TerryMcK

I would be interested in hearing about the light tightness of that too. I also have 2" filters and have looked at the Artesky Filter drawer https://www.astroshop.eu/filter-wheels-filter-sliders/artesky-filter-drawer/p,56987?utm_medium=cpc&utm_term=56987&utm_campaign=1912&utm_source=froogle&gclid=CjwKCAiA3OzvBRBXEiwALNKDP2myjVw5SefdbyNw_dmeYXUA0Og_fA_DBsSaxDr6-rndajK73iidnhoCMPoQAvD_BwE&utm_content=#tab_bar_0_select but haven't seen any reviews.

I have a 400D (10 M pixel) that I bought brand new 12 years ago. I had the IR cut filter removed and it is really good. You can pick them up off eBay for a few quid/krone. Recently I bought a pre-used 650D (a later one manufactured about 2014/2015) with very low shutter count (2500) off eBay but am not removing the filter from that (yet) as I am using it for general photos/videos. It has a flip out screen and live view works great in APT/BackyardEOS. That one or a more recent replacement model might be a good one as it has 18M pixels 4.29 µm wide pixels in APS-C format.

Yes no problem with that. The power supply does pump out a nominal 13.8 volts and over that distance with larger diameter copper the voltage drop at the end shouldn't be too much. The power supplies do have a voltage adjust knob but I just leave mine at the default and have never have had any issues.

I like the framing. There are a few halos around the brighter stars and it may be a touch saturated but still a stunning image - fantastic.

If it were mine I would definitely open up the holes in the dovetail bar.

Yes indeed. That Nevada one will nail it. I edited my reply and actually have the power supply (in box) close by the imaging rig. The 12v cable is only about 5 metres long and is heavy duty 2.5mm2 cable to minimize voltage drops. I found it easier to run a long mains extension (which is also in the lidded storage box) from the garage via an RCD circuit breaker.

I use a 32 amp version of that to power my amateur radio gear and it works fine. I use another, older version power supply, which isn't switched mode, to power my astro rig and it draws about 4 to 5 amps when everything is on (dew heaters x 3, cooled astro camera, mount when slewing) so is well within the capacity of the power supply which is capable of around 40 amps at 13.8 volts. You will find it better to use the terminals on the rear and run two cables - one to each rig - and will find it is much more reliable than a car plug (up to 10 amps) that you can still run BTW from the front. Terminal binding posts are far more reliable than cigarette lighter plugs and are less likely to be kicked out in the dark! My power supply and laptop power supply are in a large plastic storage box to keep the weather and dew off. I have drilled holes in the side to route the cables in and out. Mains electricity and water don't play well. I also put the imaging laptop into another one.

What is your scope? Sorry I've just read it again and can see what your scope is. It doesn't look focused to my eyes. The fringing may be due to bad collimation. I used to get colour fringes on my reflector before I bought a laser collimater. It could also be the Barlow as you have mentioned.

I have the ASI 183 Pro MC OSC and it pairs well to shorter focal length, relatively wide field OTAs like mine (William Optics 73mm x 430mm). It is around 20 meg with 2.4 micron pixels. It certainly is a good one and very sensitive. The 533 has bigger pixels, lower resolution and may well work better with longer focal lengths. The 80mm scope you have might suit either one. Most people recommend mono cameras but in my experience in the fickle skies of the UK, especially for beginners, OSC cameras like the 183 or 533 are fab to collect data before the clouds roll in. The 533 does have“zero” amp glow- allegedly. Any amp glow I have seen with the 183 is easily removed with calibration frames. The cooling on the 183 is a real boon after using a DSLR and the 533 also has this. Similar prices. You make the choice. However DSLR work is much, much easier. You end up spending lots of time troubleshooting dedicated astronomy cameras (usually in the cold) but the efforts are well worth it.

Very nice and a great start. It does get expensive (and addictive) as you are probably aware. Lots of things you see that are "must" haves (equipment I mean).

I too was getting mysterious disconnects during imaging sessions. In PHD2 an error message against the guide camera (ZWO ASI120MM) would say something like "An image has not been acquired after 17 seconds so the camera has been disconnected..retrying". Sometimes it would reconnect successfully other times the imaging camera (ASI183) would error in APT saying "waiting 30 seconds for download from camera". I found that PHD2 would acquire whatever ZWO camera would respond regardless of whether it was already connected. They were both using ZWO ASCOM drivers. After pulling my hair out over the last couple of days with my rig I am now using the ZWO native driver for the ZWO ASI120MM mini guide camera and the ZWO ASCOM driver for my ZWO ASI183. It seems to have settled down now 🤞. It is so much easier with a DSLR 😁

While we having been having a cloudy spell in the UK I took the opportunity to doing some more cable management on my wide field rig. It had a faulty generic USB3 hub (one port didn't work at all) so replaced it for one I had lying another from a manufacturer called Sabrent. It had USB3 on the label and all the ports and cable were blue as per USB3 standard. Last night we had a little cloud break so went out to do some imaging. The first issue I had was with PHD2 guiding constantly dropping connection to the ZWO ASI120. Then to compound it images from the ASI183 were not downloading from the camera. I gave up in the end as the clouds rolled in. This morning I loaded ASICAP and on closer examination noticed my 183 was "connected via USB2" !!!!! The Sabrent USB3 hub has all blue coloured ports and my USB3 repeater cable was plugged into the USB3 port on my imaging laptop. So I bypassed the Sabrent "USB3" hub and plugged the camera straight into the USB3 repeater cable. Bingo - ASICAP reported it was connected via USB3. I have now swapped out the Sabrent hub for an Anker 4 port USB3 hub and can report that the Anker is indeed a proper USB3 hub. My problem is solved. But take care when buying goods like these as they might not be what they say they are.

Hi Rich. The D2 cuts out light pollution from LED streetlights (and domestic LEDS too as it happens) which have been fitted in the past few years around here (Manchester area) and also cuts sodium LP from older streetlights. I’m in Bortle 7 and wouldn’t be without it. However the Altair Astro triband filter also works great and just lets through hydrogen alpha, OIII and Hbeta so no light pollution problems with that either. I got the 2” (M48) versions rather than clip in EOS so I can use them with the ZWO camera too. The WO field flattener has M48 threads to permit fitting filters inside and an integral lockable rotator so you can frame your images by turning the camera.

I have the same kit you are looking at and can confirm it is a great setup. I takes me about 10 minutes to get going and a couple of minutes to break down (essentially just disconnecting the scope and removing it) as I leave all the wiring permanently on the tripod and leave the mount in place. It doesn't weigh a great deal and can be carried inside easily. WO ZenithStar73 with adjustable field flattener. Extremely well made, solid and produces excellent images. It has guide scope rings, a dewshield and Bahtinov mask built in. guiding with a 9x50 Skywatcher finderscope converted to enable fitting the ZWOASI120MM with PHD2 Some filters - in my case the IDAS D2 and the Altair Astro tribander. Skywatcher HEQ5Pro with Rowan belt upgrade - tried and trusted - it works extremely well Lynx Astro FTDI EQDIR USB Adapter for Sky-Watcher Mounts 5m - no need to use ST4 cable if you are using PHD2- you can get rid of the handcontroller if you use the EQDIR adapter and connect straight to a computer. A 4 way USB3 hub An astro modded DSLR is good but if you could stretch to a dedicated cooled Astro camera so much the better. I only shoot in colour at the moment and have both a Canon 400D (IR cut filter removed) and a ZWO ASI183 OSC. The 400D gives a fairly wide field of view so getting the North America Nebula and Pelican in the same frame is possible with the ZS73. The ASI183 is more detailed but not as wide field. Advantages for both systems. If looking at mono there are many systems out there that you could couple with a filter wheel. I'm sure members will make recommendations on that. A useful addition, but not essential, is QHY PoleMaster to aid in polar alignment - I have this and wouldn't be without it as it makes polar alignment a breeze. It can also be used on any other scopes you get in the future. PC Software used BackyardEOS for the Canon using a Shoestring Astronomy DSUSB box to hold the shutter open longer than 30 seconds in bulb mode. The 400D can't open longer than 30 seconds on its own USB circuitry and needs the Shoestring. Later EOS cameras don't have this limitation. Astro Photography Tool that can control both the Canon and ZWO dedicated astronomy camera. Great for leveraging platesolving software too. N.I.N.A also looks very promising as control software - I am experimenting with this at the moment. ASCOM platform with EQASCOM PHD2 for auto guiding DeepSkyStacker Photoshop I also use Stellarium with Stellarium scope as an aid to getting the scope pointed where I want to go. You might also need a dew heating system too for our fickle weather in the UK. The ZS73 can also be used for visual but you may need a diagonal. I couldn't get any of my eyepieces to focus with it but I don't have a diagonal and only intended it to be an astrograph anyway. I have a reflector for occasional visual work.

I've been trying out N.I.N.A and it is very impressive. I particularly like the "Slew To Zenith" feature in the Flats aid. One button press and it perfectly points the scope upwards so I can place my flatfield panel directly on top. There are probably other software packages that do the same but the ones I normally use (APT for instance) doesn't have that feature. Anything that simplifies any part of the astrophotography process (without going down the path of full automation of course) is fine by me. N.I.N.A will be investigated more by this astronomer.

I too got the dreaded RA wobble on my HEQ5 Pro (Rowan belt mod) and thanks to AstroBaby's website was able to fix it. A slight adjustment of the two grub screws she mentions (after loosening the bigger cap head screws) made everything good again.

The HEQ5Pro with Rowan belt mod will eat that 5 to 7 kg weight. And still under a grand! Or an NEQ6 Pro with belt mod that will give you even more capacity for future expansion. ASCOM and EQMod work out of the box with these two Skywatchers so nothing new to learn.

Thanks for the great tutorial David

ok cheerio for now

I think you are missing the point. RealTimeSync monitors the source folder(s) and copies files to the destination folder as the imaging camera delivers the image files to your imaging computer. You don't have to set it off copying as you do with Robocopy etc, as it is all done automatically in the background. Also realtimesync, when setup to run as a batch, doesn't use the GUI overhead. It also runs on Mac and Linux as well as Windows. Old programs like robocopy, richcopy et al do copy files but you, the user, have to trigger the copying process or rely upon task scheduler to run it on a timer.

Nice. I imaged Pacman too Monday night (7th Oct 2019) but in RGB also with an astro modded EOS 400D. I like that Hubble pallet I must get a few narrowband filters .

Synctoy doesn't automatically monitor a folder for file changes though. It's true that Synctoy can be setup to automatically sync files on a schedule daily etc using Microsoft Task Scheduler. Whereas RealTimeSync does.

I'd been looking around for some automated software which would copy images from my imaging laptop (A lowly I5 with 16GB RAM), as soon as they were taken, back into the house so I had the images instantly available on my main computer (A dual Xeon workstation with 64GB RAM). When the clouds have parted and the imaging rig is running if it gets cold I am not normally outside! I remote into the imaging laptop using RDP via a wireless connection. Anyway onto the main subject of the topic. I have been googling and found this fantastic software which is GNU public domain software that costs nowt. It is called FreeFileSync and is available from here Essentially you set it to monitor a folder, for instance your \Pictures\BackyardEOS directory and when image files arrive in that folder it is copied to the destination of your choice. In my case it is a network share on my server. So I have two copies of each image and it saves me time copying GB's of data later on! It can be configured to copy anywhere like an external USB drive for instance. The software has another module called RealTimeSync that sits in the background monitoring your chosen directories and it automatically copies the files. It is this module that I use the most. It's a bit like GoogleDrive or Microsoft OneDrive but not copying potentially large files via t'internet to some anonymous datacenter int'cloud.. The files are then available on your destination computer for processing on a faster computer with DeepskyStacker/Photoshop etc. The software can be configured to run a as service so it is always running in the background whether you login or not. Did I mention its absolutely free?

Some great replies from everybody. I have reinstalled the 64bit version of AstroTortilla (was previously the x86 version) and this is noticeably faster , installed a demo version of APT, installed PlateSolve, UCAC3PS and ASPS (for APT integration). Now just have to wait for some clear skies. I think it may be OK tonight 07/10/2019 in north west England. 🤞

Yes it would be nice to use platesolving for GOTO. I must say I'm also using BackyardEOS Canon version to control the camera at the moment. I note that NINA doesn't appear to have that as a camera option yet. Ultimately I will use a full astro CCD but for the time being just a DSLR. I also use PHD2 for guiding and have an HEQ5 Pro mount controlled through the ASCOM driver.