How to use the Plan mode in the ASIAIR PRO

Hi, I’m Ian and I live in Surrey in the UK.

In this video I will show how to use the 'plan' mode within the ASIAIR PRO applications.

I used it here to take two images of the Veil nebula, the Western and Eastern elements and then I merged them together to form one larger image of the whole nebula.

This is only one way you can use the plan mode. It allows you to set up a series of targets that the ASIAIR PRO can move your telescope to during the night, without having to manually set these up. It can all be set up ahead of the night’s imaging session.

I really like this aspect of the ASIAIR PRO, as you can leave it to manage its tasks through the night and by morning all the images are taken and the telescope is back in it’s home position. Nothing could be easier!

In this video I also use Telescopius to help identify the two images/panes that I’m going to take to get my full image of the Veil Nebula.

Things to watch out for are estimating as best you can the angle of your camera on your scope. This will be critical to ensure you have framed your target as you are seeing it in Telescopius and thus you get the right co-ordinates to put into the Plan mode for your desired field of view.

Second is how to put these coordinates in the Plan. Whilst I believe you can do an automatic download file, I did it manually. I simply clicked on the first big Plus sign, having created a name for my plan, and then used my historic image references within the ASIAIR Pro to populate the co-ordinates for NGC6960, the Eastern Veil Nebula.

Once this is in the plan and I’ve set my image sequence, I returned to the plan summary page. I then unclicked the green tick icon at the top left of the plan and clicked on ‘Detail’, this lets me back into this part of the plan so I could click on the RA and put the new co-ordinates in using the hours, minutes or seconds drum wheels at the foot of the page and likewise for the DEC co-ordinates.

The important thing to remember is to hit the top right arrowed circle button to ensure this now saves the new co-ordinates and does not go back to the original NGC co-ordinates. That’s it, so once all has been done you are ready to start imaging, just press the go button.

On my initial night, I got two images perfectly as I wanted, it did a Meridian Flip half way through the first set of images and the plan parked the telescope in the home position at the end of the night’s imaging, all whilst I was asleep!

The Veil Nebula

This is a cloud of heated and ionized gas and dust in the constellation Cygnus. It shows the remnants of a Supernova, with many having their own identities and names, such as the Eastern and Western Veils. The Supernova was a star 20 times the mass of our Sun which exploded between 10,000 and 20,000 years ago. It is believed this nebula is about 2,400 light years from Earth.

On Earth 2,400 years ago, 379 BC, in Greece, Sparta suppressed the Chalcidian League and imposes terms favorable to King Amyntas III of Macedonia!

Imaging:
• 5th September 2021, 2 x 25 light frames (plus 2 x 10 junks) at 300 seconds.
• Gain at 120, temperature -10
• 60 Auto Flats and 60 same exposure Dark Flats and one Master Dark File

Main Equipment:
• Sky-Watcher Evostar 72ED DS-Pro (Doublet Refractor)
• Sky-Watcher 0.85x Reducer/Flattener for the Evostar-72ED Pro
• Sky-Watcher EvoFrame Camera Rotator for Evostar-72ED DS-Pro
All above acquired from FLO

• Sky-Watcher EQ6-R-PRO equatorial mount
• ZWO ASI 294MC-Pro single shot colour camera
• ZWO 60mm Finder/Guidescope
• ZWO ASI 120MM Mini
• Baader 610mm Longpass Red Colour Filter
• ASIAir Pro
• Optolong L-eNhance Filter

Music (at the beginning):
Isolated by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/...)
Source: http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-...
Artist: http://incompetech.com/

Music at the end (over the final image)
Sunrise in Paris – Dan Henig