ASiair and Wedge?

[johnst]

Hi all, a bit of advice please. I am seriously considering purchasing the Asiair pro bundle that FLO have  on their website at £510, but know very little about guiding and plate solving etc, also I am looking at the newish Wedge by William Optics for the Star Adventurer at £189 which seems to have very good ratings for improved performances, we are talking about £339 of equipment which is a lot of money - is it money worth spending! Any advise is welcome.

Cheers,

John

[johnst]

Apologies for my math's, it should say £699. Wish I was right first time!

[Toaster05]

I can't speak of the ASIAIR but regarding the WO wedge I myself have recently purchased it.

I've not yet used it in anger due to the weather but just from appearances you can tell it's a very well made, solid bit of kit. My reason for purchasing is to replace the iOptron wedge which I've found to be very frustrating when trying to pa. 

By the time I'd got the alignment right and attempted to lock it down I'd find myself wildly of where I should be. Will the WO wedge solve this completely? Probably not but I can say with a fair degree of confidence that it will take away some of the frustration. It's a not cheap at £189 but it could last you a lifetime as part of a portable setup.

I'll update once I've got to use it in anger.

[johnst]

Thanks very much for that, yes please keep us informed👍

[Toaster05]

Used it for the first time tonight. A million miles from the bundled wedge. Very generous adjustments and I was able to pa in next to no time.

Most importantly for me was once I had my alignment nailed I could lock it down without losing pa.

Is it worth the money? Probably not, do I really like it? Yep!

I'm sure you could put your money elsewhere but I'm happy with it.

 

[Space Oddities]

The WO latitude wedge is very well made, definitely a worthy upgrade over the iOptron one. It's very solid, smooth... Also quite heavy at almost 1 kg.

Note that there are 2 versions, high and low latitude. However, they're essentially the same and you can convert one version to another, by unscrewing and moving one piece. The only thing is that the printed latitude scale won't work, but honestly, I never look at the scale, so that's a very minor issue.

Is it worth getting? I'm not sure. It's a great piece of equipment and I don't regret my purchase, but it's also pricey. I would say it ultimately depends on what kind of setup you plan to put on it. If it's on the heavy side (like 3 kg for the scope and camera, with a mount and 1-2 kg counterweights), then I'd say yes. If it's not too heavy, perhaps it's overkill and the Sky-Watcher wedge will be enough.

Regarding the ASIAIR, I've been using the V1 and now the Pro. I simply love it! I would say it is for your if:

• you have or plan to have ZWO equipment (cameras, filter wheel, motor...) or compatible DSLR (Canon, Nikon mainly)
• you want a simple and intuitive interface, easy to learn and use, that you can setup in a few minutes
• you don't care about having control over every possible setting, nor having all the bells and whistles
• you need something portable, to use with a tablet or your smartphone, instead of dragging a laptop
• you don't mind paying £289!

I don't regret my purchase at all. I'm a mobile astrophotographer, and I need something that works out of the box, is simple to use and gives me the basic functions. Plate solving, polar alignment, guiding, focusing aid, imaging sequences... That's all I need, and the ASIAIR Pro does it all very well. And it can also power your camera, mount and dew heaters. 

They also improve it every now and then, for instance recently they introduced the multi-star guiding function (it uses PHD2) and it seems to work very well. It's starting to be a very mature platform. They really listen to their customers when it comes to new features.

Regarding plate solving: it's mostly relevant if you have a go-to mount. It's extremely simple to use: you take a picture, and once it's done, you click "Plate solve". The ASIAIR will analyse the stars, know where it's pointing at and tell the mount. Now, when you slew to an object, it will be dead center. And if it's not, there's an option to automatically perform a plate solving after each go-to, and realign the mount so that the target is in the center. It's really just about pushing a button!

Guiding relies on a software called PHD2, that is extremely simple. PHD means "push here dummy" ZWO made it even more simple:

Basically, the 2 arrows on the right means "start shooting". The guide camera will shoot frames continuously, and transmit the image on your screen, in some kind of live view. You can specify the exposure length at the bottom right corner (usually 1-2 seconds).

Once you see what the guide cam sees, you need to click that crosshair icon on the right, which is basically "start guiding". The ASIAIR will select a star (or multiple stars) by itself, and then start the calibration sequence. It's automatic and takes 1-2 minutes. Once it's done, you'll see the green lines on the screen indicating you're guiding. You can stop/pause it by clicking the stop button. 

Check out the official documentation, it's well made: https://astronomy-imaging-camera.com/manuals/ASIAIR_User_Manual.pdf

This blog also has great explanations and how-to's: https://eastwindastro.blogspot.com/

Hope that helps  

 

[johnst]

Thanks, folks, for quick and informative replies. I'm going to purchase the wedge for my Star Adventurer for better pa and general usage! Which brings me onto my second query which is going for the ASIAIR pro, does it connect up to the Star Adventurer which has an auto guiding outlet on it, if it does then I will go for it!

Cheers, anyway.

John

[callisto]

Yeah, I upgraded to the WO wedge from my stock ioptron one and It's a totally different ball game. 

Very well made and solid...locks very well and best of all it looks the part with all my ZWO gizmo's  😁

 

Mark

[Toaster05]

42 minutes ago, callisto said:

Yeah, I upgraded to the WO wedge from my stock ioptron one and It's a totally different ball game. 

Very well made and solid...locks very well and best of all it looks the part with all my ZWO gizmo's  😁

 

Mark

I didn't like to say as the looks are not important to some, but yeah I 100% agree. That candy apple red is 'chef kiss'

[johnst]

 I tend to think that appearance goes with quality most of the time, I've yet to see a shabby looking William Optics scope yet - I've got the Megrez 72 and it looks gorgeous so the wedge looks good and is good so the reports say. 👍

[ollypenrice]

On 25/04/2021 at 21:33, johnst said:

 I tend to think that appearance goes with quality most of the time, I've yet to see a shabby looking William Optics scope yet - I've got the Megrez 72 and it looks gorgeous so the wedge looks good and is good so the reports say. 👍

I think that some astronomy manufacturers have achieved a considerably inflated reputation based on prettiness and lots of red anodizing. My only WO scope looks OK but the focuser slips and sags and the main tube is far too short. At the other end of the scale someone described my Mesu 200 mount as looking like 'a bag of spanners.' This mount, approaching ten years of age and in commercial use, has yet to drop a sub exposure to guiding error. My TEC 140 is a very 'plain Jane' of a scope, nothing cutesy, but it ain't for sale!

Olly

Edited April 27, 2021 by ollypenrice

[iapa]

On 23/04/2021 at 22:20, johnst said:

Hi all, a bit of advice please. I am seriously considering purchasing the Asiair pro bundle that FLO have  on their website at £510, but know very little about guiding and plate solving etc, also I am looking at the newish Wedge by William Optics for the Star Adventurer at £189 which seems to have very good ratings for improved performances, we are talking about £339 of equipment which is a lot of money - is it money worth spending! Any advise is welcome.

Cheers,

John

Before you proceed, can you say what all you have just now? E.g. camera and lens that you have, which variant of the Star Adventurer, what tripod are you putting it on?

For example, Re the latter if you are using a tripod with a geared head, you could get away without the wedge for the time being.

I set up an ASIAir Pro with my 80mm F5 refractor with the ZWO guide scope and 120mm camera - not using Star Adventurer - but found it very simple and straight forward to use and got 60 x 300m guided exposures in about 40 mins the first time of use. Second time, it was about 10 minutes (my mount had moved so PA needed to be re-done).

[johnst]

My camera is a Canon 700d modified, lens is a Canon 70-210 f4 but I'm now coupling it to a WO Megrez 72 with a Moonlite focusser fitted. I have the Star Adventurer which I've had about 10 years now but I think I've got PA issues. I use a Velbon tripod which is quite sturdy. I feel the wedge and ASIair Pro are going to improve my next imaging sessions. As I've said previously I am relatively new to this sort of imaging as in DSO - I've imaged conjunctions, eclipses etc, over the years so this is a whole new ball game to me, it's great to get info off this great forum though.