Lots of new equipment and new techniques:
- Zwo AM5 mount (with the carbon tripod and the 160 mm extension)
- Sharpstar Z4 (FL 550mm and f/5.5)
- Zwo EAF with AF (Zwo ASIAIR)
- Calibration frames (darks, biases, flats)
I'm pretty sure I messed up focusing (the stars should be much smaller).
The mistake was not to tweak the AF parameters in ASIAIR (I did not touch them at all...).
I shot about ten lights when the meridian flip happened (ASIAIR/AM5 handled that flawlessly).
Since I did not want the meridian flip to happen unattended, I used the opportunity to stop the session after the next two lights to create the calibration frame.
Bias frames were made by putting the telescope cap on and using the ASIAIR to control the capturing.
Bias frames are easy to shoot, but the ASIAIR limits the minimal exposure time to a minimum of 1 ms. The Nikon D5600 could do faster.
Dark frames are also easy to shoot, but their exposure time eats away the time for the lights.
For flats, I used a flatbox that I put on top of the telescope (which was heading almost at the zenith).
The ASIAIR can do auto-exposure (equivalent to Av mode or aperture priority mode), so shooting is trivial.
This was the first time I did calibration frames. And although capturing them costs some time, it is worth it!
The flats also recommend cleaning the dust on the image sensor before the next session.
A total of 112 lights @ 180s were captured. However, clouds, satellites, and the rising sun in the morning reduced the number to 85.
The manual removal of the suboptimal lights improved the resulting image significantly.
To show this, the "original" version includes all 112 lights, while the "final" version only used the best 85 lights.
Comments