New CMOS optimised Baader Ultra-Narrowband filters

[Guest]

Finally had a chance to try out the H-alpha 3.5nm F/2 filter. Had to throw many subs away because of clouds and confident that the one's I kept are ideal. Just did a blink, removed the obviously bad ones and then stacked. Just over 2 hours, 120s subs, RASA 8 and 294MM from LA:

[Xiga]

Finally got a chance a couple of nights ago to have a very brief first light with my Qhy268m and the Baader 2" 3.5nm CMOS Ha filter (not the super fast F2 ones). 

Zero processing on this, just a stretch, not even cropped. It's just 9 x 360s so only 54 mins. I need proper calibration frames too, this has only had a very quick BPM and a single 500s dark (not even the same length lol) applied, together with some similarly badly calibrated flats! Time to finally get some decent calibration frames now i'm finally back in the game after a long 10 months out. 

I'm happy with the overall contrast and star sizes, but am a bit disappointed in the Sadr halo if i'm being honest. I wouldn't have been surprised to see halos in Oiii or Sii, but i was expecting the Ha to be virtually halo-free. In all my time using the 7nm Ha i never really saw any halos at all, i was really happy with it. I know Sadr is about as bad a case as it gets (annoyingly i never shot this with my 7nm) but what do you guys think, does it look ok or not? 

I also might have a slight spacing issue. Not completely sure, perhaps a tiny bit more spacing needed. Hard to say for sure, as immediately after the meridian flip i got 2 more subs before the clouds came in, but both had really eggy stars! I had moved my finder-guider to a dovetail on top of the SW 80ed (supposedly for better balance), but i think that may have introduced some diff flex, so i've moved it back again. Just need another test session on either side of the meridian to know for sure if it's ok now, then i'll move on to trying to get any tilt or spacing issues sorted for good. 

Edited August 3, 2021 by Xiga

[Guest]

Having Absolutely 0 Issues with H-alpha. Zoomed through Cygnus in ~20 hours combined over the span of about a week

I love these filters! If the weather continues to be like this, I hope to start testing [O III] by tomorrow to test for Halos, which have been especially bad in O III for me on the RASA. I'm not wholly opposed to Halos but the one's that I have been getting are not ideal. They don't have to be gone, but, If they're better controlled, I'll be extremely happy!

[ianaiken]

2 hours ago, LeftyAstro said:

I love these filters! If the weather continues to be like this,

You are making me so jealous. I have a set of the highspeed ultra narrowband and it's raining and cloudy. I'm dying for some decent skies to start to work on a decent picture. Excellent results, is this with RASA11?

[tooth_dr]

@LeftyAstro wow now that’s a halo 

[Guest]

2 hours ago, ianaiken said:

You are making me so jealous. I have a set of the highspeed ultra narrowband and it's raining and cloudy. I'm dying for some decent skies to start to work on a decent picture. Excellent results, is this with RASA11?

You're just going to love them! Hoping for some clear skies to come your way. And thank you! These are actually taken with the RASA 8 paired with the 294MM. I'll get around to updating my signature and things here with my gear info...😅

[Guest]

46 minutes ago, tooth_dr said:

@LeftyAstro wow now that’s a halo 

Oh yes, It really brought out the ring from the cable router that I use to control the diffraction spikes. I also likely contributed to the problem by over-stretching and making the artifacts more apparent. At the time (March 2021), I wasn't even one year into Deepspace astrophotography and am still continuing to learn how to process! Maybe with the new O III as well as some careful processing, I can tone the halo's down. Here's to year 2.

[Louis D]

Does anyone know if these new Baader filters are made in Europe, Japan, Taiwan, or USA?

[tooth_dr]

13 minutes ago, Louis D said:

Does anyone know if these new Baader filters are made in Europe, Japan, Taiwan, or USA?

I'll check my packaging later on if it's on it.  What do difference do you think that might make?

[Louis D]

7 hours ago, tooth_dr said:

I'll check my packaging later on if it's on it.  What do difference do you think that might make?

Mostly in the pricing and quality control.  Generally, astro items made in Europe, Japan, Taiwan, and USA tend to have higher prices and higher quality control levels.  If these new filters are made in one of these regions and have the aforementioned quality control issues (scratches, coating defects, etc.), then it is concerning.  If they were made in China, it's not surprising, but then the price is surprising in that case.  Chinese labor and overhead costs are a fraction of those other four production areas, but are rarely passed on in full to consumers.

When athletic shoe production was moved from the US to China over the last 25 years, prices were kept constant despite production costs plummeting.  Shipping costs could not have eaten up all the cost savings.  Interestingly enough, the very same suppliers would produce extra shoes and sell them at a cut rate price worldwide through non-official channels that still made them plenty of money but enraged the US companies.  Fighting this has been tough for US companies.

Edited August 6, 2021 by Louis D

[AstroCoto]

On 26/07/2021 at 11:13, Adam J said:

You seem to have much worse halos than i see in @tooth_dr 's image above. I think he has a slight OIII halo but thats to be expected on a star as bright as Gamma Cygni, hence i considered his results be be quite good, in this case that SII reflection seems a little abnormal to be honest. Which version of the filters are you using?

 

Adam

I'm using the ultra-narrowband f/10 to f/3.5 set in 1.25" size mounted on a QHYCFW3S-SR.

Certainly I wasn't expecting those results but as it is the first time that I use a reducer + FW etc maybe I got something wrong (distance to the reducer maybe?) that might be contributing to the halos . I don't know, I will try different configurations though to see if I can get rid of or at least reduce the halos somehow and report back here. 

 

Cheers

[tooth_dr]

@LeftyAstro great to see a comparable image from similar scopes 👍🏼👍🏼

RASA

Epsilon 

[Guest]

1 hour ago, tooth_dr said:

@LeftyAstro great to see a comparable image from similar scopes 👍🏼👍🏼

RASA

Epsilon 

Awesome result! I've seen a bit about the epsilon recently when I was researching fast scopes and our scopes certainly match up well. Looks like these filters are a great match. Fine processing!

[Whistlin Bob]

I got a set of these in July, but some typical British summer weather has really limited any opportunities to use them. I have had one evening with them, and gathered some Ha on NGC7000 for comparison with my previous 7nm ZWO filters on an image I took back in June. Both images below are an hour of data from an ASI1600mm on an Explorer 200p at f4.5

First- here's the ZWO 7nm filter: 

...and here's the new Baader 3.5nm:

I've not quite lined them up the same, but I think there's plenty here to inform a comparison. So- smaller stars and more signal from faint nebulosity. Pretty happy with that. 

[TakMan]

Took the solar gear off the mount a weekend or so ago. Finally got to test these new Baader ultra-narrow CMOS filters last night (Monday 6th Sep), after an FLO delivery a few weeks ago.

Conditions not great, 'clear' but not really.... but good enough to run a test on Sadr.

Would love your feedback, especially with regards to the OIII, looks pretty useless to my eyes - so if needs be, will contact FLO for help, advice, replacement (?) - perhaps Baader could explain it....

Ha a definite improvement, I think..: (would also say the SII looks good although I don't have much data through the older Baader 8nm version for a direct comparison and certainly not with such a bright star)

So: Baader 3.5/4nm Ultra Narrow CMOS set (not the ultra-fast f/2 version), mounted 2". FSQ106-ED (native f/5), Atik OAG/EFW3/16200m

https://www.firstlightoptics.com/baader-filters/baader-35nm-ultra-narrow-band-filter-set-cmos-optimised.html

Screen grabs @ 100% - all from a single 600 sec exposure (dark calibrated)

Ha

 

SII

 

OIII

Jesus! So when Baader say on their website; that they 'found a way', did they ever test these OIII filters on the ubiquitous FSQ I wonder...?

 

For comparison to the Baader 7nm Ha filter - same scope but with my old SBIG STF8300m AND the FR added f/3.6 (better sky conditions back on the 5th April 2020).

and the new version again below...

 

All stretched manually (twice) along these lines:
1
 

2

 

So what do we think, keep, send the OIII back.... or the lot and reload the old versions....

Damian

Edited September 7, 2021 by TakMan

[Louis D]

That new OIII doesn't look good.  What is meant by Baader when they say "improvement"?  Did they ever define what that means in a quantifiable way?

Did we ever figure out if these are Chinese made or not?

[TakMan]

I don't know Louis.... I'm sure (given the budget), the Chinese can make things as good as anybody else these days given the chance.

I've had a look through the data again tonight and to be honest, I'm pretty disappointed.

Thankfully I purchased them from FLO, so have just sent a reply to them for advice re returns.

I did ask them to contact Baader in the first instance to get their input (faulty batch perhaps..?). As I mentioned though in the email, the filters were clean and tidy - no scratches as some reported - I had high hopes!

Otherwise I've asked if I can return them. Thankfully I still have my older Baader line to use... I'll just have to bite the bullet and place an order with FLO for Chroma filters when I've saved up!

Perhaps 5nm Ha and 3nm OIII.... I'll leave the SII for now and use the old filter.

Astrodon or Chroma then (2" mounted), that'll be the question!

Damian

[Mike73]

1 hour ago, TakMan said:

Astrodon or Chroma then (2" mounted), that'll be the question!

Would be good to see how Astrodon and Chroma fair on Sadr?

[JimothyC]

I purchased one of the new 4nm o3 Baader filters the other day to replace my original 7nm which used to show ridiculous halos. I've not tried it on Sadr, but here's an example sub from the other night which has a couple of bright stars and no halos. It's certainly an improvement on what I had before. I went for the Baader purely on price and availability. I'd love to have Astrodon or Chroma but I can't afford them.

This is on an Altiar 102 Triplet with 0.79 reducer taking me to around F5. So although not as exotic as the Tak, probably not all that a dissimilar optical configuration. Here's an example frame of the wizard nebula, just given a quick stretch. I'll try a test shot on Sadr when clear skies next show themselves.

 

[Adam J]

I will not be swapping my AD 5nm set out for the baader 3-4nm any time soon. But I would say that something is actually wrong with that OIII if baader replace it we will know. That's a very bright star though. 

[TakMan]

Thanks for the input guys.

In my email to FLO earlier, I have asked them to contact Baader and I’m happy to try a replacement before sending them back.

In all honesty, I don’t wish to spend the Chroma/Astrodon sort of money to replace these Baaders with… I don’t have the skies or opportunities to get any sort of ‘return on investment’ and would rather put the money towards a good holiday when we can have such a thing again! But then again, I don’t want to spend hours imaging a target to end up with massive halos either - that OIII halo is a disgrace. I have to believe it is faulty as surely Baader tested these on an FSQ or similar…?

Perhaps I could keep the 4nm SII, buy an ‘expensive’ 5nm Ha (keeps things a bit cheaper at 5nm) and ‘even more expensive’ 3nm OIII, the 3nm on the OIII is perhaps the wiser move. That sort of band pass across the three sounds quite acceptable and any focus change due to the 2/3mm difference in filter thickness between the different manufacturers would be easily sorted by the auto focus routine…

To finish tonight, a very quick process of the 3.5nm Ha test data taken over two nights (6-7th Sep) under 'clear' yet milky skies - first light for the new Baader's after the camera came back from an ATIK service over the summer.

14x 1200sec subs (dark and flat calibrated). Yes, I know there is tilt... may have to live with that, but if Baader/FLO try a replacement OIII first (or I end up sending them back), the set-up is going to have to be broken down again anyway in the near future....

 

Edited September 9, 2021 by TakMan
Ha image added

[TakMan]

An update...

Contacted FLO, had a helpful (as expected) reply from Steve at FLO. They are contacting Baader for help and I await their findings.

I'm happy to try another filter to see if that fairs better... or FLO will be getting more money from me in due course if I decide to jump to Chroma (or Astrodons). At least these things are small and I can sneak them past the wife!!!

I'll update here when I have news.

I also went back again to the original single 600 sec OIII exposure and really stretched it. As has been pointed out above, Sadr is VERY bright and one can't expect Astrodon/Chroma levels of perfection at this price point.

What IS worrying though is that dimmer stars within the frame also show halos, so as Adam pointed out, there must surely be something wrong with this filter...? One would hope so anyway...

Damian

Full size jpeg below:

[tooth_dr]

Anyone have any ideas what is wrong here?  I imaged the Squid over several nights, and spent three of those on Oiii.  I stacked the data but there is very little sign of the Squid.  The fits header says I used Oiii.  I just pulled the camera and filter wheel off the scope, and checked that Oiii is correctly placed in position 6 of the wheel.  I did several tests earlier on the EFW and the wheel always went to Oiii when chosen in SGP.  To me this looks more like Sii, so I was wondering if the EFW went to position 7 instead of 6?  But I am finding it hard to believe that the software/filter wheel found the wrong position 3 separate nights in a row.  I'm assuming this is user error on my part, just not sure where I went wrong?

Any suggestions welcome!  I also did image the squid at the same time with an NBX filter on another scope, and I can see the squid, using same gain and exposure settings (and a slower scope F4.8 versus F2.8).

Fits attached of Oiii 300s sub, QHY268M, 4nm Baader Ultra Narrow High Speed 2" filter.

Also attached

1) jpeg of stacked Oiii data with stretch in APP - QHY268M

2) jpeg of stacked Oiii data (from NBZ filter) with stretch in APP - ZWO2600MC

 

Any input welcome.

Adam.

 

 

SQUID_QHYCCD-Cameras-Capture_300sec_1x1_-10C_gain_56_268_033-2.fit

[Adam J]

10 hours ago, tooth_dr said:

Anyone have any ideas what is wrong here?  I imaged the Squid over several nights, and spent three of those on Oiii.  I stacked the data but there is very little sign of the Squid.  The fits header says I used Oiii.  I just pulled the camera and filter wheel off the scope, and checked that Oiii is correctly placed in position 6 of the wheel.  I did several tests earlier on the EFW and the wheel always went to Oiii when chosen in SGP.  To me this looks more like Sii, so I was wondering if the EFW went to position 7 instead of 6?  But I am finding it hard to believe that the software/filter wheel found the wrong position 3 separate nights in a row.  I'm assuming this is user error on my part, just not sure where I went wrong?

Any suggestions welcome!  I also did image the squid at the same time with an NBX filter on another scope, and I can see the squid, using same gain and exposure settings (and a slower scope F4.8 versus F2.8).

Fits attached of Oiii 300s sub, QHY268M, 4nm Baader Ultra Narrow High Speed 2" filter.

Also attached

1) jpeg of stacked Oiii data with stretch in APP - QHY268M

2) jpeg of stacked Oiii data (from NBZ filter) with stretch in APP - ZWO2600MC

 

Any input welcome.

Adam.

 

 

SQUID_QHYCCD-Cameras-Capture_300sec_1x1_-10C_gain_56_268_033-2.fit 50.44 MB · 0 downloads

Any chance the filter itself is incorrectly labelled? I have heard it before shine a light through it. Does it look green?

[tooth_dr]

7 hours ago, Adam J said:

Any chance the filter itself is incorrectly labelled? I have heard it before shine a light through it. Does it look green?

It does look green and the Ha and Sii are red. Any suggestions on a test target, looking clear later?