Adam J
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Posts posted by Adam J
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4 minutes ago, Elp said:
I've got the same brand charger so will charge it up, I did battery test with it though prior and it stated 100pc but I assume that's health or something.
So not sure on your battery monitor, make sure that the charger is set correctly as if its like mine it has many different options. My max charge voltage is about 14.3 - 14.4 volts on the LIFE charge profile.
Take note of how much you put into the battery.
Are you sure that monitor is for LIFE batteries and not Lead Acid as that would set 12.8 volts as 100% charge.
Adam
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7 minutes ago, Elp said:
I tried this battery for a rig I'm putting together. The voltage started at 12.8V then dropped to below 11 within 5 minutes causing my airs to reset. Is this due to total power draw in amps/watts?
No if its starting at 12.8 volts it was not properly charged to start with. It sounds to me like it barely had any charge in it. It should start at 13.4volts when fully charged.
Are you charging it with a dedicated LIFE charger I hope?
Charging it with anything else is potentially extremely hazardous.
It should run a ASI Air for about 12-24hours.
Adam
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On 11/02/2024 at 20:11, ollypenrice said:
At a first glance, the RASA 8 blows this out of the water. It has a 100mm longer FL but is nominally 3.6 times faster, though rather less given the central obstruction. Even so, it will cover the same FOV in far less time and, I think, with perceptibly better resolution. The RASA is not diffraction limited but it doesn't need to be when considering its competitor refractors of comparable focal length.
The RASA is entirely dew-proof without heaters, in my experience. Camera heat and fan deals with the problem.
Olly
Yeah it but the RASA is 2.9x the cost normally (although it is on sale), the RASA is hardly a portable scope and where this will sit just fine on something as cheap as a SA GTI the RASA is going to need a approx. 2k mount.
All said and done your are comparing a bulky £4.5k setup to a £1.4k grab and go / mobile imaging setup, making a comparison between apples and oranges.
Adam
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On 26/09/2023 at 15:25, wavydavy said:
What do you consider the best filter for imaging narrowband mainly h-alpha, I currently am using a Baader 7nm 1.25"................is there anything better, make/quality etc. The camera is an ASI 553MM Pro.
Well that is a can of worms, you are opening.
Firstly the Baader 7nm is by no means a bad filter, it was the goto starter narrow band filter set for a long long time an for good reasons. On the Ha at least I never really found that you had much in the way of reflections.
So what are you going to gain? Well you will gain some signal to noise by going narrower potentially most so if you go with a 3nm filter.
However, you will also lose something in going for a 3nm filter and the thing you will loose is NII. What will that mean, well in my opinion it means less definition in quite a large number of targets and not just SNR. For this reason I tend to think that for Ha at least the optimal band pass is about 5nm and not 3nm.
I have never felt a need to upgrade from my 5nm Astrodon filters, for me they are perfect. For a 533m you can use 1.25, 31mm or 36mm filters. The first two will cover a IMX492 sized sensor in the future to about F4 / F3 respectively and the 36mm will cover a IMX571 sized APSC sensor. So think about your upgrade path, better not to have to buy twice.
The best filters are still made by Chroma and Astrodon, that is still what you yet if money is no object.
But if you are only using a small IMX533 base senor i am going to guess that money is a consideration.
Top tip: By the time you are spending more on your filters than you spent on your camera you are doing it wrong in my opinion.
1) Do you have a filter wheel?
2) Do you already have OIII and SII filters to go with the 7nm Ha?
3) What scope / scopes are you using? You may or may not need pre-shifted filters.
Adam
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Its understood, but you really cant deviate from the method or it all goes wrong.
Adam
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2 hours ago, Trippelforge said:
PixInsight
For every rejected frame it's "X" amount of data loss, that's what I am confused about. But perhaps I am not understanding things correctly. Say I take for example an hours worth of images at 5 minutes each, that's a total of 12 images (obviously). But if due to the longer exposures it caused me to lose say 4-5 images I just lost 1/3 of my data.
Because its not the whole frame that is rejected just the effected pixels.
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3 hours ago, UKRoman said:
Just discovered that the ASI585MC Pro doesn't have a built-in dew heater. Doh, I should have read the specs properly. I already have the uncooled 585MC which I've tried for DSO imaging on a couple of occasions without success due to the sensor window dewing up. I may have to review plans before I unbox the new camera 🤔
All ZWO cooled cameras using sensors smaller than APSC don't use a dedicated dew heater but the are designed push waste heat from the thermo electric cooler into the camera housing preventing dew, you will not get dew unless the desiccant tablets need replacing. So in summery stop worrying it will be fine.
Adam
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On 13/03/2024 at 00:50, Elp said:
I just tested it with a Celestron Lithium LT hence the need for the 12V female connectors. I'm only concerned with testing the 12V at the moment.
Within the monitor the connections are simply spring fit, you depress the corresponding connector "button", insert a spliced cable bare copper wire into the opened hole, release the "button" and the cable is retained. I don't think I need the shunt considering the amount of amps is low, but even if I did, I can't see how to connect the bridged positive and negative connections to the 12v female cables if I did need the shunt.
So if the battery is charged and you connected it correctly it should at least show voltage. If it's not showing voltage then it's probably just busted.
Adam
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11 hours ago, pipnina said:
I thought I scored a real deal when I won the bid for a Canon 300mm f2.8 L (non is non usm) for only £600. Given the lens was originally over 4000 I felt pretty good about it.
Until I got my hands on it today. And learned that it WILL NOT manually focus and cannot be focused AT ALL unless a canon DSLR is attached to it. So it may as well be a brick as far as my astrocam is concerned!
I am beyond disappointed and to make matters worse, my normal DSLR is a Nikon so I can't even use it on that. I guess I can only hope that I can return the lens to the ebay seller and find another set of optics to try for compact and fast astro imaging unless anyone knows a way to hack it lol
One of these adaptors from Astromechanics would solve your problem.
You might be able to find one that is in someones old stock, I know FLO used to sell them. Apart from that it may be a problem importing.
Maybe a wanted notice in the forum and on Astrobuysell uk.
Adam
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4 hours ago, Elp said:
Need some advice please. I may be able to do AP (well I think so anyway), but electronics was never my forte (even though I can build and usually fault find PCs), so putting together a custom rig which might need a new more powerful battery I decided to load test it first and bought this monitor and 2 off pig tail 12v 5.5 x 2.1mm female connectors (as my current battery is the same connection as is the asiair):
Now looking at the instructions I've wired it as per the top wiring diagram minus the external battery connections as ive only got the one battery but the monitor doesn't power on and also not the air. Any advice? I'm not sure if I can even use the 12v female cables I've got for this.
I would really need a better look at the connections. What type of battery are you using?
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On 24/02/2024 at 14:26, tomato said:
I bid "Au Revoir" (hopefully) today to my damaged RC IMX 571 as it starts it's trip back to China. Eddie has said he thinks the repair will be "not much" so we'll see how that pans out. If I deem the repair quote to be uneconomic I'll ask him to keep it and put it in RC's Black Museum and I'll put the funds towards a new replacement. I suspect this will be from a UK based retailer though.
Given it's a current gen camera it would have to be over it's used price for it to be uneconomical. So that's probably anything upto and including £800 ish I would say. I really really doubt it will be that much.
Adam
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13 minutes ago, Elp said:
I assume for absolute simplicity of connecting up you need:
Battery, 12v regulator, pigtail 12v female connector (5.5 x 2.1mm size). Maybe a switch to turn it off and on.
Is this correct?
(Also how would you charge it back up?).
I've been happy using off the shelf compact ones (less than 100Wh) but I'm putting together something which will draw more amps and will need to have more capacity as a result.
The little tutorials I've seen, people take it OTT, I just want simplicity. Maybe later I'll add in a monitor.
You don't actually need the 12volt regulator for the LiFePO4 but you do if you want to be able to use other types of batteries and higher voltage power supplies and I think it adds a layer of protection to what is expensive equipment. SO with the regulator for example you could use a 4 Cell LIPO battery if you wanted or a 24volt leisure battery. or a 16volt power supply or even a 9 volt battery, it would all end up at 12.2volts.
You charge it by connecting both batteries to the box and then the charger to the third XT60 connector. Then you can charge both batteries at the same time.
Adam
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9 minutes ago, Stuart1971 said:
that is certainly not a collimation issue shown, as the OP said its mote likely a reducer spacing issue, the star shapes tell you that quite obviously, i owned a Tak FSQ85 that was basically crap, and had to go as the collimation was awful and these were the star shapes i got in the corners…really bad astigmatism
It’s the only scope on the market that you have to use two flatteners with and even then it’s not great….
The FSQ is a totally different optical design to this scope the effects of collimation errors are different. The issue with the FSQ85 is that it was never optically designed to cope with modern small pixel cameras., Unfortunately what your seeing here is quite typical. of this.
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25 minutes ago, Grumman said:
Thank you!
I found this at FLO, will contact them and ask if it supports the HEM15 mount…
A friend already contacted them with exactly that question, you still need the handset.
I would not let that put you off too much though.
Adam
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On 30/01/2024 at 19:05, Grumman said:
I have a SkyWatcher 72ED main scope with a SkyWatcher 50ED for guide scope and a Canon 100D / Altair Hypercam 174C on a EQ3 Pro mount which I use at home for photography.
I am planing to make a small, portable and lightweight kit for taking with me on holidays.
I was using a FOV calculator and it seems the Hypercam and 50ED combo give me almost the same FOV as the 100D and 72ED.
Any ideas what mount would be good for this setup?
Thank you in advance,
Thanasis
The HEM15 is the better match for travel its just lighter. The AM3 is not really that much lighter than the AM5. But honestly the SW GTI will carry what you are looking at just fine.
Adam
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On 01/03/2024 at 07:33, 900SL said:
Looks good Adam! You don't have links for the box, display, regulators etc?
Box:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07F9S5W2R/ref=ox_sc_act_title_3?smid=A1A6WWKJ95BCLL&psc=1
Battery Monitor:
XT60 Connectors:
5volt regulator:
12volt regulator:
Similar switches:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0BD39FPRQ/ref=ox_sc_act_title_2?smid=A1DPAY3BCHO71J&psc=1
Could not find the same output voltage monitor but this would work:
5.5/2.1 connectors:
Batteries:
Charger:
Use LIFe mode
So allot of this I already have and sometimes you get this stuff cheaper on ebay selling single items while most of this is bulk buy. SO the cost is more than I paid. You need to shop about a bit.
You can fit it all in the box i used, but you will have an easier time if you go a size larger I think.
Adam
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I think there would be benefit in blowing the dust off your camera / filters. But that is not because the flats are not working looks like they are, Its more because you dont want the situation when dust moves during a project and then your flats will not work.
Adam
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13 minutes ago, astrosathya said:
Hi All,
ZWO ASI 071 MC PRO seems to have the USB3 and DDR 256MB buffer. Are there any users here who are facing amp glow currently with this camera? I am planning for either 533MC or 071MC, but leaning towards 071 because of APSC.
Its not really got amp glow and even if it did I would not see this as a reason not to choose it, just use calibration frames to remove it.
Your choice if between a larger sensor yielding a larger field of view or a smaller sensor yielding better sensitivity.
However, if you have to take more than one frame to cover any given target it will demolish any sensitivity advantage of the 533.
SO the only question you should ask yourself is can i cover the targets I want to image with the 533 using my intended scope.
Adam
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6 hours ago, Thommy said:
Adam, thanks for the explanation. But there is not so much difference in read noise between the 585MC and 553MC. For both cameras the read noise where HCG sets in is 1.5e-. For higher gains the read noise of the 585 is marginally lower.
The dynamic range of the 553 is somewhat higher which is not so important if you keep the exposures very short. The pixel area is roughly 70 % larger for the 553. When speaking of sensitivity that is important! On the other hand the QEmax of the 585 is 91% compared to 80% for the 553, according to ZWO. Further, this difference increases for longer wavelengths. I wonder if the 91% is correct for the 585 when taking the color filters into account?
I do not see a big advantage of the 585 (for short exposures). Perhaps the higher color resolution of the 585 could be one.
Another conclusion: I think, I will stick to mono's ....
Its 1e vs 1.2e at the kind of gain you would use for short exposures using HCG mode...
However, ZWO have not used the lowest read noise mode (HDR mode) of the 585 chip....that would have allowed the read noise to drop to 0.5e-0.65e, I don't know why they have not done it??
So like the mode used by the Altair Hypercam version.
https://www.altairastro.com/altair-hypercam-585c-colour-fan-cooled-usb3-astronomy-camera-13481-p.asp
IN terms of QE I think you are comparing relative response on the 533 and actual QE on the 585 so they are actually very different.
Adam
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13 minutes ago, Trevor-Austin said:
Ah indeed, that does make sense! Although I was pretty careful with getting it only on the mirror, and when I say careful I mean like an old granny careful 😅
Unfortunately pure alcohol has very low surface tension and so it flows really easy around things in a thin film in comparison to water.
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On 25/02/2024 at 11:18, AstroGS said:
@Adam J if it was the sensor cover glass, wouldnt there be an issue with all filters - including the SII and OIII?
Doesn't have to be the case, the AR coating is not a single layer but a stack of layers that are optimised for different wavelength ranges. It is entirely possible (depending on quality control) for one of those layers to be messed up and the others to still work.
However, until disproved with a different filter the OIII being defective remains the most likely issue.
The most likely issue with the filter itself is that it is not cutting IR effectively and allowing light to pass in the IR that is potentially outside of the wavelength range covered by the sensor AR coating and so those micro lens diffraction patterns are generated by IR as opposed to the OIII part of the spectrum....not that it matters why in the end.
I say this as the its happening on even less bright stars yet at the same time the OIII line is still clearly well filtered given the signal you still gathered.
Like I say just a theory to match the observed effects.
Adam
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3 hours ago, Trevor-Austin said:
I purchased a brand new 130PDS from Rother valley a couple of months ago. Although I’ve been using telescopes for 20+ years it’s my first new one, had older LX200s and 90s, etc. so quite excited:)
in first light it seemed great until the very centre of the secondary dewed up like a fingerprint. Very odd looking mark.
it had gone by the next day but basically every time it got cold this centre mark would appear, although the rest of the mirror was fine.
on the advice of Rother valley I cleaned it and also added a few shield to heat the tube and a heated dew shield and the backyard universe secondary cover. Seemed to get some pictures I was very happy with after that.
obviously not had much use since with such awful weather. But yesterday was clearish but I just couldn’t seem to get it collimated.
And then the clouds came in so I gave up.
today I put it out, wasn’t to collimated and couldn’t get a reflection. Then looked into my Focuser Andy he secondary was missing. It had fallen off, and sitting on the mirror mask on the primary.
has anybody ever had this before? Seems crazy on a new scope, and also the stick pad quite clearly was only making partial contact on the mirror, roughly coinciding with the weird mark I’d seen from new.
I feel i know what has happened here.....
They should not have gotten you to clean it yourself. When you cleaned it am guessing you used alcohol and unfortunately alcohol and glue don't play nicely together, you basically dissolved the glue with alcohol.
I view this as their fault though as they clearly did not give you sufficient instruction in how to clean the mirror.
You can actually see on your picture of the pad how the alcohol has seeped in around the edges leaving a small untouched patch of glue in the centre of the adhesive pad.
Adam
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15 minutes ago, Thommy said:
Adam, why is that?
Potentially significantly lower read noise so potential for very short exposures even down to 5 seconds and less on some brighter galaxies. Mitigates guiding errors on large long focal length scopes and if you can go short enough it will mitigate some of the seeing too.
Further more even in the case of more conventional exposure length in my opinion the smaller pixels will benefit allot of galaxy imaging setups as you want to have better sampling on an OSC due to the effects the bayer matrix has on resolution.
Adam
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1 hour ago, Stuart1971 said:
exactly my point, so a beginner can get better bang for buck buying second hand…IMO…👍🏻
In general I agree and lots of what I own is used. But someone has to buy it new for someone else to buy it used lol. Some people will want a shiny new unboxing experience and warranty just like some people want that new car smell.
Cameras should normally be ok used, but I have come to the conclusion that I don't like the mine field of buying used Chinese made optics. Too much sample variation.
That aside this 585 will be superior for galaxy imaging to the 533 and for some that's all they want to do. Those people won't find a used one.
Lithium Batteries for a mobile (flight safe / legal) imaging rig.
in Discussions - Scopes / Whole setups
Posted
how are you getting 100Wh it's described as 27000mah so only 27Wh?
Adam