Using ASIair Plus with AM5 mount

groberts

I'm just starting out with the highly recommended ASIair plus AM5 combination and have set up the mount, installed ASIair and now have it running but have a few basic but important operating questions before attempting first light:

How can I polar align when I'm unable to see the north sky / polaris?
After imaging, how should I return the mount to home using ASIair? I presume once PA has been created home is definded as in line with PA position.
I've used ASIair to cool down the camera (ASI294MM Pro) OK but when finished is there a way to progressively warm up the camera sensor to ambiant temperature so as to avoid any thermal shock?
I see I can set camera Gain in ASIair but where do I set the required Offset value?

Briefly looked at calibration imaging and would liek to know:

How do I obtain correct exposure times for various filters using a light panel - with my current image capture software it runs a program that looks at the said exposures for the light panel with given a ADU value, which for my camera is 32,000?
Using ASIair Darks and Flats look OK but how do I take flat darks?

Many thanks, Graham

Corsair

groberts

Enable All Sky Polar Align by going to the About page.
The ASIAIR sets the Home position of the mount when you turn on the ASIAIR. So make sure your mount is in the correct physical Home position before you turn on the ASIAIR. Home is usually with telescope pointing towards True North/South (depending on hemisphere).

When setting up - always set up the tripod first with N mark pointing towards True North/South. Make sure it is level. Then attach all your equipment - the mount itself (setting the correct latitude), telescope/OTA, etc - and balance it. Make sure you leave it in the telescope/OTA pointing up towards True North/South position before turning on ASIAIR. This will now be the Home position (which you can check is set correctly by going to Mount settings > Go Home).

Not really. You can go into the camera settings and turn off the cooling. Or you can just tell the camera to turn off.
No. You can't change Offset in the ASIAIR.
So how do you take flats? I have an ASI294MC Pro cooled to 0°C. I set my exposure time to 5 seconds with my light panel (plus a bunch of A3 paper) in order to get the AVG ADU value to 28000 (as recommend by AstroWorkz in their video here - https://youtu.be/nl_LQDmkg2o?si=BAJ5nr8gSXBIs__s
Since the ASI294MC Pro doesn't need Bias frames I take my flat darks/dark flats using the Bias mode and just adjust the settings to make it be a flat dark/dark flat.

groberts

Many thanks for the reply, which is very helpful.

So - when I've finished imaging what do I do to return to the home / parking postion using the ASIair app not the handset?
Somewhat related, when imaging from a fixed location and have Polar Aligned + calibrated the guidescope, does ASIair save the related PA and PHD2 calibration information afterwards for the next night and if so where / how do I use the same data again to avoid repeating the process each time? Of course, if it's a different location it will be necessary to carry out a new PA.
If you can't change the offset, what value does ASIair assume?

Graham