well order has gone into flo for the asi1600mm kit1 so prepare yourselves for a 1000 questions

[Wirral man]

Well folks today i have put my foot in the big pond!! 

I have ordered the Asi1600mm pro kit 1 from flo and cant wait to see what headaches are going to hit me!!??

I will be using my ed80 pro on the heq5 and using the asi120mc for guiding so yeah id thought id share that with you all and would like to say a big thank you for all the support shown so far it is much appreciated....wish me luck!! 

[cjdawson]

You'll have got yourself a lovely kit there.  Wish I had the £1800 to get one of those.

First thing I would seriously suggest is getting you hands on Sequence Generator Pro.   Whilst I have an electric focuser, it isn't good enough for computer control (I don't trust it, long story)  Even without that, SGPro will give you a completely different way of working.  Much better than trying to get things going with other methods.     Combine it with PHD2 for guiding and you should have a lovely setup.

 

[tooth_dr]

Congrats.  I've promised myself one on my 40th ?

[Redscouse]

2 hours ago, Wirral man said:

cant wait to see what headaches are going to hit me!!??

The first will be clouds. They usually come prepacked with any astro gear.
At least @FLOhave the decency to warn you of such impending doom by way of a sticker on the box! ?

Nice camera choice! I'll be interested to see how you go with it as I have the 183M on my wishlist. 

[Marky1973]

Yeah, good luck....half the fun is finding out how to get it all working.... Honest ?? Looking forward to some reports....I too am heading to a 183mm.

[Wirral man]

Thanks all i cant wait like a big kid on xmas day.. i do have a lot to learn tho before getting any decent results and must be patient  (which is probably my biggest flaw) hence the 1000 questions coming soon so stay tuned folks haha?

[Wirral man]

For now i have downloaded apt software would this be enough as sequence generator to more money yet again

[ollypenrice]

There is no one thing that is at all difficult in imaging. The only problem is that there are lots of not-very-difficult things to get into place and working. Just take your time and tick them off one by one.

Olly

[tooth_dr]

10 minutes ago, Wirral man said:

For now i have downloaded apt software would this be enough as sequence generator to more money yet again

I think APT is a fantastic program, it should serve your needs very well. 

[Wirral man]

i dont think the filters are parfocal  so with my skywatcher evostar 80ed pro can i just use a auto focuser ? if so which one and how much?

[Jonesdee]

The ZWO filters are not parfocal with green being the 'least parfocal' in my experience.  I have the kit with 31mm unmounted filters and it is important to ensure that you fit the filter wheel with the motor pointing toward the camera to ensure that the filters are as close to the sensor as possible.  I started with mine the wrong way round and got vignetting with my 80mm refractor.  Following advice from others on this forum, I am also using a 2" CLS filter to help with luminence  image quality (not sure if it is necessary with RGB, but I leave it in place permanently).

I use a Bahtinov mask for accurate focussing, and usually tweak the focus manually.

As Olly mentioned, there are loads of small things to get your head around -  I moved from SLRs to the 1600 MM Pro and am still experimenting with settings for the camera.  The latest ZWO ASCOM driver no longer has an offset adjustment, just Gain, and this makes things a bit easier to cope with initially. ZWO state that an appropriate offset is now applied in conjunction with the gain value, although you can still download the earlier driver (with offset adjustment) if you feel the need.  Loads of info on this forum on the pros and cons of various settings.  I found that using unity gain is a decent starting point.

Cooling the sensor makes a huge difference to noise (I forgot to plug the power in recently and the impact was extremely visible, even on short exposures - turned Leo into the Milky Way  ). I currently cool to -10 degrees which is achieved easily with a 12v 3A PSU.  I believe that a beefier supply is required to run it at significantly lower temperatures.  Compared with my SLR, the sensitivity is astonishing with 60 - 90 second exposures yielding similar data to 4-6 minutes with a Canon 100D.  My experience to date suggests that RGB exposures need twice that of Luminence with the ZWO filters.

I am also using APT and finding it pretty good to work with, with cooling and warming aids for the camera plus a lot of handy tools like the Bahtinov, and FWHM, etc focusing aids.  Very easy to set up the filter wheel with APT too.  

I find that the camera works fine with either USB2 or USB3 connections, although I suspect running full frame video would require USB3 for optimal transfer rates. 

I am very much at the bottom of the learning curve with this kit at the moment, but if I can help with anything, give me a shout.

Cheers

Dave

[cletrac1922]

Nice kit

Around $2700 down under

Have fun with your new toy

 

 

 

[Wirral man]

5 hours ago, Jonesdee said:

The ZWO filters are not parfocal with green being the 'least parfocal' in my experience.  I have the kit with 31mm unmounted filters and it is important to ensure that you fit the filter wheel with the motor pointing toward the camera to ensure that the filters are as close to the sensor as possible.  I started with mine the wrong way round and got vignetting with my 80mm refractor.  Following advice from others on this forum, I am also using a 2" CLS filter to help with luminence  image quality (not sure if it is necessary with RGB, but I leave it in place permanently).

I use a Bahtinov mask for accurate focussing, and usually tweak the focus manually.

As Olly mentioned, there are loads of small things to get your head around -  I moved from SLRs to the 1600 MM Pro and am still experimenting with settings for the camera.  The latest ZWO ASCOM driver no longer has an offset adjustment, just Gain, and this makes things a bit easier to cope with initially. ZWO state that an appropriate offset is now applied in conjunction with the gain value, although you can still download the earlier driver (with offset adjustment) if you feel the need.  Loads of info on this forum on the pros and cons of various settings.  I found that using unity gain is a decent starting point.

Cooling the sensor makes a huge difference to noise (I forgot to plug the power in recently and the impact was extremely visible, even on short exposures - turned Leo into the Milky Way  ). I currently cool to -10 degrees which is achieved easily with a 12v 3A PSU.  I believe that a beefier supply is required to run it at significantly lower temperatures.  Compared with my SLR, the sensitivity is astonishing with 60 - 90 second exposures yielding similar data to 4-6 minutes with a Canon 100D.  My experience to date suggests that RGB exposures need twice that of Luminence with the ZWO filters.

I am also using APT and finding it pretty good to work with, with cooling and warming aids for the camera plus a lot of handy tools like the Bahtinov, and FWHM, etc focusing aids.  Very easy to set up the filter wheel with APT too.  

I find that the camera works fine with either USB2 or USB3 connections, although I suspect running full frame video would require USB3 for optimal transfer rates. 

I am very much at the bottom of the learning curve with this kit at the moment, but if I can help with anything, give me a shout.

Cheers

Dave

thanks dave thats a great heads up start for me much appreciated thank you