Dark Raven

5 hours ago, gilesco said:

a design flaw caused by user modding which I would have found ZWO hard to predict users would do

I love my AM5 and enjoy it immensely. I do not mind the vendor lock as long as they provide product compatibility, stability and support. That being said, changing mount saddle or scope finder shoe should not be hard to predict and IMHO it is the fundamental feature of AP equipment. I will probably change the saddle in order to save on some weight as I use V style dovetails and carry it in the backpack. 

There will never be a replacement for common sense and experience. I screwed the screws back in without any tools, only using my fingers. It just gives me chilis to know that I could have damaged my mount. 

Entire finder shoe on the side of the mount is an afterthought brought in after green laser feature removal due to diverse international legislature on the matter. It was never part of the original design and not well tested. That is also obvious from the new instruction not put the AA+ on the mount to prevent antenna and cables breaking. If you look at the initial promo materials and videos, finder shoe is not present.

Kudos to Zwo for making AM5 and putting it on the market in time of global supply chain disruption. Also for not ignoring the issue, putting the notice out and updating the user manual.

I am not doing widefield landscape AP, but I like supporting content creators in the general field of my interest. Mr. Wallace seems to have pulled himself by the bootstraps and is doing it in a fun and interesting manner on his YT channel. Not easy to publish a book, 575 pages at that.

There are other options as well, mainly from Mission Impossible
First, there is Ethan Hunts (AKA Tom Cruise) option

Or Emilio Estevez Mission: Impossible Glasses

Which appear to be nothing else but MAGLITE SPECTRUM SOLITAIRE LED taped with electrical tape or heat shrink tube on regular glasses. However they come at 33 lm.

I use and can recommend Petzl Actik Core
Red light is at 2lm

Amazon price appears to be OK at the moment.
PETZL Unisex -Adult's Stirnlampe Actik Core Schwarz Lamp, Black, Onesize : Amazon.co.uk: Sports & Outdoors

Price history:

Do let us know how it ends up and don't forget, pic or it didn't happen! 🙂

Posting here as well, so all who follow the topic see it.

It appears that ZWO has issued an official warning in regards to removing the finder shoe on the side of the mount and screwing the screws ALL the way back. I have done this the first day I got the AM5 but appears I was lucky enough not to damage it.

There are no moving parts directly behing the finder shoe but clearly cabels could be pinched.

I never opened FB account but it is possible to see the group page on an android phone.

https://m.facebook.com/groups/zwoasimount/?refid=13

How it started vs how it ended with M31. Naturally, GraXpert was only a part of the process but it did its job well. 

Only GraXpert applied without any further processing on M81 and M82.

Requires a bit of fiddling but overall super easy to use.
Thanks Frank, Steffen, Christian, and David.
Please keep it up.

DR

No structural support is needed. The material and Velcro tape are sufficient. Chris made a nice video about it.

Worked well for me, and over a year later still holds on my 150P.

Many will say that Pi HQ sensor is too small and not suitable for AP, but I think it would be interesting little project. I went different route and made all sky camera following Chad's video.

To answer your question, I remember while back seeing something that might be of interest in MagPi. 

https://magpi.raspberrypi.com/articles/hubble-pi

Apparently, he got KStars running and using the Pi HQ camera. Might be worth checking out his GitHub repo for details.

Good luck and be sure to let us know your progress.

IDAS NBZ 2" aaaaaaand clouds, of course clouds...

Shawn Nielson made the review

Some halos apparently still persist on bright stars.

2 hours ago, Martthebass said:

sure that it matters where the meridian flip is toggled as it won't work in 'live' anyhow if I recall correctly. 

I have not tried the 'live" mode yet, hoping for some good weather towards the end of the month. There are many things to try with AM5. 

I fully agree that the AA+ needs some polishing but overall I find it far smoother running than Stellarmate. Native drivers and full in-house development are advantages of a closed platform, but it comes with the vendor-lock as price tag. 

1 hour ago, Martthebass said:

As I've been testing in live mode I think it just gets to the meridian and tracking stops.

That is my experience in Autorun as well, however, upon later inspection, I noticed that my meridian flip toggle switch was off. 😒🤦‍♀️

Not having clear sight of NCP, I can see your point. I am mobile imager exclusively, so I have to set it up each time from the ground up. Coming from iOptron and DSLR as well I also found AM5 to be oversensitive to even slightest movements during the PA routine. With time, I came to appreciate it more and more. Moving to dedicated uncooled OSC ZWO ASI585MC enabled PA in under 5 min. That's why I love it...
I hope it gets better for you too...

On 08/09/2022 at 21:51, Chris said:

I'm now very much looking forward to testing gain 252

Hi Chris,
It would be interesting to see side by side comparison of HCG switching from 150 to 252 with everything else being the same.

On 06/09/2022 at 17:31, The Admiral said:

I use the ASIAir Plus, and I must say that it doesn't half make the whole process easier.

Could you please be so kind to elaborate a bit more? I ask because my imaging sessions have been a total blast using AA+ and AM5 compared to Stellarmate and iOptron mount. Although it might all be just iOptron and shaky wedge, as I yet have to try AM5 with Stellarmate. Repeated polar alignment with iOptron would always give different results regales how precise previous polar alignment would be. So frustrating and so time consuming. 

This video shows 10 consecutive polar alignments that were perfect.

I could only dream of this before.

Interesting. Could it be product range differentiation? Lower specs for a lower price?

56 minutes ago, PeterC65 said:

Does anyone have more information about why ZWO changed the HCG switching point for the ASI585MC?

I was looking at zwo version from the announcement because it matches my RedCad with pixel pitch and don't remember they changed the specifications. Could it be the FLO posted the wrong camera soecs?

Not sure if it has already been posted, but there is someone who disassembled AM5 and did some measurements on it. Interesting to see the internal works and current draw.

https://youtu.be/ni-NEcRa7Ks

*Please note, video appears to be in Russian.

14 hours ago, ONIKKINEN said:

Cant see why not?

My concern is that on the RedCat the OAG comes after filter (i.e. IDAS NBZ) and ZWO AM5 requires super short guiding exposures of 0.5 - 1 seconds. I am worried there will be not enough light with dual narrowband filter rather than small FOV. Fairly specific situation...

Would ASI120MM in an OAG work with RedCat 51 on ZWO AM5 that requires guiding at 0.5 to 1 seconds?

On 31/08/2022 at 08:18, CraigT82 said:

ZWO claim in their published graphs that their version switches to HGC at 150 gain setting too,

Not sure where that comes from but I just checked their product page and it states 252. I can not guarantee but if my memory serves me right that was like that from the beginning.

On 18/08/2022 at 15:32, CraigT82 said:

Would any 585mc owners be so kind as to share a sharpcap sensor analysis report? 

Here you go:

Last night I drove to dark site and it was first light for my ZWO ASI585MC.

I did not cool it as I wanted to establish the baseline performance. If you are interested how to cool planetary camera check my smartphone coolers for AP review on this forum.

I will test with the cooler next time on the same target and report back in the above thread, Given current schedule and weather permitting, probably towards the end of September.

Equipment:

Mount: ZWO AM5
Tripod: ZWO TC40
Optics: RedCat51
Guider: ZWO ASI120MM
Imager: ZWOASI585MC
Control: ASI AIR+
Focuser: ZWO 5V EAF
Filter: Optolong L-Pro

Sequence:

100 Lights
180 sec
Gain 254

Calibration:

Darks ( yes i am aware it is back illuminated... )
Flats
Bias

Conditions:

For reference purposes NO processing beyond DSS (v4.2.6) stacking and basic stretch. Single light and full stack (.fit) below

Final result (.png):

Stacking mode: Intersection
Alignment method: Automatic
Cosmetic applied to hot pixels (Filter = 1 px, Detection Threshold = 50.0%)
Cosmetic applied to cold pixels (Filter = 1 px, Detection Threshold = 50.0%)

Stacking step 1 ->91 frames (Gain: 254) - total exposure: 4 hr 33 mn 0 s
RGB Channels Background Calibration: Yes
Per Channel Background Calibration: No
Method: Auto Adaptive Weighted Average (Iterations = 5)
-> Offset: 60 frames (Gain: 254) exposure: 1/31250 s
Method: Median Kappa-Sigma (Kappa = 2.00, Iterations = 5)
-> Dark: 25 frames (Gain : 254) exposure: 3 mn 0 s
Method: Median Kappa-Sigma (Kappa = 2.00, Iterations = 5)
-> Flat: 60 frames (Gain: 254) exposure: 1/33 s
Method: Median Kappa-Sigma (Kappa = 2.00, Iterations = 5)

Autosave001.fit
Light_M31_180.0s_Bin1_585MC_gain254_20220827-224108_0002.fit

@bomberbaz Thank you for posting your findings. 👍

@bomberbaz Thank you for posting your findings. I would love to see how it turns out in the end.

8 hours ago, bomberbaz said:

I think the higher the ambient, the more effective the cooler is. I don't think I was making the minus 10C of ambient as in @Dark Raven bench test.

I would fully agree regarding the ambient. My subsequent field test achieved only ΔT of 7.2 °C. Starting point does make a difference. I was suppressed it pulled that much in the first place given it has 5.8 W ( 3.5 W ) compared to dedicated AP camera cooler of 36 W. It makes sense from physics standpoint as well.