Total Solar Eclipse on April 8, 2024

I realized that I never posted my photos of the total solar eclipse that happened on April 8, 2024.     Two years have passed since that day, but it will always be one of the most remarkable days in my memory.   The last time I saw a solar eclipse I was in primary school and we did not even go outside to look.   I just remember seeing how daylight turned to darkness through the school windows.

This time I was living in Indiana and only needed to drive about an hour away to get a good spot to try and not only watch the show but photograph the event as well.

Just to jump to the chase here is totality - April 8, 2024 in Indiana

Before that picture was taken, everything was in place and the sky was clear.

The money shots were during totality.

I also took a few shots as it progress and combined them.   Totality was breathtaking.

During totality you could even see stars.

The next Total eclipse in the US will not be until 2044, while the next total eclipse viewable in the world will be 2027.   Be sure at some point you make a trip to view this amazing phenomenon.  You will not be disappointed.

 

Getting ready for the April 8, 2024 Total Solar Eclipse!

 Are you ready for the April 8, 2024 total solar eclipse?  I am so excited and just hoping the skys will be clear!  I happen to live in Lafayette, Indiana and so I will only need to travel just a bit south to get into the path totality.  

 To be ready for the eclipse I did a test run on the sun today with my telescope.  I was able to get my scope tracking the sun and snap a couple pictures.  Here is one picture using using my Stellarvue 90 mm telescope. .  It was fun to see a few sunspots showing up in the picture.

The sun on February 25, 2024 taken from my backyard in Lafayette, Indiana.

In order to take this picture, I needed to add a solar filter onto my telescope which I purchased from Spectrum Telescope.

The nice thing about this filter is it just slips right on the end of the telescope.  Spectrum makes all kinds of sizes of these filters and you can also get the filter in glass or film.   Film is going to make the sun look more white like my picture above.  The glass filters are a bit more expensive and will retain the yellow coloring of the sun.

Even my dog Beasley is ready to view the sun! 

NASA has a wonderful map of the upcoming total solar eclipse in April.  I hope we all get a great day to view it!  Check out NASA site on the solar eclipse including this map and others.

I will be looking up in the sky with all of you on April 8th!

Photographing a Comet: C/2023 E3

 

In early 2023, comet C/2023 E3 became a celebrity in the sky.   It was a green jewel above us with a tail that changed throughout its journey around the sun.   The comet made it closest approach to the Sun on January 12, 2023 and then reached its closest point to Earth on February 1, 2023.   In early March, I tried to snap a photo of this comet before it left our view for generations to come.  

This first photo is only 4 minutes of exposure time.   Essentially it is just one shot of the comet so we can see the comet with the stars in background.  You can see how green this comet is!  

I wanted to try and get the tail of this comet with a bit more clarity, so the next picture is a stack of  50 two minute exposures.  Since the comet is moving so fast through space, when I stack these 50 photos into one final shot, the stars turn into lines.   In this photo you can see a second tail extending from the comet as well as a hint of the star trails during the 1 hour and 40 minutes of exposure to obtain the shot.

The equipment and software that I used to process this photo are below

Until the next comet graces our sky, this was a fun one to capture. 

Astrophotography: The Elephant's Trunk Nebula (IC1396A)

The latest area of space that I tried to capture with my telescope is called the "Elephant's Trunk Nebula."   In the picture will see what looks like a darker sections that resemble an elephant trunk.  Why does it look like this?

Imagine a concentrated area of gas in space and near all that gas is a massive star.  The star ionizes that gas and that means we can see that all that gas glowing in the area.  Now within that cloud of gas there are pockets of more gas that is super dense.   These areas are so dense that even the nearby powerful star cannot penetrate to ionize the gas.  That means some of the gas will not appear to be glowing and will instead be dark.  The fun part is that that dense area of gas that is protected from ionization forms the shape of an "elephant trunk."

 You can easily see this area of gas that is glowing from the largest star in picture.  Right in the middle is a shape that resembles an elephant's trunk.  That is an area where the gas is so dense that it is protected from ionization.  Due to the shape of this dense gas it is commonly called the Elephant's Trunk Nebula.

The picture can also be be found on Astobin.

I took this picture in my backyard and was one of the first times I got to use a light filter called the Optolong L-eXtreme.  I was pretty happy with my first use as I do not normally catch as much of the red nebula color like this with only 3 hours of exposure.

The acquisition  details for this image were:

The beauty of our heavens never ceases to amaze.  Wishing you all clear skies!

Astrophotography: The Outer Limits Galaxy (NGC 891)

Have you ever wondered what our Milky Way galaxy would look like if you saw it edge on?   Well look no farther than NGC 891 also sometimes called the Outer Limits Galaxy 

I had taken these pictures last winter, but had been working to process them into the final picture seen below.  I was using a Celestron Edge 8 telescope and I did not get the most round stars in this outing, however I think the galaxy is just so cool.   The picture below is almost 4 hours worth of exposure.

A couple other fun facts about this galaxy are:

• It is a spiral galaxy 
• It is 30 million light years away from us!
• It was discovered in Oct 6, 1784 by William Herschel
• The galaxy appeared in the end credits of The Outer Limits TV show and thus how it got its nickname.

Here are the acquisition details that I used to get this final image the can also be found on Astrobin.

Link:  My Astrobin account with the Outer Limit Galaxy

Saturn and Jupiter Conjunction Astrophotography - Views from Different Scopes and Cameras

It seems that the great Saturn and Jupiter conjunction of 2020 even made mainstream media as a nice distraction from an otherwise dreary 2020.    

There is a lot of info below, but the cliff note picture that I was able to get is here:

Jupiter and Saturn - Dec 20, 2020 - Celestron Edge 8  HD with Barlow and ASI294

Essentially Jupiter and Saturn formed a line through space with Earth so that both planets appeared to be right beside each other in the night sky.  They were at their closest point next to each other on the night of Dec. 21, 2020.  They had not been with this degree of proximity in over 400 years and over 800 years since humans were able to view them this close.  That is because in the past when they would have been this close, the sun blocked the view.

https://www.today.com/news/christmas-star-will-show-jupiter-saturn-s-closest-alignment-800-t203057

Due to the rarity of the event I certainly wanted to get a picture.  This conjunction will happen again in 2080 so my kids may see it again, but for me I think this was my only shot.   Unfortunately on the actual night where the two planets were the closest, Indiana clouds covered our sky.  However I was able get the scopes out a couple other nights and still see the planets coming together.   Even then the conditions were not the best, but the clouds gave me a couple breaks to see this amazing celestial event.

I love events like this because it gets other amateur star gazers interested in the hobby.  I remember starting out in the hobby of astrophotography and was so lost in what I needed to see something cool in space.    I still have so much to learn, but I hope that by sharing my experiences I can give some info to help any newcomers to the hobby whether just for visual observation or taking photos.  So during this event I took pictures with two different scopes and two different cameras just to give a flavor of how different scopes and cameras see the beauty of space.

If you want to just look at things visually you really just need a telescope, a mount and some eyepieces to get started.  If you want to take photos then you need a few more things and below is a very simple primer. 

Requirement 1 for Photographing Planets: Camera with video capability

Photographing planets is a bit different that photographing deep sky objects like nebula or galaxies.   For a deep sky object you take a many long exposure pictures an object and then stack all the pictures.   Planets though are difficult little buggers because the atmospheric turbulence make getting a good picture extra tough.   But because they are so bright and you don't need long exposures to see planets, the solution is to actually take a video of the planet.  Once you have a 20-30 second video at 15-30 frames per second then you actually have hundreds of pictures.  Each frame of the video becomes a picture.  Then you can run the video through  a processing software like Autostakkert which splits the frames into pictures and stacks the best pictures together.  So if you want to take pictures of planets you need to have a camera that can take video.

Here is an example of when I took a video of Saturn.  You can see how sometimes the planet gets fuzzy and other times it gets a bit clearer.   Getting perfect atmospheric conditions to get a clear photo is tough, but taking a video can help get lots of pictures so you can stack the best ones and discard the bad ones.

Two common types of cameras that many people use for astrophotography are:

DSLR:  Many DSLR cameras have the ability to take videos.  They can easily be attached to a scope to both take still pictures for deep sky objects or videos for planets.  I used a Nikon D5300 as an example DSLR.

Dedicated Astrophotography cameras:  One of the most popular cameras that have been coming on the market are dedicated CMOS cameras.  Two of the most popular companies that make these are ZWO and QHY.  There are so many of these cameras on the market now and it is hard to always figure out what to get.  They come in monochrome versions and one shot color and are a topic all on their own.  Some of these will do much better at deep sky objects while some are specifically better as planetary cameras, but many will do both.  I use a ZWO ASI294 Pro and while better at deep sky objects can shoot video and is serviceable for planet photography.  

Requirement 2 for Photographing Planets:  Telescope

Planets are bright and many can be seen with the naked eye as bright points in our night sky.   At he same time they are still tiny and require some decent magnification.  Even a small scope though can see the rings of Saturn.  It goes without saying though the bigger the scope the better for good pictures of a planet.   I have two scopes to highlight the differences in what you can see.  

The first is a 90 mm refractor made by Stellarvue.  Refractors use glass lens and thus while they give exceptional views both visually and for photos, they get crazy expensive the bigger they get since making the glass for bigger scopes is harder.  It becomes rarer to see super larger versions of a refractor scope.

The way to get a bigger scope for cheaper is to use mirrors instead of glass.  There are many types of scopes that use mirrors and one of those is called an SCT (Schmidt Cassegrain).   The SCT I used is a Celestron Edge 8 HD SCT.  It is a bit more powerful than the refractor, but not as a user friendly due to being bigger and heavier.

Here,  I was getting the scope ready and the focus dialed in for the night with a quick view of the moon that was up in the day sky.

Optional requirement:  Barlow lens

In general, getting more magnification can help get a better view of a planet.  One trick to help increase your magnification is to use a barlow lens.   These are small lens that can be added to your imaging train and can help double or more your magnification.

Here is the Televue 2.5X Barlow lens I use.  One one side is the T-ring that can go right on a camera and the other is the adapter that screws right on the Celestron Edge 8 HD SCT scope.  It also can screw right into the ASI294 camera making it easy to add to the imaging train.  

Now that we have the equipment we can take some videos!

Example 1:   90 mm Refractor (SV90T) with ASI294 Camera

On the night of Dec 9, 2020 Jupiter and Saturn were still a bit of distance way but they were getting closer.  This is where a small refractor scope can get a nice wide field of the sky and fit both planets.  As you get higher magnification you see a smaller piece of the sky and my larger scope would not be able to see both at the same time.   Even besides planets there are many deep sky objects that take up big parts of the sky and these small grab and go refractors are the go to imaging scope.  If you are thinking about getting in stargazing and astrophotography I would always say a good 80 mm refractor is the perfect scope to get and there are many choices on the market.  

I just used the ASI294 camera in this example directly hooked up to the SV90T (90 mm refractor scope).

In this case I just took one frame of the video to get a picture.

The refractor definitely does not get crazy detail, but the wide field of view in nice as you can see both planets even when they were still a bit far away.   While the planets are small, the refractor can still see the rings of Saturn.  If you were using this scope for visual observation, a good eyepiece could get an better magnification of Saturn.   This is the scope I used to visually to see the rings of Saturn for the first time in my life many years ago and it hooked me!!    Even with the wide field picture if you zoon in you can see what you would see with the scope if looking at Saturn.

Example 2:   Edge 8 HD (SCT) with ASI 294 Camera

On Dec 20, 2020, the planets were pretty close and I was able to fit both of them in the field of view with my bigger scope.  

In this example I used the ASI294 camera and no barlow lens with the Celestron Edge 8.  

The planets look a little bit bigger than with the 90 mm refractor.  However they are still pretty small.

Example 3:  Edge 8 HD with Barlow and ASI 294 Camera

Right after taking the video with no Barlow, I added the Barlow lens to the imaging train and took a new video.  That Barlow is a nice way to get some added magnification.  You can see the planets show a little bigger.

I took that same video and processed it through Autostakert and Registax to get the following picture which probably ended up being my favorite.

Example 4:  Edge 8 with Barlow and Nikon D5300 camera

I missed the actual night where the planets where the closest, but got some breaks in the clouds on Dec. 22.  In the case I kept the Celestron Edge 8 HD scope, but replaced the ASI294 camera with the Nikon D5300 DSLR camera.   The Barlow stayed in the imaging train.

The DSLR shows that it can still get a decent video and picture.   The same video was processed for the resulting picture. 

One nice thing about the DSLR is there is usually a "5X" zoom feature that can use the camera to get even more magnification.    The more you magnify the more the atmospheric conditions need to be perfect to get a good picture.   I did not have great atmospheric conditions, but was still able to get a video of the planets in a much more zoomed state using the added camera magnification feature.  I took the resulting video where I zoomed into each plant individually and processed the video in Autostakkert and Registax.

Here is Jupiter with the DSLR.   Again a lot of atmospheric turbulence, but you can see the hints on the banding on Jupiter. 

Jupiter - Nikon D5300 - Dec 22 

The same process for Saturn using the DSLR zoom feature and then processed shows the rings quite clearly.

Saturn - Nikon D5300 - Dec 22

All in all, this was an amazing event.  The fact that both planets got so close and could fit in the same field of view is so cool.  The pictures some other folks in the hobby put what I got to shame, but there is something about taking a photo or seeing something in space from your own backyard that is always special.

If you get into photographing planets taking the video and processing the video is also a learning curve.  I will not spend a lot off time here, but can just a give a primer.

Capturing and Processing Planetary Video and Pictures.

Step 1:   Use software to capture the video.

If using a DSLR:   My favorite software is actually BackyardNikon (or BackYardEOS).  It was built to connect your DSLR to a computer and control it for imaging from a scope.  Once connected it has a "planetary" button.   Hit the button, focus the scope and then hit record.  The movies will be saved to the computer.  Link:  https://www.otelescope.com/store/category/4-backyardnikon/

If using a CMOS camera then Firecapture is my favorite software.   Again just connect the camera to a computer.  Pick the planet you want to capture and you will see the live view.  Once in focus you can record the video that will save to your computer.  Link:  http://www.firecapture.de/

Step 2:  Process the video to individual photos and stack them.

The go to software to load your videos, pull out each frame a s a picture and stack in Autostakkert.

Link:  https://www.autostakkert.com/

Just follow the three steps to get your final photo once you load the video.

Step 3:  Clean the photo up

There are many ways to help clean the phot up a bit.  Many people use RegiStax which can just take some noise out of the picture to make it a bit clearer.  Link:  https://www.astronomie.be/registax/

Load your stacked photo and then just use the slides to help denoise your photo.

Photoshop or Affinity are other software that can help with processing too.

If you ever get a chance to take a peek at the planets through your own scope or a friends one night it is something you will not forget.  

Here were a couple other blog posts I did in the past on planets if you wanted to read more.

http://atransgenicworld.blogspot.com/2018/06/getting-picture-of-jupiter-firecapture.html

http://atransgenicworld.blogspot.com/2018/07/a-summer-of-planets-jupiter-saturn-and.html

Astrophotography: Comet C/2020 F3 (NEOWISE)

Comets are one my most favorite celestial objects.    It always brings back one of my most vivid memories of childhood.  My dad and I were fish gigging on a creek that ran through our farm in 1997.   As we left that night and came up into an open pasture, Comet Hale-Bopp was one of the most surreal images I have ever seen.  The tail of that comet spanned what felt like half the sky.    I wish I had been able to take a photograph of the sky that night and see that image one more time.

Ever since that comet I have always kept an eye out for the next big comet.  We have had a few that looked like they may have potential only to fizzle out.  There are always comets in our night sky and a couple I have taken photos of with my telescope, but even with a scope they are far way and don't manifest a great tail.  

Then Comet NEOWISE came in 2020.  It was one of the first naked eye comets I really remember seeing since Hale-Bopp.   Comet NEOWISE still pales in comparison to Hale-Bopp, but if you can see a comet with the naked eye even if just barely, then it makes a good photo target with a telescope.

Comet NEOWISE did not stay around very long, but over the summer I was able to get a few images snapped while it was still close to our sun and putting out a tail.   

Stacking multiple comet photos are a bit trickier since the comet is moving much faster relative to the stars in background.  After stacking and processing here is my final picture.

I post all my astrophotography pictures on Astrobin.   Here is the technical card with a bit more detailed info on the picture. 

Here is a bit more info on the comet itself from Wikipedia

I spent a lot of time processing the final picture which consists of multiple stacks of a long exposure picture of the comet.   It is always a balance of pulling out all the detail of the image while not over saturating the image with noise from light pollution.  

As I worked through different processing workflows here were the iterations where I kept trying to pull more detail to get to the final picture. 

Astrophotography: Horsehead and Flame Nebula

It's 2020 and a new decade!  While I look forward to all the new changes a new year will bring, our night sky mostly looks the same for most of our lifetimes.  It is always nice to take some time and see some of the hidden beauty that is above us every night.    I always look forward to the last few weeks of December since this is usually a time I can try my hand at a few pictures while on Christmas break.   One of the most common targets in our night sky that I have never tried to shoot is the Horsehead nebula (IC 434) and so I took the opportunity to try to get a shot.

This was my second imaging session with the ASIair and since I last used it they added a polar align feature.   I tried messing with it a bit, but I still found it pretty clunky.    I needed to do a new plate solve and wait for the software after each polar adjustment of my scope.   The polar align feature  was cumbersome compared to using Sharpcap that can help you polar align in real time.  So in the end I hooked up my camera up to Sharpcap for polar align and for focusing.  However after that, the ASIair really did a great job controlling my mount and taking the pictures.  If you are interested in how to use the ASIair check out my last astrophotography blog entry:  M81 and M82 with the ASIair

Here is the final pictures of the Horsehead Nebula I was able to acquire.  While the Horsehead is predominant in the picture, there is a lot of other stuff to see in this active region in our sky.

The Horsehead nebula is located in the Orion constellation.   In fact the super bright star that lights up the picture is the star Alnitak.   It is the brightest O-type star in the entire night sky and makes up one of three stars on Orion's belt.   To the right of Alnitak is the Horsehead nebula which is a dark cloud of dust and gas that is making the "horsehead" shape.   This area is a place where star formation is happening.   The horse head sits in front of a beautiful red background of ionized hydrogen that is common in this entire area.  To the left of the star Alnitak is the Flame nebula (NGC 2024).  The ultraviolet rays from the star Alnitak are knocking electrons form the ionized hydrogen gas that resides in this area.  As the ionized hydrogen gas and the electrons recombine, there is a beautiful nebula for us to admire.  This nebula is also where many new stars are forming.  Right in between the Flame nebula and the Horsehead nebula and below the star Alnitak is a reflection nebula named NGC 2023.   There is just so much going on this picture.  This area of the sky is ripe with activity on a scale that is hard to comprehend, but beautiful to reflect on.

Here are the acquisition details of the picture.  There is a lot more ionized hydrogen gas in this area that I did not pick up with my camera.  Eventually I will try out some filters that can help show even more of the red color that dominates this area in our sky.

M81 and M82 Astrophotography - First Light with ASI294MC Pro Camera and ASIair wireless controller

Since moving to Indiana I was just waiting to get my scope out and take a few pictures.  My backyard is flat and open here which is a vast improvement to the backyard I had in North Carolina.   However, it has been raining here a lot this spring and so when I finally saw some clear skies the other night I decided to get out under the stars.  The other thing I have learned since moving to Indiana though is that the sun does not set until late!!  It is about 10 pm before I have dark enough skies to start setting up.

I did not have a long session, but the point of my night under the starts was to test some new equipment and software.   If any of you are debating on whtehr to upgrade to any of this equipment, I hope this can answer a few questions you may have.

A new main camera

All of my astrophotography in the past was done with a DSLR.  I started with a D90 and then moved on to a D5300.  Neither camera was modded and yet they both served me well.   I was using Backyard Nikon as the software to take all of pictures with my Nikon cameras.   Then I started reading and researching CMOS cameras and decided to take the plunge.   I moved to a ASI294 MC  Pro camera with cooling which is made by ZWO. 

ZWO website:  https://astronomy-imaging-camera.com/

I finally had a dedicated camera for my Stellarvue 90 refractor.  In addition this camera has a built in cooler which is not present in a DSLR.  The more heat that is present when you take pictures the more noise you get in your pictures. So having cooling can really help decrease the noise you will see in a picture.

Connecting the camera to the scope was a breeze.   Everything just screws together.  Just make sure you have the needed distance to achieve focus.  The ASI294 ships with an extension tube which is all I need to achieve focus.

The ASI294 is the red camera on the very right of the picture:

Focus and Polar Alignment

Polar alignment is always the one step that does not seem to always go well for me.  My go to method was to have my mount facing North, focus my scope and then use the Celestron polar alignment setting in the mounts hand controller.  The mount I am using is the Celestrron AVX.  This worked OK, but then I read about the software Sharpcap.  I am now a big fan of this software for just polar alignment alone although it has many other features like focusing.  The software is free for most uses although their is a small fee for features like polar alignment.

When I was using a DSLR I hooked up the camera to BackYard Nikon to see on my computer screen what the scope was seeing.  Then I could use what I saw to focus the scope and then polar align with the Celestron polar align utility on the mount's hand controller.  Now that I switched to the ASI294 I needed a new software that was compatible with the camera for focusing and polar alignment.  Backyard Nokon only worked with DSLRs and not this new camera.   SharpCap fills in the void left by not having BYN since it recognizes the ASI cameras made by the company ZWO.

Sharpcap:  https://www.sharpcap.co.uk/

So before we polar align we need to be sure the guide camera and the main camera are in focus.   In my setup I am using a second smaller ZWO cameera called the ASI120 mini that is attached to a smaller finder scope.   This samll cope will be my guide scope and camera.   You can just plug the USB cord running from each camera into your computer.   Sharpcap lets you chose the camera you want to see and brings up the image on the screen based on the exposure you chose.  You basically see a live view and are able to use that view to use the focusing knobs to achieve focus on both your guide camera and your main imaging camera. 

Now that both the cameras are in focus, it is time to polar align.   The smaller guide camera called the ASI120 mini is the camera I also used for polar alignment.  Technically you could use either camera to acheive polar alignment.  I just make sure the ASI120 mini is still plugged into my computer and it is the camera that is chosen in Sharpcap.  Once Sharpcap is open and your camera is selected you are able to view what the camera sees and go into the polar align function.   Here the program tells you exactly what to do and I was able to align my scope in about 10 minutes on the very first try with this software.

This is a screenshot taken right from the sharpcap website.  I forgot to take any screenshots when I was going through the procedure.  The basic principle is you are moving your mounts adjustment knobs to follow the yellow arrow and align on Polaris.   As you move the appropriate adjustment knowbs the  arrow gets closer and closer to polar alignment.  Polar alignment is important to make sure you can take long expsoures with start trailing. 

Imaging and Guiding

Normally with a DSLR I would use BackYard Nikon to capture my exposures and PH2 to guide my scope.   Since I switched to the ASI294 I needed to change programs.  I could have continued to use Sharpcap to take my photos, but instead I was testing out some new hardware and software from ZWO.  ZWO is the company who makes the ASI294 and the ASI120.  Since both my guide camera and my main imaging camera are made by ZWO, I wanted to try their  hardward and software to easily control the camera and take images throughout the night.

The ZWO hardware to specifically use with ZWO cameras is called the ASIair.   The beauty of the hardware is thatASIair allows you to take all of your photos wirelessly.   In theory you could sit on your couch in your living room and tell your scope what pictures to take while also viewing the pictures as they load.    It seems a little lazy, but on those really cold winter nights this sounds like a great idea to me!  It also means you do not need to keep you computer hooked up outside all night.

The ASIair is a small little box that is using a Raspberry Pi as the brains.  My guide scope (ASI120 mini) and my imaging scope (ASI294 MC Pro) both connect to the ASIair by USB cables.   This little box is basically plug and play.  One USB cable runs from each camera to the ASIair.   The ASIair does need a power source to run.  The hand controller from my Celestron mount also attaches to the ASIair so that it can wirelessly move your scope to the object you want to capture using the software instead of manually entering in your viewing object in the mount's hand controller.  Even better there is also a guiding option built into the ASIair software.  It looks like a mini version of PHD which would normally be done on a computer that is hooked up to your mount.  The ASIair software is only in app form and can be downloaded either with Android or Apple.   I first loaded it onto my Android phone, but it was a little too much info on a small phone screen for me, so I moved on to an old Apple Ipad mini which was a much better solution in my opinion.

Here is what the ASIair looks like and footprint it takes up.   It comes with some Velcro stickers so you can attach it wherever you want on your mount or scope. 

So how did it all work?  Much better than I thought for my first night with it.   I decided my object to test was M81 and M82.  These are both galaxies that are very close to Polaris in the night sky.   After I had a polar align with Sharpcap I was ready to test the ASIair out.  I did need to hook up a laptop to the guide camera to use Sharpcap to aceive focus and then polar align, but after the polar align I was done with all computers for my imaging session.  The rest was done on the Ipad mini in my house on on the couch (well almost, as I did run into one intial problem of plate solving.)

Using the ASIair program was mostly intuitive.

1  First you connect your Android or Apple device hosting the software to the wifi channel that the ASIair is broadcasting.  I just opened up wifi networks on my Ipad mini and connected to the 5G signal coming from the ASIair

2.  Once connected there are a few setting you need to put in, like your mount name, the ZWO camera you are using and and the focal length of your guide scope and your image scope.  The  Software does support many ZWO cameras and many different mounts.

3.  Next you can tell your scope where to "GOTO".   Supposedly your can go into SkySafari (another planetarium app) and pick any object you want and your mount would go there.  I could not get this function to work as the Skysafari app would not recognize my mount.  This is something I will need to troubleshoot.    However there is a "Choose Object" database located in the ASIair app that had many objects including M81 and M82 (The screenshot below shows the choose object button).  When I first slewed to this object the scope did not go to the right place.  This was the only other big problem I ran into during the session.  I did not do any star calibration since the ASIair has a plate solving feature.  Since I was polar aligned, I clicked on plate solving and the software quickly said "plate solved."  I assumeted this was all I need to do to calibrate the scope and mountt to the night sky (the scope knew where it was looking and going when told to goto an object).  but my first slew to M81 proved this to be untrue.  I tried plate solving a few more times but could not get this function to work.  I had to go back outside and use the mounts hand controller to calibrate on 3 stars.  Once calibrated, I went back the Choose Object in the ASIair and everything worked perfectly.

4.  Once at the proper location to see M81 and M82 I clicked on the "Guide" option to chose a star to lock onto.   I set the exposure of the ASI120 mini (attached to my guide scope) to 3 seconds and 48 gain and hit the "loop" button. 

The stars appeared on the screen and then I just clicked on a star with my finger and hit the "guide button".   The mini PHD graph showed some nice guiding.  My scope was polar aligned, focused, pointed at M81/M82 and guiding and locked on a star.  Now we were ready to actually start imaging.

5.  Now that you are guiding you are ready to tell your main scope to start imaging.  I used a gain of 120 and an exposure of 60 seconds.  I also set the camera temperature to -20 C .  This camera can theoretically go down to -40 but it depends on the outside temperature as to how low it can go.  Also it looks like you do not want this ASI294 camera to work to hard to cool or it actually creates more heat trying to cool to get the temperature down.   I know that does not make too much sense, but there are lots of internet posts on the subject.  Therefore I used -20 C as my target temp on this night.

6.  Next you can just set how many lights, how many darks, etc you want and hit the Go button.  The camera will do what you tell it to do.  I started by telling the camera to take 30 pictures at 60 second exposure and it did just that.   After each exposure the picture is sent to the device for you to view.   The ASIair box has a microSD card where all the images are being stored.

Here was a single 60 second exposure picture of M81 and M82 beaming back to my iPad Mini.

All in all the ASIair worked wonderfully.  I was able to image wirelessly for the most part.  I still needed my laptop for just a bit to polar align and focus and I hit a few snags with the sky alignment where I still needed to manually use the hand controller.  Technically I could have used the ASIair software to focus as well and ZWO have mentioned a polar align feature coming.  Note the ASIair was made for cameras made by ZWO.  So if you have ZWO cameras like the ASI120 mini or the ASI294 I highly recommend the ASIair device.   Seeing how my imaging session was going from afar with a live feed of the incoming pictures was great instead of  sitting outside all night or constantly running outside to check on the computer.

Stacking the Pictures

At the end of the session, I had 70 lights, 20 darks, and 30 flats to stack.  I stacked in Deep Sky Stacker (DSS) and also tried stacking in a new software called Astro Pixel Processor (APP).  Both are free and fairly straightforward although both have many little setting that you can play with to optimize the final stack.   Ultimately I feel like I had a little better stacking experience with APP even though this was the first time I have ever used it. 

APP:  https://www.astropixelprocessor.com/

If you try out APP, you will see the steps 0-6 on the opening screen.  Just follow each step chronologically.  If using a one shot color camera like the ASI294 then in step 0 (RAW/FITS) be sure to check "force Bayer CFA" and chose the Bayer pattern.  The ASI294 Bayer pattern is RGGB.
.

Processing the Stack

Now that we have stacked our lights, flats, and darks  into one file we can process that image.  This is where we need to remove background noise like light pollution, etc.     I used a software called Startools.   I actually struggled a little with trying to get the color processed correctly for the final image.   I want to give the StarTools creator Ivo Jager I huge shout out for helping me get the most out of this data.

 I shared the raw data and final stacked image before porocessing and this is the workflow that Ivo shared to get a nice result.  I was able to replicate the workflow and get a similar final image.

If you would like to play with some raw data for both stacking and processing here is the link:

Stacks and individual frames hosted on Google drive

If you want to try out startools here is one workflow that you can start with (Thanks Ivo for your help sharing this!!)

Super simple workflow below;

--- AutoDev

To see what we got, we can see noise, green/yellow bias, gradients, oversampling, stacking artifacts.

--- Crop

Removal of stacking artifacts.
Parameter [X1] set to [61 pixels]
Parameter [Y1] set to [38 pixels]
Parameter [X2] set to [4094 pixels (-50)]
Parameter [Y2] set to [2788 pixels (-34)]
Image size is 4033 x 2750
--- Bin
Parameter [Scale] set to [(scale/noise reduction 50.00%)/(400.00%)/(+2.00 bits)]
Image size is 2016 x 1375

--- Wipe

Vignetting preset.
Parameter [Temporary AutoDev] set to [Yes]
Parameter [Dark Anomaly Filter] set to [8 pixels]
Parameter [Drop Off Point] set to [0 %]
Parameter [Corner Aggressiveness] set to [100 %]
Parameter [Aggressiveness] set to [93 %]

--- Auto Develop

Final stretch.
Parameter [Ignore Fine Detail <] set to [2.0 pixels]
Parameter [RoI X1] set to [1126 pixels]
Parameter [RoI Y1] set to [686 pixels]
Parameter [RoI X2] set to [1389 pixels (-627)]
Parameter [RoI Y2] set to [819 pixels (-556)]

--- Deconvolution

Worth a try.

(automatically generated mask)
Parameter [Radius] set to [1.3 pixels]
--- Color

Spiral galaxies like M81 tend to show a yellow core (less star formation) and a bluer outer rim (more star formation)

Something about the stars is off, as they showing fringing (it looks like DSS had trouble aligning them correctly?)

Parameter [Dark Saturation] set to [2.70]
Parameter [Blue Bias Reduce] set to [1.00]
Parameter [Green Bias Reduce] set to [1.72]
Parameter [Red Bias Reduce] set to [1.76]

--- Wavelet De-Noise

Switching Tracking off

Parameter [Scale 5] set to [50 %]
Parameter [Grain Size] set to [23.3 pixels]
Parameter [Smoothness] set to [85 %]

Final Image

When I tried to replicate a similar workflow this is the final image that finally comes at the end of the entire process:

Hello there M81 and M82! 

Here is just a little more info on each galaxy from Wikipedia.

M81 and M82 taught me a lot.   I really like the ZWO products, both the new ASI294 camera that has replaced my DSLR and ASIair wirelesss controller.  I have only had one quick session with both of these pieces of hardware and I hit a few challenges.   I need to play around to get things a little more streamlined, but I still managed to set up and get enough data for an image.  Taking flats with the ASI294 is definitely something I think I need to optimize.   Also I could not get SkySafari linked with the ASIair to use the Skysafari app for GOTO.  The plate solving feature in the ASIair app also did not do anything for me.  I still had to manually calibrate my scope with a few stars so the mount knew the layout of the sky. 

I also really like APP and suggest you give it try for a stacking option.  When it comes to polar alignment, I wish I had found Sharpcap a long time ago. 

Clear Skies!