LBN 744 is a planetary nebula and may not be suitable for use with the Ha/OII filter.
1 Like
OK understood. The filter is off by default.
There are three filter settings:
VIS Filter (Visible Light):
Covers 430–650nm, designed for daytime, solar, and regular photography by filtering out infrared light for accurate colors.Astro Filter (IR Cut):
Covers 430–690nm, extending into the infrared range to improve, deep-space, and low-light imaging.Dual-Band Filter (Narrowband):
Targets OIII (500.7nm), H (486nm), and H (656.3nm) wavelengths, effectively reducing moonlight and urban light pollution for clearer nebula imaging.
(plus the clip-on solar filter of course)
Well I have finally got myself organised to have another go with the Askar 71F - and have learned how to get it polar aligned properly (using the ASIAIR camera/controller), as well as figuring out all the other steps, including using the ZWO autofocuser, to get it to point at something useful and take photos!
Last night I photographed M81 / M82 (Bode’s Galaxy and the Cigar Galaxy). I took 200 30-second exposures, no filter. As the moon was near full I thought it was best to shoot something in the northern sky rather than try and compete with moonlight!
I am still definitely not 100% there when it comes to post-processing in SIRIL, GraXpert and Photoshop, but have learned a lot from watching Nico Carver (Nebula Photos) on YouTube.
So here’s the result of my efforts - “could do better” will no doubt be the verdict but I feel I am making progress at last. Just need some more clear nights!
1 Like
You’ve got some really good detail in the larger galaxy. My first ever attempt was Andromeda and I had trouble with the detail so you’ve done really well there. Thinking again, it could be my very novice stacking and post processing that were the problem so I may revisit the raw data to see what I can do now.
1 Like
Yes the processing is half the battle it seems! I had another go at my Pleiades image from a few months back and I got a bit more detail out of the nebulosity.
And I even managed to get something from a single exposure of Andromeda where my tracking was so bad the sub-frames would not stack!
But now I am dialled in a bit with the image capture side of things I can hopefully do more.
Here’s one of LBN-569 which is a faint molecular cloud that I managed to take a few weeks ago. It took quite a bit of processing to bring out the detail. Still working on some of the other stuff I took during 4 nights … when I can.
3 Likes
Last night’s effort - M101 the Pinwheel Galaxy.
100 60-second exposures. More would have been better of course. No filters, just the colour camera.
I still haven’t figured out electronic tracking with the secondary camera inside the ZWO 585 MC Air, so this is just relying on the mount to track reliably, which it seems to do fairly well considering the telescope etc. is pushing its 5kg payload capacity.
I may have oversharpened this a touch. 
Anyway I feel I am making progress… (click to enlarge)
Looking at the weather forecast it seems I may get one more go tonight and then it’s cloudy for the next fortnight!
6 Likes
What software are you using for the capture ? What are you trying to use for the tracking ? Although the mount tracking is pretty good, you can see there’s some drift. With second camera tracking, it’ll be much better and you’ll be able to take longer exposures which ill be important for longer exposures.
It’s the ZWO iOS app for the MC585 AIR camera.
I am just using the Skywatcher Star Adventurer GTI mount, controlled by the MC585 AIR. I have been quite diligent about getting a good polar alignment though.
Yes the stars are just a bit oval. As mentioned above I tried to switch on the second camera guiding (the 585MC Air has a built in mini guide camera which you can see below the main sensor in the photo above) but it refused to cooperate saying it could not see a suitable guide star.
I suspect I didn’t have the exposure set properly for the guide camera but by that point I had done enough faffing about so just went ahead and did my 100 60 second exposures. I need to get my head around calibration frames too, all my stuff so far has been lights-only.
The 585 MC Air is still dropping its wifi connection occasionally too - that seems to be a “feature” of ZWO controllers. I tried getting it to use my home wifi via a repeater but same thing. Some astro forum folks blame insufficient voltage if you plug things like dew heaters or the mount into it, so next time I will try giving it its own separate power.