New to ASI 1600 Mono Cooled

farzad_k

Hello,

I have just unboxed my 1600 mono-cooled and attached the EFW, and am hoping for a first light opportunity. I have an 80mm F/6 refractor and an 8-inch f/10 SCT.

I am coming from a DSLR workflow and am looking for some information on how to image using the ASI. I know about binning and various filters. I think gain in these cameras is similar to ISO in DSLR imaging.

I have downloaded the latest ASCOm driver for the ZWO which I hope includes this model as I have not yet hooked it up to a computer and don't even know how to launch the driver since. Since they don't come with instructions I imagine they will get launched automatically when I launch one of the supported applications.

For DS imaging my favorite software is SGP. And for lunar imaging I have no favorite capture software because so far I have been using my DSLR to capture videos.

The eclipse is coming up and I want to figure out the camera ahead of the event so that I might take a chance with it. I would appreciate any pointer to a place where I can read about how to use this camera for DS imaging, and especially if I need to set the cooling temperature or if the cooling is automatic.

Thanks a lot.

Farzad

Sam@ZWO

Hi Farzad

you can have a look at our quick start guide manual at first

https://astronomy-imaging-camera.com/manuals/QuickGuide-cooled.pdf

farzad_k

Thanks, I did look at that document and it is very useful. Since I am coming from a DSLR world and I am familar with things like shutter speed and ISO, I am not sure what the equivalents to a DS camera like the 1600 are. I want to choose proper settings so that I will take advantage of the camera's abilities.

Is there a document that talks about these?

Farzad

Sam@ZWO

maybe this is useful for you

ISO VS GAIN.png

farzad_k

Yes, that curve does say how ISO (sensitivity of a pixel to light) is related to Gain, for which there is a control, and so it is helpful.

This is the article that I recommend people look at:

https://astronomy-imaging-camera.com/cooled-cameras/cooled-asi-camera-setting-in-ascom-driver/

It shows tests on long and short exposures.

And then what helped me get more comfortable was to simply attach the camera to my short refractor, put it on a tripod and launch SharpCap, go through the various settings and compare the differences in gain, brightness, gamma, etc.

Last step was to activate SGP, get it to see the ZWO and the FW, set the FW up and do some imaging.

I feel like I am ready to use the camera, and all that we need now is clear skies.

Farzad

ngwillym

To get started I would suggest (in Sharpcap - but similar setings for other capture progreams), set Gain to 139, Brightness (=offset) to 21 and take exposures from 15 secs - 120 seconds - depending on the target. And turn on cooling - I usually go to -20c

For DSOs - Jon Rista over at CloudyNights suggests 100 frames (for each of the LRGB filters) as a good starting point to stack. ( I use DeepSkyStacker or Pixinsight to process).

For lunar/planetary/solar work - use same gain and try to get exposure under 1/50th sec and shoot AVI or SER video - for Sun/Moon >1000 frames per target. For Jupiter ~1 minutes worth, for Mars ~2 minutes and for Saturn ~ 5mins. Stack with Autostakkert

This should be sufficient for you to get some images as a baseline and then start to experiment.

Regards

Neil

farzad_k

Thanks.