 30 with 60 second exposures. During the sequence I forgot to watch HFR/Star count graph and it rose above 5 which meant I have to refocus to (HFR ~2.0) and so due to my oversight due to chatting I will have to dump a lot of the early subs.
At the end of nautical darkness I stopped the sequence and used the NINA flat wizard (dynamic exposure) with the old PegasusAstro 120 flat panel at 100% brightness to create 25 flats and flat darks for a target of 33% ADU. After packing up and the with the pre-dawn temperature hitting 4℃ just before 4am I was looking forward to getting to bed.
At the next clear non-working evening I will attempt to grab some subs again but this time using the correct filter. Thank you to Dave and family for hosting me once more.
NB – NINA 3.1 was formally released the following day (09/06/2024) !
I’ve always liked what PegasusAstro have been doing with their astronomy equipment and I already own an original FlatMaster120, UPBv1 and a UPBv2.
Overview
Packaging – The mount transport box is (21cm x 34cm x 34cm) which is larger than the AM5 transport box. Weight/Size (6.4 Kg compared to ZWO AM5 5 Kg). The build quality follows the same high quality and blue anodised styling of recent products.
On opening the packaging I found damage to the mount knob indicated a possible rough handling in transit with plastic shrapnel in its plastic bag. This was superficial and did not impact the function or integrity of the mount.
There was no hand-controller supplied in the box but the manual hints that a hand controller can be connected to the ST-4 (EXT) port but no detail on if that is compatible with any existing hand controllers, so for now we have to use the Unity PC application, ASCOM access or the mobile phone application (Android).
The USB2.0 port is better than others I have encountered on other mounts such as iOptron and it grasps the cable securely and does not feel loose or feels like it would just drop off. This is especially useful as I tear down each night so let’s see over time if it maintains the positive connection it has at the moment. I connected the mount USB and power to the UPBv2 sat on top of the scope.
The carbon fibre tripod has no stone bag which can be found on other astro/photography tripods. You could suspend some form of weight from the leg spreader that might help prevent the tripod from tipping over with heavier scopes.
I found the Altitude adjustment a bit loose and takes a bit of getting used to even though the NYX101 has altitude tightening bolts which themselves seem to shift the altitude which again affects polar alignment if you are not careful.
Due to the compact nature of the mount there is no room for a GPS receiver so this function is relied upon either from your phone or by pushing the values from Unity or via Uranus device. If you push from your phone and you have Unity running then Unity will not see the change until you restart Unity.
I like the SW tripod (adapter required) and M12 counterweight compatibility, LX200 protocol support, polemaster placement support. There is a polemaster mounting plate but this is a permanent fixture via screws with no quick release mechanism. However there was a post on Cloudy Nights by PhilippeL on a release adapter he made, CAD link here.
Experience
Usage
Set your park/home positions and then enter in your location/altitude via Unity/Mobile phone app so that the mount understanding things like horizon limits.
As with other mounts, care needs to be exercised that your scope does not collide with the tripod legs, this is still a risk when using the pier extender with longer length scopes.
Unity Software
I couldn’t find a change history or date on the released Unity Platform on the website so it’s not easy to look back when things happened but you can use this link to check the currently available version. I used version 1.8.1733.15, when upgrading the existing Unity software the update process will remove all older versions including the ASCOM drivers and then install the latest version.
I do seem to lose wireless connection to my house router randomly even though the mount was positioned within 6ft of it. I had setup the router to give the mount a static IP address via DHCP but I don’t know it loses the connection – DHCP lease time is set high.
Firmware Update
When I first looked at configuring the NYX-101 to connect to my house network I had no end of trouble getting a connection. The only way I could achieve a connection was to have both the PC/laptop and mount connect to one of my travel routers which itself was also connected my the house wifi.
I soon worked out that the “Smart Connect” feature of my house wifi router was attempting to connect the ESP32 wireless (2.4GhZ) of the NYX to the 5GhZ band. Once I had put the MAC address of the NYX-101 into the exclude list of the house router 5GhZ band then it would reliably connect to the 2.4GhZ band. From that point onwards everything worked as expected and I could then successfully perform the firmware update to 1.15.
The 1.19 firmware (released the week 13th March 2023) also brought a pleasant surprise of the motor noise being reduced when slewing. This is a welcome change since making any noise in a suburban garden location in the early hours of the morning when people sleep with their windows open is highly undesirable.
Resetting park & home
I actually turned off the mount by accident whilst the mount was pointing somewhere in the sky so it lost its position and didn’t know where park and home was. This is easily rectified by moving the mount via one of the applications to the correct marks and setting the home and park positions again. This issue was mostly solved with a later firmware update where the mount now remembers where it is pointed once power is restored. However on performing a meridian flip (no slew & center) and then instructing the mount to home resulted in the mount not being it’s predefined home location.
Mobile App (Android)
Originally there was only Android11+ support but after raising a support ticket (support@pegasusastro.com) to request that the documentation state that the linked app only supported Android 11 I also requested a pre-Android 11 support. This actually appeared pretty quickly on the website so kudos to PegasusAstro for the fast response.
I do suffer regular disconnects from the mount when using the mobile app via the hotspot. I’m not sure why this is as I was sat right next to the mount, could be down to an idle time-out ?
I also see the NYX-101 disconnect from my house wireless router in Unity but could locate no reason why (DHCP lease was valid), I could find no entry in the Unity log files or see no reason on the router. Now this could possibly be either interference from other 2.4GhZ networks or down to the Aluminium casing, would an external aerial resolve this problem ?
There is no way to reconnect to the wireless other than shutting down Unity so as long as you have a USB connection then everything should continue working.
Mount/Altitude Limits & Meridian Flip
To begin with I set the meridian and altitude mount limits in Unity and then test the automated meridian flip using ASCOM simulator for the camera. Regardless would I did the mount would stop 10 degrees because hitting the Meridian. It slowly dawned on me that I had set the meridian limit to -10 which I thought was 10 degrees after the meridian but the value should have been +10 so it was actually stopping 10 minutes before the meridian ……. dooh !
Unity hard limits for Elevation & Meridian
Once I made the change then both NINA and SGPro performed the meridian flip just fine. There is also a switch to enable automatic meridian flip to prevent any potential crashes but I opted to leave this disabled so the mount would just stop tracking but NINA would continue taking new subs in both simple & advanced scheduler.
One item that would really help here in a text box with optional input to set either limits instead of having to grab the slider to see the current setting – I can query/set this in the API but it’s not easy to view and change using the slider method.
Polar Alignment
I used the polemaster software to perform a polar alignment but decided to utilise SharpCap to compare the alignment procedure and difference. Because SharpCap requires the scope to be slewed 90° so the scope weight was now on on horizontal the RA axis dropped causing the mount to shift and results in the PA being 4° off axis.
This would happen regardless even if I tightened up the axis bolts. Talking to another user he suggested at using a counterweight but to me this would negate the mount as a portable mount.
Guiding
Using the OpenPHD guiding reference document (link), it appears the that the harmonic gears have a period of 430 seconds with a periodic error of +/- 20 arcsecs or less. Two complete periods are required for the Permanent Periodic Error Correction (PPEC) before guiding any improvement will be seen, this is pertinent for the imaging train in use at the time. If you change the imaging target the model will re-initiate the PPEC learning cycle.
The recommendation is to set the guiding interval to 1 – 1.5 seconds and try to be within 30 arcsecs of polar alignment error. I certainly found keeping the FSQ85 setup to around 1.5 seconds resulted in better guiding graphs compared to 3 second intervals.
Support
After initially purchasing the mount I took my NYX-101 along to Astrofest 2023 (UK) for Evans to look at (by prior appointment) as I was not entirely happy with the resonance during slewing. I compared my mount against two other NYX-101 mounts in my astronomy society and it definitely sounded like it had been treated roughly during delivery transit. Although Evans did a great job to investigate the mount during the show, due to the noisy nature of the exhibitor floor it was not obvious that it had been resolved until I was in a quiet environment back at home.
On contacting PegasusAstro I was offered to have the mount picked up by DHL and couriered back to Greece for inspection. The whole process from DHL pickup was professional from picking up to receiving the mount back, the service was excellent and he mount was backed with me 7 days later. The courier communications was good but I received no notes or communication on what was done (board serial number was the same) under I enquired. The most important thing the mount operation was much better and more akin to the other two reference mounts I had listened to; my gratitude to Evans and the team for their patience with me.
It had been reported on various forums that the ZWO ASIAir had suddenly stopped working with the NYX-101 and some heated speculation quickly arose as to the reason why this occurred. ZWO was quick to dispel any conspiracy theories and rightly put their hands up and stated it was a bug in ASIAir software (link) which would be resolved in the 2.1 beta release (you will also need the latest firmware). Kudos should go to ZWO for setting for the story straight and resolving the issue to the benefit of the astro community.
First Light Use
So Dave asked me to come over to the observatory for the evenings of 26th & 27th so I could do a test run on the kit I would be taking to Tenerife later that Summer. At this time the M101 Supernova SN 2023ixf so I decided to image it alongside Dave using his 17inch RDK and Bob’s 24 inch RDK.
Using the QHY Polemaster I noticed that when I rotated the mount for alignment that the chosen calibration star moved away from the rotation circle – is the mount slightly misaligned ?
The guiding document available here were extremely helpful in testing out various settings. Certainly I was seeing some trailing around 3 seconds but that could have been due to the PA issues or balance. I ended up using Predictive PEC and setting the interval to 1 second just to see what would happen. I still noticed large variations every now and then and it was not as smooth as I’d hoped for.
Slewing to a target after plate solving it was clear that the mount had moved outside my FoV at first slew. This was unusual for me as my CEM60/NEQ6 first slews were always in the FoV, this issue may be related to an situation observed by Chris Woodhouse and can be rectified by following his forum post.
Chris asked me to confirm his experience of overshoot when slewing in the DEC axis causing the target not to be in resulted field of view. Chris had raised a support ticket for this issue and PegasusAstro were investigating.
Closing Thoughts
The NYX-101 is more expensive that the competing ZWO AM5 but the NYX-101 offers more weight carrying capacity (20 Kg versus 13 Kg without counterweights) and compatibility with those already own QHY Polemaster, SW NEQ6 or similar tripods.
The direct open API (REST) via Unity or access via ASCOM Alpaca allows me to query components and it’s easy to script up web status pages quite easily.
If you only ever plan to use light imaging equipment and are already invested into the ZWO eco system then the AM5 might make more sense but if you wanted to use other vendors equipment then for me ZWO is a closed ecosystem with limited flexibility.
If using USB3 cables for any equipment such as CCD/CMOS cameras then it is wise to invest in a high quality shielded cable as USB3 tends to have issues in the presence of 2.4GhZ. I used 5Ghz wireless from my Mele Quieter3c mini PC to avoid this problem but I would advise to use good shielded cables in all situations.
I’m looking forward to taking the mount on the upcoming trip to Mount Teide, Tenerife to see how well it performs under dark and clear skies 😀
Wishlist
The following wishlist is based on my experience of using the NYX-101 alongside the Ultimate Power Box v2 (Firmware 2.4) and NYX-101 (Firmware X.Y.Z) via the Unity software (1.9.1825.32) :
Would be nice to see dust covers provided in the box for all the various ports on the back of the mount.
An external aerial port might be useful for the included ESP32 wireless connection ?
An option to power other Pegasus items such as the UPBv2 from the aux power port on the mount ? This would mean that then I would only have one cable going up/down from the scope to the mount which is especially useful for those who are mobile and don’t use the NYX mount in a permanent setting.
Include a hand controller in the default offering or document compatibility with any existing hand controllers. Could utilise the USB port instead of relying on the ESP32 internal module ?
Display the MAC address of the ESP32 module in the Unity app (wi-fi network tab) so it’s not necessary to hunt for it in the router’s client connection pages.
A disconnect/reconnect button for an existing wifi connection definition.
An editable display box for both the meridian and altitude limits where I can enter the desired value as I can only know what the settings are by actually grabbing the sliders or reading/setting the position from the REST API.
API call to set/get horizon & meridian limits as a profile similar to the location. This would allow the user with different scopes/piers/tripods to store different hard horizon/meridian and auto meridian flip settings.
If possible add a NYX-101 uptime value to Unity and API similar to other products like the UPBv2 to show how long the NYX-101 has been powered on.
If possible add a timer field to the wireless tab to indicate how long the mount has been connected to the configured wireless access point and/or the USB connection.
The NYX-101 health status in Unity sometimes doesn’t not render correctly on smaller/different aspect screens between Unity releases such as a Dell 13.3″ laptop.
API call to provide NYX-101 health status if the information is not already available via other API calls.
API call to indicate if a new firmware (inc version) is available as it is indicated in Unity ?
A changelog history for NYX-101, Unity & UPB between versions.
Update
As of May/June 2023 there is now a XT60 cable available to run from the AUX port to run to the UPBv2 and now I only need an adapter cable to fit my 10 Amp PSU with a XT60 connector.
14th June : Firmware 1.21 released by PegasusAstro and the patch notes show this release fixes the DEC axis overshoot experienced by Chris Woodhouse :
DEC motor accuracy improvement during slews. In previous firmware declination axis tends to overshoot.
Wi-fi hotspot channel width was reduced from 40MHz to 20MHz to improve channel data integrity.
Wi-fi hotspot can turn ON and OFF.
Wi-fi hotspot channel can be selected from 1 to 11 (11 is the default).
Reset home is not allowed when mount is hard encoder limit.
DSW invited me over to the IMT3 observatory for an imaging weekend to image M101 and the recent supernova2023ixf discovery. DSW was using the 12inch RDK and I decided to put the FSQ85 on the Pegasus NYX-101 to test out the setup ready for our Tenerife trip to Mount Teide.
I ran the QHY268C at high gain mode, gain 56, offset 30 and -20℃. I finally managed to cure the noise banding I was experiencing on the QHY268C but using a fully shielded high quality USB3 short length cable that I run from direct to a Pegasus UPBv2 that sits on top of the scope.
Although it’s mid summer and the Moon was bright and approaching full the phase, the sky conditions on the first night appeared to be okay at first sight. Before processing I decided to check on data quality via the blink module in PixInsight it was obvious that they were a lot of unusable subs due to high cloud and using them would have ruined the quality of any resulting stacked image.
Running the data stack of raw images through the PixInsight Subframe Selector to analyse the PSF SNR versus noise it clearly shows that I could only use 7 frames (35 minutes) didn’t drop below 0.08 from night one whilst all the data from night two should go straight into the bin along with most of night one 🙁
Pixinsight SubFrameSelector
Given I don’t have enough data to do the end result justice due to my poor PixInsight skills I decided to invert the images – I really should subscribe to Adam Block Studios (Shout out !)
Inverted image of M101, supernova 2023ixf and surrounding area
Running the AnnotateImage Script labels the various galaxies in the image which I enjoy looking up to see which type they are, magnitude and how far away they are.
Annotated FoV for area around M101, supernova is not labelled
Zooming in to M101 to see the Supernova better, it is located to the right of NGC5461 and indicated by the two arrows.
M101 with SN2023ixf indicated by the arrows
Light Curve
The AAVSO have a light curve plotted from measurements submitted by amateurs, just enter “SN 2023ixf” and submit here. It was still around 11th magnitude on 18th June but there does appear to be a slight decline in the brightness curve.
M101 for me this evening to try and get there RGB data in one night. GingerGeek has come round to test out his travel setup, he has a Takahashi FSQ85, QHY268C and the Pegasus NYX-101 harmonic mount.
Focused at 20,105 on Luminance so RGB will be 21,105
1 x 300s Red
Taking 2 minute exposures for each colour at -25℃. I then realised 5 minutes is so much better. So at 1:30am I then started exposing at 5 minutes with the plan to combine both data sets. The SkyX worked brilliantly as can be seen below, looking after the guiding and image capture.
The main challenge I had early on was the the dome shutting unexpectedly. I will attempt to find out why over the next few months. The camera noise continues to be an issue but less so tonight so I think it may be USB related, again I will troubleshoot and check there cable lengths.
GingerGeek had a productive night troubleshooting a multitude of problems on his untested travel kit and was pleased with the results including taking his first image of a supernova in M101.
A week with the family in Tenerife afforded me the opportunity to test out for the 2nd time this year the Skywatcher 100 Esprit on the AM5 harmonic mount with the ASIAIR in control and the ASI2600MC with a new Antlia Triband RGB Ultra filter.
Travel Rig
Over the period of the week I picked 2 nights when I wanted to observe. Because of the clement environment of Tenerife and the Canaries and unlike the UK, you can decide when to go out and image as almost all nights are clear, the weather warm, around 22 deg Celsius and the bed not that far away from the pool. Given when we were on holiday which was decided around other activities, the Moon phase was Full.
Night time flood lit pitches
The one problem with renting a villa is when the owners will not pinpoint where on a map it is. There is normally a reason. In this case it was because of the proximity of the local sports buildings. A swimming pool to the front of the villa including a floodlit pitch and 2 more flood lit pitches to the left and right of the villa at the rear.
Impact of flood lighting
So yes it was bright, very bright, as can be seen on the villa party wall.
Full Moon and Floodlights
So given all that light pollution I was then pleasantly surprised how well the final image came out of the singular target I chose. NGC 2244, the Rosette Nebula.
NGC 2244 Rosette Nebula – 6 hours
I exposed for some 75 x 300s over the 2 nights. All the images were on the West side of the Meridian to make it easier without a flip.
Crop of cluster
I found stacking 75 images instead of just the first night of 30+ images gave a much smoother background and nebula, much less noise and easier to work with the data.
Wider crop including dust
So not a bad photo for Full Moon and 3 flood lit pitches. I look forward to testing out the kit at the top of the mountain later in the year under New Moon dark skies.
First of all tonight I have taken darks for 300s that are needed for the earlier data. However I am still suffering from the QHY168c disconnecting from the laptop, this time in TSX. I have upgraded the software yesterday but this has not made a difference, so it must be something to do with the way there USB cable is connecting. I will attempt to troubleshoot when I get home. Right now I have switched to Ezcap again which seems to be ok.
I have setup over by Mark and will see what this location is like behind the pool building. I have found that the WiFi is weak or non existent. Also the staff room is nearby and the light is constantly on so maybe not the best place to image from.
@00:03 NGC 6352 30s -20℃ I took a single exposure of this.
