>> I have gone through a few YouTube clips telling us to back up the micro SD data card that has the ASIAIR pro OS..

>> is this necessary for the new Pro version?

Absolutely! Don't even attempt to apply power to the ASIAIR after opening the box. Back up the microSD card first. If you have more than one ASIAIR/pro, be sure to back all of them up, since that all have different license files.

The reason is if you happen to forget to soft power down the Raspberry PI and the ASIAIR is in the process of accessing the SD card, the card could be rendered useless. There are also people who physically crack their microSD while inserting or removing it. The pro model of the ASIAIR is especially prone to this because ZWO's metal case has a deeper ledge under the microSD card than the original plastic box from Raspberry Pi. I recommend using a tweezer, or temporarily stick a Gaffer tape to the part of the microSD that is visible, and carefully pull on the tape to extract the card -- do not, under any circumstance, apply any pressure that can cause the card to bend or crack.

Your license file resides on the card.

In case you lose your SD card for some reason, the easiest thing to do is to restore from a backup copy (the license file is included in the backup). It takes about 20 minutes to restore the 32 GB image, and you are done.

If you are on a decent computer, backing up takes less time (of the order of 5 minutes) since it is faster to read from the card than to write to the card.

If you don't have a backup copy of the microSD image, you will need to find a friend who you can copy from, or download a 32 GB image that ZWO has placed on a Google server. Depending on your internet service, this can take a while.

Even if you now have a good microSD image from the Google server or your buddy, you will still need to add/replace the license file on the new microSD card with your own license file. If you also haven't squirreled away your license file, then you need to take a screen image of the startup window that includes your ASIAIR serial number (it has part of the ARM processor ID). Email that to ZWO and wait for them to send you some QR image that contains the license. It is a manual process, so the wait time varies.

Each Raspberry Pi has a unique processor ID burned into the ARM chip. ZWO uses that, together with encryption, to create a unique license that works only with your copy of the ASIAIR hardware.

Might as well bite the bullet and do a backup now. As the TV commercial says, "Pay me now, or pay me (much more) later."

Chen

>> What about my second question?

No clue. I haven't used a DSLR even for photography for many years now. Went mirrorless. Perhaps someone from ZWO will see your question.

Chen

Regarding your second question, it certainly is not a setting on the DSLR. As with any OSC camera, the images need to be debayered to show color and that's something that needs to be done after the images have been downloaded from the camera. Not sure if that's possible with ASIAir since I don't use it. However, the product page of ASIAir states that it is possible:

https://astronomy-imaging-camera.com/product/zwo-asiair

HTH, Wouter

The Bayer option disappeared from the Main window of ASIAIR when they started to do auto detection. If the camera is monochrome, it will display as a B/W image. If it is a OSC camera, the ASIAIR will automatically debayer it.

The green tint is "normal," if the ASIAIR does not know the color balance of your camera (for example, if it has one or two green pixels in a 2x2 Bayer cell) -- your camera probably has two green pixels per Bayer cell, perhaps RGGB or some such Bayer pattern like the one in Sony sensors, thus about twice the green component compared to red and blue.

At least it means that ASIAIR is treating your camera as a color camera; you had originally mentioned that you were getting a B/W image.

Take a look at the Advanced Settings of your Main Camera Settings window. There should be a switch to toggle if you wish the ASIAIR to Auto White Balance the image in the screen. It will take an extra second or two when an image arrives to color balance, depending on the size of the sensor in your camera.

Chen

>> my camera is currently set to AWB and sRGB..

My guess is that those settings in the camera are irrelevant to the ASIAIR, since ASIAIR is using the camera RAW format and not the JPEG format from the camera.

Just tell ASAIR to automatically adjust the white point of the RAW image that it receives from the camera.

Chen

Nightingale wrote:

On second thoughts.. maybe it is a coloured image.. but it is very light.. almost black and white.. the FIT images on screen looks very black and white compared to a CR2 image taken with my DSLR which has much more colour in it... Also, how do you convert FIT files to TIFF for processing?

Please try DSS, use the Save As function.