M51 Whirlpool (First real go with ASI2600MC Pro)

[nexusjeep]

Well we had a clear night the seeing was not great as the live view FWHM between frames varied from 3.2 to 5.5 at some points, the images below are the result of the 369 x 15s frames that I kept out of the 700 that I took. This was the first real go with the new ASI2600MC Pro that we have had to actually try the potential and I still need to use the camera a lot more to fully understand it's capabilities.

However bearing in mind the seeing and wind were against us last night I am very impressed with the data that the camera collected and optimistically things can only get better going forward. The two images are the same capture one is just the full image the second cropped in by about 50%. All frames were captured via SharpCap with the processing done in the new 1.077 version of APP. Also this is the first run in anger using Green Swamp Server (GSS) in place of EQMod and this also worked flawlessly and for some reasons the go to's appear to work better as it is putting the target pretty much on centre every time without the need to plate solve.

Equipment
Avalon M-UNO Synscan Mount
ED72 Guide telescope + Altair 290MM Guide Cam + Sesto Senso focus motor
APM LZOS 130/780 + M/R 1x Flattener so F6 + ZWO EAF focus motor
ASI2600MC Pro Main Imaging Camera at 300g -10c 15s exposures
Pegasus Ultimate Powerbox V2 to run everything

Full Image
_20_03_02 - M51 Whirlpool 369 x 15s (92m 15s) 300g -10c -ASI2600MC Full Image by Nick Davis, on Flickr

Cropped in
_20_03_02 - M51 Whirlpool 369 x 15s (92m 15s) 300g -10c -ASI2600MC Crop Image by Nick Davis, on Flickr

Thanks for looking.

Cheers
Nick

[turfpit]

Very good Nick. IC4263 there as well.

Dave.

[umasscrew39]

Very nice, Nick. Looking forward to receiving my ASI2600 to try.

Bruce

[BlackWikkett]

Awesome result Nick! The 2600 is looking like a real winner. An excellent image for such short exposures. Are you using darks / flats?
-Chris

[mAnKiNd]

Very nice!

[nexusjeep]

Thanks for the comments

Chris yes this is using a full set of calibration frames in APP so darks / flats / dark flats and bias although it has very low noise and amp glow, etc I still want to calibrate out hot and cold pixels so I still use darks the flats are really only for dust as the corrected image circle is 60mm with the 1.0x flattener and 43mm with the 0.75 flattener reducer so there should not be any vignette issues.

Cheers
Nick