ISS & Nauka

During a recent stay from my brother, we sat one night in the hot tub and saw the ISS pass, we chatted for a while about it and found that another pass was due the following night. Camera ready and waiting 24 hours later I captured the pass as it was descending in the East, we also spotted what looked like something following it. What I didn't realise that just 8 hours earlier from pad 39 at KSC the Russian module Nauka launched atop of a Proton M rocket. Numerous delays of fuel leaks and dust contamination saw a 14 year wait in all for Nauka's launch. Eight days later it successfully docked with the ISS.

You can just see Nauka in the frame top right.

1 x 15 second image ISO400

M71 & M27

Last night was the second opportunity to capture some light with the new astro camera. Time for some tests after plenty of reading on the different and optimum settings for gain, exposure and time and balancing that with my scope size and focal length. So we have 2 images M71 & M27. M71 a wonderful globular cluster in Sagitta. Exposure time was 15 x 3 minute exposures with gain at 0 to take advantage of the full well depth 50ke and 16 bit. Readout noise is below detection when cooled to -15. I am happy to play for a few months in Mono before unleashing the filters. M27 was set to 5 minute exposures and here just six of them for 30 minutes of total exposure. A crop too of approx 400%

First Light as promised IC1396 The Elephants Trunk Nebula.

To the left is a 3 hour calibrated frames desaturated from the colour of the 294mc pro, to the right is 20 x 3 minutes frames calibrated from the new Mono camera. One error I made was setting the camera at gain 100 so stars are a little bloated. I am not interested in anything other than it's sensitivity and noise levels. Test 1 pretty incredible.

New Camera ZWO ASI 2600mm

 Purchased from my friends at the widescreen-centre.co.uk in Cambridge. I cannot wait to put her though her paces and deliver some amazing images.

ZWO ASI2600 PRO Cooled Colour or Monochrome CMOS Camera - Widescreen Centre (widescreen-centre.co.uk)

Amazing! After the recent appearance of the "zero amp glow" ASI533MC-PRO, here is another "zero amp glow" camera with a larger sensor, 16 bit ADC, huge dynamic range and a pixel size that would suit many small to medium sized amateur APO telescopes (or small SCTs etc.)

The ASI2600MC Pro uses Sony’s latest back-illuminated IMX571 APS-C format native 16-bit ADC sensor. It has an ultra-high 14 stops dynamic range, ultra-low 1.0e readout noise and an innovative breakthrough resulting in zero amp-glow. It is a camera born from the appeal of astrophotography lovers. I cannot wait to put this through it's paces and deliver some great images.