DIY remote filter wheel

[JAS]

I have made some progress tonight. after painting the internals matt black yesterday I went ahead and put it all together.

I couldn't resist adding the camera, OAG, guide cam and coma corrector to see how it all fitted together.

And as I had it all together I thought I would try it on the scope

Not sure how the focuser is going to hold up, guess I will soon find out.

I am going to bring some scales home from work to weigh everything together.

Just need to make up the lead to connect it up, setup the guide cam spacing and check the camera to coma corrector spacing. I have punched some 0.5mm shims to fine tune the CCD spacing.

Jason.

[sloz1664]

That my friend is a work of art. I couldn't agree more with the red anodising really complements that wonderful Atik you have there.

When can I place an order for my wheel :grin: and I now summons you for a first light report

cheers

Steve

[JAS]

Thank you Steve, I am very happy with how it has turned out.

With a bit of luck I can sort out the spacing and have a go with it tonight. The only problem I have is I don't have any filters yet, but at least I can check for any issues and learn my way around the new camera and its software.

I can't get any filters until the and of the month:(

Jason.

Sent from my Nexus 10 using Tapatalk 2

[sloz1664]

I use Astronomik filters I find they as par focal as you can get, they are not cheap but then no ccd filters are cheap.

Good luck with your first light.

cheers

Steve

[Gina]

I use Astrodon for NB and they are parfocal and I use Baader LRGB and they are parfocal too but the two different makes are not parfocal with each other. I'm considering buying Astrodon LRGB filters which they claim to be parfocal with their NB filters. I would like to be able to change between NB and LRGB without changing focus. I need to gather some funds first though.

[JAS]

I managed to assemble everything onto the scope late on Friday night. And I am pleased to say the spacing for the Atik was spot on and focus was easily achived, but I had a lot of trouble bringing the QHY5 to focus. I could not bring it in close enough else the focus tube would hit the camera sensor. In the end I had no alternative than to trim down the guide camera focuser tube on the OAG.

So out came the hack saw and about 6mm was swiftly if not crudely removed, and focus was achieved By the time I had a play with the guiding and worked my way around the Artemis capture software it was 4:30am and getting light.

I spent Saturday afternoon removing the old guide scope assembly and balancing the scope.

Out of interest I weighed the old assembly and the new one.

3.8kg

1.5kg

So that has given me a 2.3kg weight saving. I understand the 200pds weighs in at about 8.5kg, so I now have a total of approximately 10kg on my HEQ5, I have now removed the extra weight from the mount as well.

I got out again last night for a trial run and had a quick go at the dumbbell nebula, this is a new target for me.

This is 10 subs, 400s each unbind, cooled to -10c. Stacked in DSS with a small levels tweak in CS5.

No calibration frames. Using a UHC filter, as this is the only filter I have at the moment!

The guiding graph was all over the place, and the star in the bottom left corner has a halo slightly off centre around it, hopefully its off centre due to collimation, but I am not sure why the halo is there at all? internal reflections maybe?

So next thing on the list is collimate the scope, clean up the OAG guide camera focus tube and matt black the end and there are a few other area's that will be attacked with the matt black wile I am there.

Jason.

[Gina]

Great stuff Your filter wheel looks lovely - the biz! Doesn't it feel nice to ditch the ole DSLR

I think I might end up sawing a bit off my OAG focus tube too.

[JAS]

Thank you Gina, it is nice to progress from the DSLR, but I will keep it for some wide field work later on.

I must admit tho I was disappointed with the Artemis software. I thought it would of had the facility to control an ascom focuser or filter

Wheel. Also when I was looking into taking flat frames, there does not appear to be any way to read the mean and median values to determine that your exposure is correct!

I think I will be looking into an alternative programming in the very near future, unless I have gotten it all totally wrong(it wouldn't be the first time!!!).

Jason.

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