NYX-101 mount owners thread

[R26 oldtimer]

Having received my nyx-101 yesterday, I thought it would be nice to have a dedicated thread in order to have all the information and feedback from the users gathered together.

I'll start with a couple of photos and a mini "first impressions" review.

First of all I must say that this is my first non-skywatcher mount. Before the nyx I had an Eq6 as well as an azgti, so pretty much covered in terms of portability & payload. My intention was for the new mount to replace the other two. Sizewise it sits between the two but it's closer to the eq6 albeit much lighter especially without the counterweights. I've kept the eq6 tripod for it's sturdiness (and because I already had it), but may consider the carbon tripod in the near future.

So, it came in a very nice padded case and it certainly has the looks to support it's price tag. It is very well engineered with nice finish. The polar aligning nobs are not made like cable traps and the altitude bolt operates a tangent gear, so no more bent altitude bolts. Once secured on the tripod via the eq6 tripod adapter I grabbed the dual vixen-losmandy puck and tried to move it around. No wiggle, no movement, no backlash noticable, just rock solid.

After downloading the unity app (which includes all the necessary ascom drivers) on the PC, as well as my phone I did all the necessary software and firmware updates. Then I played a bit with unity & skysafari 6 on the phone. Used the LX850 protocol for skysafari 6, although I hear there is a dedicated nyx protocol for skysafari 7. Two things I found different was that due to the RA brake you can't slew or go-to the mount unless previously unparked/tracking from the unity app and that by pressing the direction buttons the mount slewed first on one side and then on the other but that's because of the way it's direction commands are taken literally (north is always north so movement differs on sides of pier).

Next I set it up in my balcony and loaded my ED120 with guidescope on it. Keep your fingers clear and set the mount's limits properly (it has horizon and 2 hours before/ after meridian user set but not user overriden limits) because when that thing starts to moves, it really moves in an unstoppable and forcefull way. It just moves like it doesn't care what is carrying, even though the ED120 is pretty light for a 5" frac. I will certainly try it with my 10" dobsonian newt this summer for imaging and I am pretty sure it will handle it for visual.

Fired up the mini PC, Nina, phd2 communicate seamlessly. At this point I have to say that I am really impressed with the wifi connection. Tried PC connection with USB or wifi and there was no difference. Pretty strong signal, never missed a beat, unlike the low signal and lag that I had with the azgti or my diy wifi adapter.

Guiding started a little rough @1.3-1.6" but after a few minutes turned to PHD2's predictive pec algorithm. After 5-10 minutes guiding fell to an excellent (for my local seeing and light pollution conditions) 0.65-0.80" with 1sec exposures. Also tried 0.5, 1.5, 2 sec exposures with more or less the same result. More than 2 secs and guiding RMS rose to 0.75-0.8", then tried some super fast guiding with 0.2sec exposures and guiding RMS went down to 0.5-0.6". The nyx gave me somewhat better rms results compared to my self-tuned eq6, but the guidegraph was  noticeably smoother, so a lot better when comparing peak to peak. Guiding was also very consistent during the 2.5-3 hour test. One thing to note is that you must check the reverse DEC after flip box on PHD2.

Overall I am pretty happy with this purchase and I consider this mount to be a step up, performance wise, from my eq6, something that was really troubling me until the first test.

Following, a couple of photos and a guidelog from last night.

 

PHD2_GuideLog_2023-02-01_175137.txt

Edited February 2, 2023 by R26 oldtimer

[Which one is Polaris]

Great report on your first impressions.

I am waiting for mine to arrive from FLO.

I went to the European Astro Fest in Kensington, London yesterday.  It was a shot in the dark to order the Nyx 101 some time ago and seeing it in operation by EvansG  made me very confident in my choice.  The exhibition is also open today, Sunday.  Lots of equipment to see all in one place.

The standard Pegasus CF tripod is beefy and has a very wide stance.

My Payload is a 5" Refractor, Flattner, Nikon Z6 ii, Guider, misc. at 10.5 kg.  Definitely no need for counterweights & shaft to prevent tipover.  Very portable.  I do have the pier extension on order.

[Sleepy Kiki]

thanks for your mini review!

how does the NYX fit onto your EQ6 tripod, does it need any special adaptors?

[R26 oldtimer]

8 hours ago, Sleepy Kiki said:

thanks for your mini review!

how does the NYX fit onto your EQ6 tripod, does it need any special adaptors?

There is an adapter available to fit the nyx on the eq6 tripod. Very simple to install.

https://www.firstlightoptics.com/harmonic-drive-mounts/pegasus-universaleq6-adapter-for-nyx-101-mount.html

[buzz]

This is really interesting and thanks for sharing the guide log. Have you checked the tracking error with guider outputs disabled?  I had the Rainbow and it was ±25 arc second, which was alright... but it could swing quite quickly at almost 1 arcsec/second, which was hard to keep up with.  Knowing the rate of change is often a clue to the best guide algorithm. PPEC was a bit touch and go with the Rainbow.

 

 

[R26 oldtimer]

No, I didn't run the guiding assistant and to be frank I haven't had the opportunity to set it up again since, because of the constant cloudy weather.

We might get cloudless sky over the weekend (planning to shoot m81-m82), so I can give it a go.

[buzz]

That is a good target for this time of year.  Out of interest, do you know if you can set independant guide rates for RA and DEC? The Rainbow could only have the same rate on both....  but DEC did not like the fast tracking rate and often its RMS was worse than RA, no matter how delicately I set the aggression.

[R26 oldtimer]

17 hours ago, buzz said:

That is a good target for this time of year.  Out of interest, do you know if you can set independant guide rates for RA and DEC? The Rainbow could only have the same rate on both....  but DEC did not like the fast tracking rate and often its RMS was worse than RA, no matter how delicately I set the aggression.

I haven't noticed different guide rates for RA & DEC in the unity app and I am not sure if PHD2 copes with that but, if aggression settings won't do the trick for you, perhaps you could try a different guide algorithm such as the Z FILTER algorithm for DEC.

[R26 oldtimer]

Set up last night the nyx with the Canon FD 300 2.8 (hoping this will be my widefield travel setup), but intermittent clouds ruined the imaging session.

So I played a bit with phd2's guiding assistant, and was very excited with the backlash graph. It seems that those strain wave mounts are indeed backlash free, which is also quite obvious from the ultra fast dithering settle time.

[AnakChan]

Are the active brakes only on the RA or on DEC too? So if you suddenly lose power, aside from DEC balance, is there anything that could prevent scope flop?

[R26 oldtimer]

1 hour ago, AnakChan said:

Are the active brakes only on the RA or on DEC too? So if you suddenly lose power, aside from DEC balance, is there anything that could prevent scope flop?

There is a brake only on the RA axis which is always severely unbalanced.

To be honest it was almost impossible to move the dec axis (even with the mount unpowered) due to the friction of the reduction belt drive, when I tried to rotate it with my hand no matter how much I struggled. Perhaps with too much force or weight, it might give way and start to move but the motion will be severely dampend until reaching a stop. But my guess is that it takes a lot of weight, certainly way above 25 kilos to move and perhaps this is the only reason they suggest putting a counterweight for payloads above 20Kgr.

 

[AnakChan]

25 minutes ago, R26 oldtimer said:

There is a brake only on the RA axis which is always severely unbalanced.

To be honest it was almost impossible to move the dec axis (even with the mount unpowered) due to the friction of the reduction belt drive, when I tried to rotate it with my hand no matter how much I struggled. Perhaps with too much force or weight, it might give way and start to move but the motion will be severely dampend until reaching a stop. But my guess is that it takes a lot of weight, certainly way above 25 kilos to move and perhaps this is the only reason they suggest putting a counterweight for payloads above 20Kgr.

 

Thanks. That’s good news to hear. So if there’s any sudden loss of power the DEC wise it looks like it’ll still hold pretty well.

The HD mount I have doesn’t have any active braking on either axes so my OTA can flop & crash into the tripod legs.

[buzz]

On 16/02/2023 at 11:38, R26 oldtimer said:

I haven't noticed different guide rates for RA & DEC in the unity app and I am not sure if PHD2 copes with that but, if aggression settings won't do the trick for you, perhaps you could try a different guide algorithm such as the Z FILTER algorithm for DEC.

Aggression is quite different to guide rate. PHD2 does not care about the guide rate - which is the speed at which the mount corrects the tracking. The calibration routine takes it into account automatically.

The aggression is the amount. DEC drift is slow and smooth, so kicking it with a high guide rate in alternating directions is not a great plan, regardless of the correction duration. On the Rainbow, I had better DEC RMS error if I turned off the guiding outputs. 

[Miguel1983]

I'm looking into buying one of these mounts.

The carbon fibre tripod with half pier (the rods) looks a bit flimsy to be honest.

I was thinking about the tri pier from TS-optics.

How is the zenith position with regards to gear hitting the tripod ?

[skybadger]

Not at all flimsy but  ... The rubber cups on the end of the feet allow some squishing as weight moves, so need swapping with the hard feet. Mines carrying about 10kg. 

[R26 oldtimer]

Agreed, for payloads up to 15kgr and short and medium focal lengths, it is actually very stable, with a very wide spread while it is lightweight. For higher payloads, the sensibly priced eq6 tripod, works even better, but not so portable.

[Miguel1983]

I pressed the button on this mount and decided to get the carbon fiber tripod as well.

Because of availability I had to spread my order over 3 shops, the mount head I've ordered from Astroshop, the tripod from Univers-Astro and the universal adaptor from Optique Unterlinden, none of them had these 3 items in stock.

For the carbon tripod I ordered a weight bag on Amazon to attach to the legs for some added stability. 

My EQ6R-pro was sold recently so I didn't have the tripod anymore but last week I found a used Celestron tripod which is the same as the Skywatcher one, and even better, it's black so it matches the NYX-101 better.

I also still had the mini pier for my Skywatcher tripod so that's a plus too.

For peace of mind I spray painted the mini pier black yesterday 😅.

I'm kinda hoping the mini pier wil fit the carbon tripod as well so I won't have to buy those rods from Pegasus.

For use at home I have a fixed pier in the garden with a EQ6 top plate. 

So the tripods are just for on location.

[R26 oldtimer]

5 hours ago, Miguel1983 said:

 

I'm kinda hoping the mini pier wil fit the carbon tripod as well so I won't have to buy those rods from Pegasus.

I don't think that it will be a straight fit. The pegasus tripod has a Nyx top, while the sw mini pier has to sit on an eq6 top. You'll need to remove the bottom adapter from the mini pier, place a pegasus eq6 to nyx adapter on top and run a m12 long bolt all the way through, from the tripod spreader to the mount itself. Not sure on the stability, so better consider getting the rods.

[Miguel1983]

16 hours ago, R26 oldtimer said:

I don't think that it will be a straight fit. The pegasus tripod has a Nyx top, while the sw mini pier has to sit on an eq6 top. You'll need to remove the bottom adapter from the mini pier, place a pegasus eq6 to nyx adapter on top and run a m12 long bolt all the way through, from the tripod spreader to the mount itself. Not sure on the stability, so better consider getting the rods.

We'll see, the mini pier has a "puk" in the bottom, one side is formed to drop in the hole on a EQ6 tripod but the other side is flat.

This is the normal way you would put it on the tripod (the mini pier is upside down here, and I see they have altered the design of the black "puk")

And this is if you flip the black "puk" (and how it looks on mine, so the old design)

Not sure the new design allows you to flip it...

[R26 oldtimer]

3 hours ago, Miguel1983 said:

We'll see,

Well, amateur astronomers are well known for their ability to adapt and evolve 😁, so give it a go 👍.

[Miguel1983]

Small update,

after I bought the mount I had 1 clear night, so I set up for some AP.

All went fine and I went to sleep, when I returned in the morning I found the mount dead.

Turned out I had a bad sample, that is to say, I had a mount with a faulty main board.

I contacted Pegasus and they replied very fast, so I sent the board to Greece the same day and received a new board 6 days later.

The new board is fitted in the mount but now I'm waiting on another clear night.

Also I did not receive that special nut to connect the adapter plate to the Pegasus carbon tripod.

Seems several other people did not receive the nut as well, but Pegasus sent it along with the new board.

So Pegasus clearly has some growing pains to attend to with quality control and packing.

But at least their service is fast and they are easily reached.

You can feel they are good people, ready to help you out if needed.