William Optics Zenithstar 81 - First Light (NGC6188)
After a bit of trial and error i was finally able to get everything up and running at the weekend and attempted to capture some Ha data on NGC6188 (The Fighting Dragons Of Ara).
Unfortunately, not long after starting my imaging session the clouds rolled in and I had to pack up for the night.
It may not be much but, with only 15 minutes of imaging time I was relatively happy to come away with my very first deep sky image.
Looking forward to capturing a decent amount of Ha, SII and OIII data on this target over the coming weeks.
SETUP
Mount: SkyWatcher HEQ5PRO
Imaging Scope: William Optics Zenithstar 81
Imaging Camera: ZWO ASI183MM PRO
Guide Scope: William Optics 50mm
Guide Camera: ZWO ASI290MM Mini
Filters: ZWO EFW with ZWO 7nm Narrowband Filters
Last edited by Gr4h4m; 30-06-2020 at 07:14 PM.
Reason: Include more information
Yeah, it's a nice looking scope. It's taken me a little while to get everything set up how I wanted it. I just hope I can do it some justice and capture some half decent images, haha
I recently got one of these too, and use it on the same mount, same filters and similar camera (asi1600), and did the same image as this on one of my first nights out i think yours came out a bit nicer, though! Thats an amazing result from 15mins!
I've been fortunate enough to have a few clear nights over the past week to add more data to this target.
After the first attempt I decided to amend my exposure settings to:
600s Unity Gain 111 Bin 1x1 -15C
With an almost full Moon I wasn't sure what impact this would have on image quality, even with an Ha filter. Nevertheless, I'm relatively happy with the results so far.
Ha - 41 X 600s (6.83hrs)
CALIBRATION FRAMES
Darks - 17 X 600s
Flats - 100 X 0.81625s
Bias - 100 X 0.000032s
Still a work in progress but the Ha element of the image is almost complete.