Equipment, Imaging, Accessory, First Light
Andrew Burwell
Project Dumbbell: First light with the Rainbow ...

Is this the ultimate portable long focal length astrophotography setup?

Project Dumbbell: First light with the Rainbow Astro RST-135E and Celestron EdgeHD 8"

Imaging Star Clusters with the AT6RC and the ZWO ASI071MC-Pro

M13 globular cluster imaged with the AT6RC, 6” Ritchey Chretien telescope.

M13 globular cluster imaged with the AT6RC, 6” Ritchey Chretien telescope.

I spent a few nights this week trying out my color camera, the ZWO ASI071MC-Pro on the AT6RC. I really love the pixel scale achieved here with the combination. It provides very nice resolution and a moderate field of view. I managed to divide my time between the two clusters. Four hours or so on M53 and about two hours on M13. I honestly wish I had a few more hours on M13, as there are a lot more stars to bring out that are quite dim around the edge of the cluster.

Both images were stacked, integrated, calibrated, light pollution removed, and color corrected with Astro Pixel Processor. I then took them into PixInsight for denoise, stretching, and color saturation.

M53 globular cluster.

M53 globular cluster.

AstroPixel Processor 1.072 Released

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The latest version of Astro Pixel Processor has been released.

Lots of support for Sony cameras has been added.

Improved Drizzle/Bayer Drizzle.

Lots of changes and improvements to

  • Image EXIF data,

  • console panel

  • progress monitors

  • Improved loading for frames

  • fixed some memory issues

  • dynamic distortion correction.

  • Improved star analysis

  • GUI frame panel scrolling

Head over to the APP website to get the latest version. Take a look at the full update notes here.

KStars/EKOS 3.1 is released!

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An update to my current favorite imaging platform has been released. In this release there’s a bunch of 3.0 fixes as well as a hand full of new features.

  • Fixes to the scheduler to cover some multi-object multi-night scheduling.

  • Ring-field focusing, an improvement to star selection methods for focusing.

  • Updates to the meridian flip code.

  • Huge updates to the official documentation.

  • Polar alignment routines for non-GOTO mounts.

  • Live view for DSLR’s so you can now focus easier.

  • A host of other random fixes and improvements.

Get the updated file at the Kstars download site.

Quick note for Mac users: there’s a bug with offline plate solving in this release, and is expected to be fixed soon.