Alternative to L-Extreme

[AstroGS]

I would appreciate your suggestions for alternative filters to L-Extreme.

in another discussion our fellow members suggested a simple UV/IR filter will be as good if not better than an L-Extreme. I do have an L-Pro and it does a great job. I’m shooting with an OSC (ASI533MC) and probably I will not move to mono any soon.
Budget, it should not be over 200-250.

Scopes: WO GT81 and Redcat51

 

Thanks in advance

Edited July 16, 2022 by George Sinanis

[happy-kat]

What bortle are your skies where you image from the most.

[Elp]

I doubt a UV/IR filter is anything like an lextreme. A lot depends on what you are going to image and your local light pollution conditions. I tested a few filters on my last project the veil nebula, I shot luminence with my 183mm which revealed very little signal (it was there but faint and only the main two nebulae), going up the order with my dslr from lpro, L-Enhance to L-extreme the contrast difference between background and signal was significantly better each time. The difference between the enhance and extreme was quite subtle but a difference (enhance is tri band letting in ha, hb and o3, the Extreme is dual band letting in only ha and o3), they both proved to be significantly different from the lpro however.

Galaxies and clusters will not really benefit from using filters.

Edited July 16, 2022 by Elp

[AstroGS]

5 minutes ago, happy-kat said:

What bortle are your skies where you image from the most.

It is 6-7.

[AstroGS]

52 minutes ago, Elp said:

I doubt a UV/IR filter is anything like an lextreme. A lot depends on what you are going to image and your local light pollution conditions. I tested a few filters on my last project the veil nebula, I shot luminence with my 183mm which revealed very little signal (it was there but faint and only the main two nebulae), going up the order with my dslr from lpro, L-Enhance to L-extreme the contrast difference between background and signal was significantly better each time. The difference between the enhance and extreme was quite subtle but a difference (enhance is tri band letting in ha, hb and o3, the Extreme is dual band letting in only ha and o3), they both proved to be significantly different from the lpro however.

Galaxies and clusters will not really benefit from using filters.

Usually I am aiming for nebulas - when shooting galaxies/ clusters usually I’m not using filters or just the L-Pro. 

Edited July 16, 2022 by George Sinanis

[Elp]

The Altair tri and quad bands and 7nm dual band are supposed to be alternatives to Optolongs, also look at Cuiv's channel on YouTube.

Edited July 16, 2022 by Elp

[Budgie1]

The UV/IR cut filter is good in your ASI533MC for reducing star bloat but won't enhance the contrast of Ha & Oiii because the pass band to way too large, so it also lets the LP bands through.

Your main options if you want to try capturing narrow band with your OSC are:

• ZWO Duo-Band
• Optolong L-eNhance (Tri-Band which also covers the Hb emission range)
• Askar Duo-Band
• Altair Dual-Band 7nm CMOS Nebula Filter
• Optolong L-eXtreme
• IDAS NBZ Dual Band Nebula Boost

I have both the L-eXtreme and Askar and they both work well with my ASI294MC. The L-eXtreme also blocks most of the emissions from planetary nebula, but is very good with emission nebula.

[raadoo]

I’m in a B6 zone myself. Started with the L-Pro, moved to L-Enhance, now using the Antlia ALP-T.

Hands down, the Antlia wins. It transmits sligtly better in OXygen than Hydrogen, but to me that’s a good thing because it means I get a bit more than just pure red out of emission nebulas.

[scotty38]

6 hours ago, George Sinanis said:

I would appreciate your suggestions for alternative filters to L-Extreme.

in another discussion our fellow members suggested a simple UV/IR filter will be as good if not better than an L-Extreme. I do have an L-Pro and it does a great job. I’m shooting with an OSC (ASI533MC) and probably I will not move to mono any soon.
Budget, it should not be over 200-250.

Scopes: WO GT81 and Redcat51

 

Thanks in advance

I had a UV-IR and an L-eXtreme on my old 294MC  and these filters are chalk and cheese. If you're trying to pick up some of the emission Ha and Oiii stuff the UV-IR filter doesn't compare at all. As mentioned for reflection targets then the UV-IR is fine but you just cannot compare these filters in any way really I'd say.

[AstroGS]

5 hours ago, raadoo said:

I’m in a B6 zone myself. Started with the L-Pro, moved to L-Enhance, now using the Antlia ALP-T.

Hands down, the Antlia wins. It transmits sligtly better in OXygen than Hydrogen, but to me that’s a good thing because it means I get a bit more than just pure red out of emission nebulas.

I was looking a a month or so ago at the Antlia. Any idea where to buy from?

Edited July 16, 2022 by George Sinanis

[Elp]

A quick web search will show you where, it's not cheap mind.

Edited July 16, 2022 by Elp

[Mikeshuerto]

5 hours ago, raadoo said:

 It transmits sligtly better in OXygen than Hydrogen, but to me that’s a good thing because it means I get a bit more than just pure red out of emission nebulas.

That very interesting. I've been using the L extreme for the past 6 months, and I'm veryy happy with it - except that I'd like more OIII! Do you have any comparisons you could share?  

[Lee_P]

It's worth noting that on the horizon we have 3nm dual narrowband filters coming from Optolong (l-uLtimate) and Askar (ColorMagic). It'll be interesting to see how they perform. 

[Elp]

Tbh, I don't know if receiving more o3 over affecting ha signal is a good thing, from experience shooting mono o3 signal is usually much weaker than ha (subject to target) so you wouldn't really want this. Using an osc camera any received narrowband signal will be further hampered by the rggb pixel layout.

Edited July 16, 2022 by Elp

[raadoo]

3 hours ago, George Sinanis said:

I was looking a a month or so ago at the Antlia. Any idea where to buy from?

I got mine from Teleskop Express in Germany as I'm based in the EU.

In the UK, it seems auntie FLO doesn't stock it, but 365astronomy does.

[raadoo]

1 hour ago, Elp said:

Tbh, I don't know if receiving more o3 over affecting ha signal is a good thing, from experience shooting mono o3 signal is usually much weaker than ha (subject to target) so you wouldn't really want this. Using an osc camera any received narrowband signal will be further hampered by the rggb pixel layout.

I know what you mean, and you're right, it's generally a bad idea. To me, though, it's a bad thing turned good as it sort of forces me to go for longer integrations to achieve a decent SNR, the consequence of this being I also end up racking enough integration time to get some pretty decent OIII signal as well.

[Elp]

 

2 hours ago, Lee_P said:

on the horizon

Oh no...

[Lee_P]

Askar have just released their 3nm ColorMagic dualband filter. 

[Budgie1]

27 minutes ago, Lee_P said:

Askar have just released their 3nm ColorMagic dualband filter. 

 

At $539, I think I'll be sticking to my 7nm version, especially as it doesn't say which size filter that price is for!

[900SL]

IDAS NBZ Ha Oiii dual band is a very good OSC filter with excellent quality control and no halo's. I'm about to buy the NB3 to go with it (Oiii S filter)

[Phillyo]

I used the slightly older IDAS NBX, essentially the NBZ filter for a while and really liked it. Especially for faster optics. I then moved to the Antlia ALP-T filter which is better again, but is also more expensive.

I'm currently selling my NBX filter.

Phil

[The Admiral]

On 16/07/2022 at 14:00, raadoo said:

the Antlia wins. It transmits sligtly better in OXygen than Hydrogen

That would bother me. Given that is not normally the case, one reason could be that the Ha filter isn't quite centred on the Ha peak. Or, I suppose it could be that the OIII band is wider than the specification. One would like to think that such an expensive filter is perfect, but without individual calibration one can never know. Of course, this applies to all NB filters. What f-number are you imaging at? A low f-number can really affect how the filter works too.

See Cuiv's YouTube video https://youtu.be/VkSvpOLlD2Y.

Ian