I thought it was time to break out the wider field imaging gear and get the ED80 back into action on the CEM60 mount.
I have incorporated a few upgrades to this system with the addition of :
– a PegasusAstro Pocket Power Box Advance
– an Ioptron StarFi wifi module for the mount, and
– an additional usb wifi dongle to allow access to the StarFi while still maintaining the remote access through the main wifi connection.
I have trained it on one of the brightests and most famous Nebula in the southern hemisphere – The Great Eta Carina Nebula.
The following gives the progression of the image processing
Ha only Stack of the Carina Nebula
Full Size Ha version is available here
HOO Version of The Carina Nebula
SHO version of The Carina Nebula, colour tweaked to the gold and Turquoise pallette.
Starless version of the Gold and Turquoise pallette.
Image Details :
100 x 300s for each of Ha, Oiii and Sii
100x 300s darks and 100 Bias frames for calibration
Equipment :
Skywatcher ED80 on the Ioptron CEM60 mount control via the Ioptron StarFi module
ASI1600MM-C cooled mono camera set at -10C and 1×1 binning with gain @ 139
Astronomik 1.25″ Ha, Oiii & Sii filters mounted in the ZWO EFW-mini Filter Wheel
Moonlite crayford focuser with Motor control
ASI290m guide camera with 60280 Guidescope
PegasusAstro Pocket PowerBox Advance for power distribution, USB hub and Dew Control
Mounted on the secondary pier and remotely run via a scope mounted NUC mini pc.
Processing software :
Mount interface with Ioptron Commander
Guiding by PHD2
Image Capture controlled by Sequence Generator Pro (SGPro)
Image Calibration, Registration, Stacking, Combination, Deconvolution and Star removal by PixInsight (including RC Astro plugins BlurXterminator and StarXterminator)
Image stretching and final processing in Photoshop
