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Hi all, I wanted to buy my first narrowband filter. I decided on a 7nm Ha filter. Among the options, there were the Baader 7nm and the Optolong 7nm. I chose the Optolong even though I heard that the colour ones are Astronomik copies. However, I searched some comparisons between the Baader and the Optolong and the Baader seemed to have some halos. I decided on the Optolong. However, I don't have a proper imaging camera and for a while I'll be testing it with the ASI120MM I have. Plans for a larger sensor camera. Yesterday I received the filter and had some tries on M42. My balcony window opens to NEE so M42 is a tough target. I can only point the scope to it on EQ mode only before it reaches 15deg. So I had to switch to AZ mode where a scope can reach almost out of the balcony with the counterweight bar extended. Very good AP setup. Anyway, I attached the ASI120MM to a Tair3s lens, wide open this time at F/4.5 and put them on the AZ-EQ5 in AZ mode. ~40x10s + 70x2s. Gain 70/100. With calibration files. I don't know what to try this evening if it's clear. What do you think about putting the camera on a 135 F/2.8 lens and drizzling 2x? Did anyone of you try drizzling and had a successful result? Clear skies, Alex Edit: I don't know what I've done to have the white frame, I didn't notice it until now. It was probably after combining the 10s image with the 2s one.

I have decided to boycott ZWO. Their poor quality control and appalling customer service over the last few years mean I have had enough. First there was my Asi120mm. This stopped working when I upgraded my laptop from Windows 7 to Windows 10. I’m not alone. ZWO said it was an old camera and no longer supported. It was 3 years old when this happened! The reason it did not work is that ZWO did not stick to the USB2.0 standards in order to get faster frame rates. It doesn’t even work with their own ASIAir! Then they said there was a firmware update to try. It didn’t work. Then they said they had come up with a solution and that it would be done by the end of the year. The “solution” was to offer an $80 voucher if I spent more than $249 with them and could produce my proof of purchase. I’ve already replaced the asi120mm. How does this help? Next there’s my asi1600mm-cool. This still works but I’ve had to replace the cooling fan which failed. ASIAir pro. Terrible WiFi range of about 3m so I had to buy a WiFi extender. Most users I know did the same or had an external aerial fitted. The new Plus model has the aerial but I know 3 people who’ve had units arrive DOA and a further couple who’ve had the power board fail within a few weeks. Then they wait for replacements which currently takes a few months. Poor quality control or poor components? Either way it’s not good. Their first generation filters had reflection issues. Version 2 addressed this but that does not help those who bought the originals. It seems to me that ZWO has a strategy of rushing cheap products to market and letting their customers act as beta testers. Their customer support, in my experience, is polite but doesn’t actually help you. They fob you off with excuses and delays hoping, I believe, that you’ll give up and go away. I believe they are launching a mount. How many issues will that have. I’d avoid early adoption if I were you. I realise that this will not be true for most people. If you have ZWO products that serve you well,great. I hope it continues. My EAF is working fine, but for me this has been the exception not the rule. ZWO have one plus point - they are cheaper than the competition. But this is changing with others such as Altair Astro, QHY and Atik catching up. There are great mini PCs that rival the ASIAir plus. Yes they are more tricky to set up but they run NINA and PHD2, SharpCap etc and offer far more flexibility and better performance. You can pick one up cheaper than the ASIAir plus and add a Pegasus pocket power box for a much more powerful setup. Am I a grumpy old git? Yes! I probably am but I think I have good cause. Will my boycott have any impact on ZWO? No it won’t but it’ll make me feel better and hopefully it may make a few other people think twice before jumping on the ZWO gravy train. There are other options. Please consider them. Support your own country’s manufacturing if you can or at least a company with UK/European/North American customer support that listens. Starlight Express have always been brilliant for me in this regard. If just a few people do this and get better products or service as a result it will have made my post worthwhile. Clear skies everyone and if you’ve read this right to the end - thank you.

Hello all, I have taken a brief break in my studies to image the moon, now that it is getting higher in elevation during winter. Quick and dirty, guerilla style imaging with some new gear. Time seems to be getting less and less for me these days. TS72mm F5.5 apo, ZWO ASI120mm, Skywatcher Star Adventurer

Good day fellow SGL members! Not even minus 30 C could discourage me from going out on a clear night on the weekend where I don't have to be up early. Nearly froze solid, as the night progressed to lower temps and a windchill of purportedly minus 43 celsius. I don't think I experienced that low, but I didn't stay for longer than just over an hour, with a couple breaks to the warm house or garage. Got a bit of visual in as well. Just a 13mm nagler and scanning around on the DSV-M mount. FC, AS!3, ImPPG, Gimp

Well, its been a long time coming but finally managed to get something captured and processed of this season. I have captured a handful of nights in the past month but am struggling to get much out of them but I do need to spend more time on the raw data so there might be some more in there. Despite the altitude, I'm fairly happy with this result considering the size of the scope compared to other observers in the forum. I think the colour is a little off so will look to correct at some point but wanted to get something up in the gallery for now. Clear skies and good luck imaging to you all, especially the UK based observers. Rob

Good day fellow SGL members! I went out for a brief imaging session to capture this tiny moon phase. A personal lowest illumination capture to date- a mere 15%! Best 20% of 6836 frames FC, AS!3, Fitswork, Gimp Anyways, cheers from Canada. Thanks for looking and clear skies!

Good day fellow SGL members, I was out last night imaging the moon. This imaging run turned out fairly good, which in turn, sort of makes up for the fact I ruined a brand new refractor by accidentally dropping it on concrete and shattering the objective of my contrasty Vixen 81S. Very disappointed as it was my favorite visual scope, but it was late and all I can do is learn from my mistake. Anyways, 3 min vid with FC, AS!3, RS6, Gimp

While "working" today thoughts always turn to all things astronomy. I was thinking about, image scale of about 0.25 arc seconds/pixel for my white light imaging with the Evostar 120mm. Using my DMK21 I have to push the focal length up to 4500mm to achieve 0.25". With the ASI120mm its only 3000mm for 0.24". I am guessing I should be using the ASI120 at least for white imaging? Surely imaging at a much shorter FL but retaining the same resolution is going to be more forgiving to the conditions. I do use the DMK21 for H/A, but that is due to the lack newton rings problem associated with the ASI.

Hello fellow SGL members, hope you're all getting some sun! I was graced with several hours of clear skies and good seeing. These images are my personal best, IMO (based on noise,presence of newtonian rings, chromosphere details,ect). I also tried experimenting with a whitelight mosaic and another animation. I am having stacking issues with my white light, but I will be getting started on my animation soon. I am excited to show you that, if it turns out. This images are taken with the usual gear and processing. Thanks for looking and clear skies (especially for the eclipse). Comments welcome

Good day all! What a specutaclar sunspot group, AR2665, along with some huge prominences! My handcontroller is still acting up but I am able to work quickly and get some solar images in. The usual gear- Equinox 80mm with Baader Solar Contiuum filter and Lunt Herschel wedge and LS60THa with and without a reducer, and 3x barlow. Captured with ASI120mm. FC, AS!3, ImPPG Thanks for looking!

Good day fellow SGL members! I got some good imaging in yesterday, unfortunately I had some mount problems. I will have to begin diagnosis. My motors/hand controller delayed engaing to move the mount after a while, or just stopped working all together. Considering this is a very expensive mount, I will have to try and figure it out. I have been very good with my connectors, could be running the laptop and mount off of the garage power. Also concerning, I believe it happened running off of my battery box as well. Anyways, I was not able to shoot white light close ups because of mount failure. I did stack more frame % (20%) on this run. Close ups to follow. Thanks for looking and clear skies!

I've often wanted to get a camera attachment of some sort to make a a DIY Polar alignment method and noticed a review of the SharpCap 2.9 Polar alignment function, so I ordered an adapter for a well known brands Polar Camera to fit my HEQ5. I then made a separate adapter on the lathe with a 1/4" x 20 thread for a camera tripod screw that would then fit my ASI120mm and then a Pentax takumar 85mm 1.8 lens with a spacer, Bob's your uncle it works a treat so far. I need to try it again but my alignment was so quick and my PHD2 graph much flatter. Not as compact a package as a purpose built camera but works well with Sharpcap 2.9.

This image is dedicated to everybody who has advise and encouraged me since I first started planetary imaging around 2010. Thank you! Having asked for help in 2010 to get to the "next level" I have been trying to get to that next level ever since. It has been a long journey with mostly ups and the odd down, personally I don't think I will ever be totally happy, but at the moment I am close Taken last night at around 10:30 before the clouds rolled in. The current set up of C9.25/ASI120MM, plus the all important x1.8 Barlow! 60 seconds per channel So pleased to finally to crack imaging at a focal of around FL 5100mm Res=0.15" so much more detail at this length, the jet stream out of the way obviously helped! Given even better conditions I might be able to improve even a little more! Again using the focusing technique as talked about previously, I tried moving closer and then further back from the laptop screen last night and it really is startling the difference in detail visible from a distance.

I am preparing for guiding and have the ST80 with ASI120MM camera. I want to connect this to Lin_guider running on a Raspberry Pi, and use StarsPi as a user interface/client. At the moment I have connected the camera to the RPi and I can see the connection on the client in my android device. But it says that the camera is off line. That's where I am stuck. Does anyone know how to continue from here, i.e. get the camera recognised by the app?? Any help appreciated.

While waiting for the ASI1600MMC, I'm still playing with the ASI120MM. As I don't have a clear view to the South, I can only see Orion less than 2 hours/day and I can use the mount only in AZ mode. All in all, here is the result of ~1000 7nm Ha exposures of 15s, 70/100 gain captured with FireCapture over 3 nights. Lens: CZ 135 F/3.5 wide open. I could use the smaller stars taken with the 300mm lens, but it's not a great result so I'm not sure I'll bother. Clear skies, Alex

Good Evening. I just unboxed my first scope ever. I have a ASI120MM that I am attempting to mount on a Explore Scientific 8x50 scope to use with PHD2. I have no clue what adapter is needed to join the 1.25" OD tube with the eye piece which is also 1.25" OD. This doesn't even begin to address focus. The other VooDoo is not overwhelming. The challenge is not being in a place to touch the solution on the shelf. Any "Guidance" is much appreciated. Thank you. Ron Virginia City, NV ES AR152 with Bresser EXOS2 EQ Mount Nikon D5300 for AP ASI120MM with ES8x50 Finder

Hey guys Just wanted to share my latest go at imaging Saturn. This was the first time using my ASI120MM on Saturn. The image was taken with an Orion XT8G + ASI120MM + 3x Meade Barlow + Astronomik IR742. Date: 30th June 15 Time: 9:05pm PIPP + AS!2 + Registax Any feedback would be great. Saturn by Enrico Danieli, on Flickr My previous image was taken 10 months ago with a Logitech C200 webcam. I'm very happy with the improvements.

Here's my second attempt withe the ASI120mm with RGB filter from Baader, I tried using the RRGB as suggested by THEO here on SGL for the extra luminance and I do think it's brought out a bit more detail. I know this has been contended before but what's the opinion on the Televue 2.5 powermate as opposed to the Revelation one I using?. Thanks Campbell

Evening Folks, Here's my first attempt using my new ASI120mm and Baader RGBL filter set on the SW200p HEQ5 and Revelation 2.5 Barlow on the 4th at 11pm. I got the camera about a month and a half ago but as the weather has been so bad I've not had a chance to use it so feeling a bit rusty with planetary imaging. RGB= 2000 frames each L= 2600 Captured in Fire Capture Thanks

Hi All, Had another great holiday in France. Unfortunately only 2.5 clear nights in the week and I picked the week containing the longest day! However I managed to capture 2 targets I have wanted to try for a while and here they are. I believe I over processed the Veil but I got excited as I found myself finally understanding some of the actions in photoshop! I am aware there is a lot of "Red" too - something I am working on correcting as I get used to the camera after being modified. Both were using ED80 on HEQ5 with modified Canon 1100D (with Astronomik CLS filter), guided with ASI120MM on ST80. Approximately 20 x 300 second exposures with darks and flats (taken as the sun came up lol - darn these short nights!) I am happy with them anyway :-)

Here's The big man from a couple of nights ago, I'm desperate ti get a bit more info out of it but I've started with AS2 and it's pretty good software. Would love to have a go with a 4x or 5x Powermate but could do with some motor driven focusing. Thanks for looking, other stuff is on my flickr site.

Hi folks, Here's my 2nd attempt at the red one, the 24th looked to be a great evening at the start but high cloud moved in and caused quite poor seeing, this was also my first try of my new Astronomik IR pro 742 filter which really makes a difference. The IR channel is layered at 36% opacity but it really does bring out detail especially in slightly poor visibility. Thanks for looking Taken With SW200p, HEQ5, ASI120MM IR-RGB filter wheel stacked in AS2, Wavlet adjustment in Registax and finished if Photoshop.