|
Managed to get the first DSO images last night, but have some problems still to sort out. First my old camera controller power supply failed the night before and I had to switch over to another one (the Bintel 12V 7.5amp supply). The Bintel power supply was putting out moving interference lines visible on Liveview and on BYEOS, it's fine running the mount but not clean enough for the camera (and the camera cold finger is earthed). So I switched again to run the camera controller directly off the battery system and that cleaned up the interference - which was a relief as I was starting to think it was the camera.
Next I noticed that I had some internal fogging happening. I had not bothered to put the camera into the Argon bag for the test, nor had I insulated the cold finger on the outside of the camera body (other than the Plasti-dip coating), and it was a more humid night - that combo led to optic fogging somewhere. I shutdown the cooling and allowed the camera to heat up enough to evaporate the fogging, then turned the cooling back on for the test shots.
I ran a set of five 180 second subs on M42, which looked ok on Liveview and then had to shut it down due to approaching cloud.
On stacking and processing this morning I can notice a pattern on the images that appears to be something like evaporative gradient patterns - probably due to the fogging or my attempt to clean the optics prior to the test - using isoalcohol instead of my preferred acetone.
So no image to share at this stage, not until I am happy with it.
**** I spoke too soon!! This morning I tried to clean the sensor with acetone down through the open shutter, something I have done in the past with no problem, just set low ISO and bulb mode. Sadly I managed to snag the shutter curtain and seem to have damaged it - DOH! I am hoping the spring has just popped off the control arm but I will need to disassemble everything to get to it ( or maybe I can just take the front section off to get to the spring). Might have to step away from this till the new year if the shutter needs to be replaced.***
Last edited by glend; 07-12-2015 at 11:31 AM.
|