gilesco

37 minutes ago, nephilim said:

🤔 No comment 😂

Well, the pre-order price on the ZWO website is $1,999. A comparable product is perhaps the Rainbow RST-135. Which is £3899 on the FLO website. A new product, so wait and see is my usual stance on this.

But once again, they're working on the price-point again, and that will introduce new competition for these types of mounts (I guess some manufacturers will compete on Support Quality too, not just price) - but we've discussed that already. Having a manufacturer which consistently challenges the cost of similarly spec'd equipment can only be a good thing for all and sundry.

3 minutes ago, wornish said:

Its on their website now.

 

https://astronomy-imaging-camera.com/product/zwo-am5-harmonic-equatorial-mount

 

Look at the price!

Well - a harmonic drive + tripod for £2000 (I know it says USD $1999, but that will translate to £2000+ for UK retail suppliers)

This will always need auto-guiding, the laser feature may not be available in many countries due to local regulations etc...

I will certainly keep an eye on this.

4 minutes ago, centroid said:

Altair Astro. I have the Altair Hypercam 294c Pro Tec. It does  "what it says on the tin", and hasn't let me down yet.

I know that some of the thread here is talking about support etc.. and as Altair Astro has a UK presence then you're likely to get more timely support from them.

However, I believe that Altair Astro cameras, are essentially re-badged OEM cameras from Touptek, another Chinese company.

So really this is about, if you're happy to pay the premium of getting good support from Altair, leaving them to deal with a Chinese company then that's fine. I guess if you're not happy to pay that premium and buy from a ZWO reseller to save a little money, perhaps leaving you with not great support (I've not ever needed support for a camera, to be honest), then that's OK too.

It depends what you're looking for during the life of the product I suppose.

1 minute ago, rnobleeddy said:

Out of curiosity, are there any more local options that produce comparable modern CMOS cameras, within say 130% of the price of ZWO? 

Even if cameras are assembled elsewhere, Japan and Korea have pretty much the biggest lions-share of the CMOS sensor market, so even if you assemble a camera, controller, sensor, cooling, the bulk of the manufacturing cost is to the benefit of the sensor manufacturer, which will still be in the far east, certainly not in the UK.

For APP, if you are doing multi-channel and/or multi-session, then I believe the recommended method is to stack each channel and each session separately and then stack the resulting stacks again, before finally combining the channels for your LRGBHaOIIISII results. The most recent versions of APP lead you in this direction as they ask for a session number when importing your subs.

If doing a mosaic then the recommended way is to stack each pane of the mosaic as above for each channel, register each mosaic panel, integrate the mosaics, and then conmbine LRGBHaOIIISII channels.

If you just load all the frames and try the basic workflow then you can quickly exponentially increase the time it takes, especially if you enable things like LNC, MBB etc... The APP forums have better information about this than I can probably put in to words.

@vineyard I think longer subs would help you here. These were 60s exposures? Perhaps try some small batches of 120s, 180s, 300s and compare the initial results of stacking those.

Just now, AstroKeith said:

But what you say could be turned around.

ZWO choose to cut corners and use an existing computer (RPi) and use it without modification, but charge a premium nevertheless.

Using an external wifi on the RPi doesnt require a hack - its common practice. The corrupting SD cards is a card issue not a RPi issue.

I'm talking about attaching a separate external antenna to the existing on-board antenna on the Pi, using external Wifi adapter is entirely different.

2 minutes ago, StevieDvd said:

  And I expect the addition of a hack to the Raspberry Pi to add an external wifi aerial would have resulted in more issues than a simple drop in Raspberry Pi board.

I'm not certain, but if they had tried to attach an antenna to the Raspberry Pi board, then they might have had to go through all the certifications and approvals  again (e.g. CE, FCC, CTIA, SRRC), whereas if they don't mod the board then the existing ones still apply. And if an end-user fixes the problem with another approved device.

I have owned a few ZWO cameras, and not had any issues. I have an extensive background in Linux and IT prior to Astronomy so wouldn't go the ASIAIR route myself, as I like to roll my own systems.

Possibly named the AM5 ?

3 minutes ago, nephilim said:

It looks as if the tripod leg on the left is bending under the weight of the scope, hopefully just a trick of the light.....or is it 😂😂

https://www.illusionsindex.org/ir/hering-illusion

11 minutes ago, Stargazer33 said:

Is there not a very good reason why mounts have a counterweight to offset the weight of the ota? 🤔

You can still use counterweights on harmonic drive mounts, and I would recommend it as you want to have the system balanced to stop the chance of it toppling over.

They say Harmonic Drives don't need counterweights, because the transfer of torque by the drive mechanism is much more efficient than a worm gear mechanism.

3 minutes ago, Hogarth said:

As i understand, harmonic mounts can suffer badly from PE. 

Apparently, although if you're using auto-guiding (which ZWO would obviously like you to do, as you will buy twice as many cameras if you are) then you can essentially eliminate PE.

PE becomes an issue if you're tracking without guiding.

Will be interesting, ZWO have a habit of entering a market with very competitive price points.

Interesting, do you have a link to the leaked image?

11 minutes ago, vineyard said:

Oh that's interesting @gilesco - I've never used one of those before.  So it's like a VM - I'd have to upload all the data to the cloud, and also install APP/SiriL/DSS etc to the cloud machine <does APP allow that?> & then run the processing on that (ie, essentially use the much faster machines of AWS)?  I've always thought of AWS as commercial pricing, didn't realise normal retail accounts could also use it.

Yes, you would have to upload your data, and if you don't have a fast upload speed (thankfully I do) it could take a while.

APP allows multiple installs to a limit (I have installed it on 3 machines simultaneously). If you reach the limit I think you can de-register old installs - not sure about the process for that.

I run a small VM in Azure for other purposes, it costs around £10 a month, but it runs as a server continuously, if were to shut it down then the subscription would cost close to zero, perhaps not zero though. Renting a larger VM would cost more per month, but for this purpose you only need to rent it for the processing time.

As the processing is a one-time thing, have you thought of, rather than using a laptop, get a cloud computing account, e.g. Azure, AWS, and do the registration / stacking integration in the cloud? You only need pay for the actual time you use it, then power down the VM or discard it.

The PixInsight / Photoshopping probably needs to be done locally though, license considerations, and visual determinations can be tricky over a remote desktop session.

Nice image, I have barely had 2.5 hours of clear skies so far this month.

I agree with you on the HDR comment. I quite like to see the heart almost over-exposed as it is indicative of the amount of activity going on there. To essentially dim it out goes against what I'm trying to capture.

1 hour ago, david_taurus83 said:

I honestly think (and hope!) everything will be OK. They are basically launching a satellite which is built on current knowledge and experience. Sending rovers to Mars and getting them to work seems much more complex. 

JWST will not orbit the Earth, it will orbit the sun at L2, it is unlikely that if anything goes wrong, or if something doesn't work that we could do what we did with Hubble and go out and fix it.

When I had a Startravel 120 I used the combination of these two:

https://www.firstlightoptics.com/skywatcher-focusers/skywatcher-auto-focuser.html

https://www.firstlightoptics.com/astronomy-cables-leads-accessories/hitecastro-dc-focus-controller.html

I think the ST102 has the same focuser, but you need to be sure that the knob on the focuser is removable (mine was, glued but I managed to clamp axel and use a pair of adjustable wide pliers. See note in the FLO product page). If you can't remove the knob, then the focuser can't be attached.

Another thing to note, is that this is a DC motor, and not a Stepper motor. This means that when you move steps in one direction the same amount of steps in the other direction may not be the same. Some people have compensated for this by attaching rubber bands between the imaging train and the OTA, to make the steps more equal.

I could not find a stepper motor which could be attached to a Star Travel, and have since upgraded to an Esprit.

I think another option for you would be to replace the stock focuser on the ST to one that would accept a stepper motor, such as the ZWO EAF, or the Sesto Senso 2 (which is what I now use on the Esprit).

15 hours ago, symmetal said:

According to the Beelink site they do support auto boot on powering. I don't have this particular model but all the mini-pcs I've used including Beelink work fine in headless mode, with no dummy HDMI plug, or keyboard/mouse required. The resolution can be set by the remote computer over vnc or remote desktop and that resolution is kept after repowering.

Alan

Correct, there is an option in the BIOS to auto-power-on when power is applied. Good for remote observatories. I have this disabled, as I like to stagger the power on.

I suspect whether VNC works with HDMI with or without a HDMI plug is more a operating system thing rather than the hardware. I've put in a HDMI plug in mine (they're typically < £5)

On Ubuntu & on Raspberry OS the root password is not defined, and in many modern Linux, root is not able to login by default.

In order to get a root shell you can use "sudo -s" as the astroberry user, and then enter your astroberry password.

You can also just execute a single command as root by typing:

sudo <command>

sudo will ask for the (astroberry) password the first time, but then for a limited time you can execute multiple commands via sudo without it asking for a password again.

Type "man sudoers" for the manual how to configure sudo policy in the /etc/sudoers file.

I added a 500GB SATA drive to it, and that is where I've loaded Linux, so I am able to dual boot from Windows 10 Pro, or into Kubuntu 20.04. I have setup INDI / Ekos / Kstars on Kubuntu and it all appears to be working (weather is not good, so can't do real-world stuff, but testing is promising).

Under Windows I installed the ASCOM platform and all the drivers for:

Two ZWO cameras, ASI EFW, Sesto Senso 2 focuser, Pegasus Power Box Advance, GPS etc... not done much testing under that platform, but it is nice to have access to Windows for device firmware upgrades etc... I also installed NINA and had a play ensuring all devices could be detected.

Everything looks good. Under windows updates the box is showing up as "Can Run Windows 11", but it is not actually offering the upgrade to Win 11 as yet.

With regards to power, I am powering it using one of the 12V channels on the Pegasus PPBA, seems to work just fine, and the power cables that came with the PPBA fit OK into the GKmini - correct voltage, correct size. Total power draw well within the 10A limit on the PPBA, although I usually power my mount via a separate 12V line, not the PPBA as it is all mounted on the OTA.

To finalise things I now need to re-design my perspex mounting plates, the GKmini came with a mounting kit, whereas I was using Velcro tapes for the Raspberry Pi, as it has a mounting plate I think I'd prefer to use that rather than mess about with adhesives + Velcro.