I’ve been pondering for weeks whether to buy an Asiair. I really like sitting outside with my laptop directly connected to the camera and sharpcap for livestacking but it’s getting cold and there’s something about observing the skies from my warm home that is hard to beat.

The main alternatives are:

• A raspberry pi
• The asiair
• A mini pc or laptop to which you remotely connect
• Going all eskimo

I bought the asiair with an EQmod cable to connect directly to the mount.

So how about this Asisair? It’s small and light, which is nice and it works out of the box. Focusing, polar aligning, controling the mount, everything works. The only thing I struggle with is the wifi signal, so I had to take refuge in the laundry room to stay close to the scope. Something I’ll have to figure out because the vibrations of the washing machine made me doubt the tracking of the scope on the live view.

I will also need to start adding calibration frames to my images. Maybe it’s just me but I think I had less noise with sharpcap.

Here are a few of my livestacks. M76 or ‘the little dumbbell nebula” is the most intriguing.