Using a ZWO ASI120MC for Meteor Shower

jmccul

I want to try to capture the new meteor shower next weekend with my ZWO and attached lens. The camera is a new purchase and I have only used it a few times in the last couple of months. I use it with Firecapture. I have been looking over other pictures posted and have concluded I must limit my exposures to 10 s each. Is that true if I also take darks and subtract them? Any suggestions would greatly appreciated!

By the way, love the design on this camera. I have been able to attach it to a tripod using the standard tripod attachment on the back side. And it comes with a wide angle lens! What a versatile camera!

james_screech

The exposure you use will depend on the gain and how dark your sky is.

I haven't used my ASI yet for this kind of imaging but use my old planetary camera instead. I set the gain to 70-80% and exposure to 20sec. I use Firecapture's dark frame option and to appears to remove the hot pixels fine.

james

jmccul

Thanks James. We were testing the system last night and found that FC does a nice job with removing noise with a dark frame. It was a bit cloudy so the skies were not the best. I used 3s with 80% gamma. I was using the color camera. We found the mono camera to be brighter and shot at 2 s with no gamma, which was not surprising. Just want to test this all out before Friday.