What to buy next?

[Space Oddities]

You can mount it using a camera "cage" or L-bracket, which you might already own. The guider would be attached to the bracket or cage directly, on the top or on the side. You can also add an Arca Swiss dovetail and plate to make mounting/unmounting the guide scope easier. Many people go this way!

Some examples here: https://blog.martinbelan.com/2020/08/14/how-to-mount-a-guide-scope-to-your-dslr-mirrorless-camera-without-a-telescope/

Another way would be to DIY something. You'd need a dovetail bar, long enough to mount your lens and guide scope side by side (~20 cm should suffice), and 2 clamps: 1 Arca-Swiss compatible for your lens and 1 for the guide scope. Plus a few screws (usually 1/4").
 

Like this for instance :

 

 

 

This would cost a bit more than option 1, but they're the kind of accessories you'll always need and that you can repurpose in the future. Plus you can balance it more precisely than option 1.

You might even be able to attach an ASIAIR Plus in the middle, either flat or on the side, which would simplify your cable management.

[Killpond]

@Space Oddities thanks for the advice! I just ordered a load of bits from Smallrig off Amazon and the ASIAIR Plus 256 version, guide scope and camera from FLO.

[Killpond]

Ok, autoguiding is amazing! This is a 4 min sub at 600mm. Very impressed!

[Richard_]

Excellent, especially for the 600mm! Did you get the ASI Air working well with your camera? Does it work via USB or do you have to use the shutter release cable to control exposures? 

[Killpond]

20 minutes ago, Richard_ said:

Excellent, especially for the 600mm! Did you get the ASI Air working well with your camera? Does it work via USB or do you have to use the shutter release cable to control exposures? 

It doesn't work with USB but I didn't expect it to. I'm just using it for guiding and goto. Looking forward to getting more compatible devices (camera, filter wheel and focuser).

[Space Oddities]

Yes, sadly Fujifilm hasn't made their cameras controllable via third party software... unlike Canon & such. But I heard that this is slowly changing, so perhaps in a near future... 

You need to make sure that dithering is disabled, in the autoguiding settings of your ASIAIR. Usually dithering is useful to get rid of walking noise patterns, but since there is no way for the ASIAIR to tell the camera to stop shooting while dithering, that you end up with a waster 5 minute sub, because your stars look like dashes.

Have fun with your autoguiding  it opens up a whole new world!

[bosun21]

On 05/09/2023 at 14:53, Killpond said:

Took this of M13 last night with the 600mm but out of 30 x 2m subs I could only use 4 as the rest had trails.

You should try taking shorter exposures like say 10 seconds and taking more of them. This will greatly help with the star trailing and won’t blow out the centre of your image.

[Killpond]

I picked up this book and a Bahtinov mask today.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Deep-sky-Imaging-Primer-Third/dp/0999470949

Fuji does work with INDI and I think ASIair uses it under the hood. Not sure what technical reasons ASIair has for not supporting it, but I know first hand that the solutions out there right now are far from ideal. Best I could get from using anything INDI based was still limited to 20 seconds of delay between shots caused by, I think, the way it encodes/decodes the RAW image using base64 encoding. Also never managed to get FIT files that were anything other than gray.

I was holding out that ASIair would allow for a simple shutter release setup where I could at lease configure the camera then use the shutter release to take exposures, allowing for dithering, but unfortunetly I can't find anything that would allow me to do this.

I'm happy just to have guiding for the time being and I'll be looking at getting a cooled astro cam at some point in the future anyway.

Edited September 8, 2023 by Killpond

[Richard_]

 

3 minutes ago, Killpond said:

I picked up this book and a Bahtinov mask today.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Deep-sky-Imaging-Primer-Third/dp/0999470949

Fuji does work with INDI and I think ASIair uses it under the hood. Not sure what technical reasons ASIair has for not supporting it, but I know first hand that the solutions out there right now are far from ideal. Best I could get from using anything INDI based software was still limited to 20 seconds of delay between shots caused by, I think, the way it encodes/decodes the RAW image using base64 encoding. Also never managed to get FIT files that were anything other than gray.

I was holding out that ASIair would allow for a simple shutter release setup where I could at lease configure the camera then use the shutter release to take exposures, allowing for dithering, but unfortunetly I can't find anything thast would allow me to do this.

I'm happy just to have guiding for the time being and I'll be looking at getting a cooled astro cam at some point in the future anyway.

Some additional features you could make use of with the ASI Air for the time being:

• Slewing the mount
• Polar alignment
• Plate solving*

*I haven't used my ASI Air in over 18 months as I use a mini-PC, but I believe you can use the plate solving feature with a guide cam when you temporarily assign it as your main imaging camera. 

I'm sure the bahtinov mask will really help with your focus too! It'll be interesting to see how close you were getting your focus without it. 

[Killpond]

25 minutes ago, Richard_ said:

 

Some additional features you could make use of with the ASI Air for the time being:

• Slewing the mount
• Polar alignment
• Plate solving*

*I haven't used my ASI Air in over 18 months as I use a mini-PC, but I believe you can use the plate solving feature with a guide cam when you temporarily assign it as your main imaging camera. 

I'm sure the bahtinov mask will really help with your focus too! It'll be interesting to see how close you were getting your focus without it. 

The "GOTO" worked once I disabled the feature that needs a main cam to plate solve so it knows the goto was correct. Polar alignment and plate solving using the ASI mini sounds cool but will PA work if the cam is offset to the right of the axis? I have the cam and guide cam left and right of each other and the mount rotated 90 from normal. Will this offset cause the PA to be out of line?

I'm also intrested to see how far off my focus has been. The focus on Fuji is by wire so I can store a focal point in the lens to quick snap too. Looking forward to seeing how far off it was once I put the mask in place.

[ollypenrice]

48 minutes ago, Killpond said:

The "GOTO" worked once I disabled the feature that needs a main cam to plate solve so it knows the goto was correct. Polar alignment and plate solving using the ASI mini sounds cool but will PA work if the cam is offset to the right of the axis? I have the cam and guide cam left and right of each other and the mount rotated 90 from normal. Will this offset cause the PA to be out of line?

I'm also intrested to see how far off my focus has been. The focus on Fuji is by wire so I can store a focal point in the lens to quick snap too. Looking forward to seeing how far off it was once I put the mask in place.

It took about 200 years for astronomers to detect stellar parallax (shift in apparent position) when the Earth was offset by 2x its distance from the sun (ie when it was six months away from its previous orbital position. Call it 200 million miles.)  Even this offset was impossible to detect till they factored in the effects of changing atmospheric refraction. I think you can relax about a few cm of offset.  

Olly

[Killpond]

4 minutes ago, ollypenrice said:

It took about 200 years for astronomers to detect stellar parallax (shift in apparent position) when the Earth was offset by 2x its distance from the sun (ie when it was six months away from its previous orbital position. Call it 200 million miles.)  Even this offset was impossible to detect till they factored in the effects of changing atmospheric refraction. I think you can relax about a few cm of offset.  

Olly

Phew! Good to know

[Killpond]

So last night I PA'ed using the guide cam, as the main cam in ASIair, down to a fraction of a degree, then did a goto to M31 and it performed the goto, did a plate solve, repositions a tiny bit then confirmed it was centred and started tracking. I then switched the guide cam from being the main cam to being a guide cam in the ASIair and started guiding. All good so far.

Then I took some exposures with my 600mm camera that's mounted about 5 inches to the left of the guide cam and no M31.

I took the images from the card of the Fuji cam and plate solved them on my main PC to find I was off by a little bit.

So it's just dawned on me that I think I need to align both camera's to the same point in the day time in order for them to both have the same goto location?

Is this right or will it still be off due to the distances involved? Aligning them both to a tree off in the distance is a little different than a galaxy light years away right?

 

[Richard_]

Glad to hear that the use of the guide cam works as I remembered! 

Can you post a picture of your two cameras set up and mounted to your Star Adventurer? That may help with advice on trying to align the two. 

[Killpond]

I've just finished aligning them so they don't look cock-eyed anymore and they were not that bad before.

[bosun21]

The guide scope and your main scope are obviously not aligned to the same point in the sky.

[Richard_]

1 hour ago, Killpond said:

I've just finished aligning them so they don't look cock-eyed anymore and they were not that bad before.

Difficult to see how the camera, ASI Air and guide scope are mounted but I'd hazard a guess that you're using some form of dovetail bar and dovetail clamps for each device? Is there some wiggle room in rotating the cameras? 

[Killpond]

1 hour ago, Richard_ said:

Difficult to see how the camera, ASI Air and guide scope are mounted but I'd hazard a guess that you're using some form of dovetail bar and dovetail clamps for each device? Is there some wiggle room in rotating the cameras? 

Yep, it's one long Dovetail they are both mounted on. I can freely rotate them but I've also removed the clamp from the camera lens shoe to lower it, trying to bring them level. Now it's just bolted directly to the dovetail plate.

[Elp]

From my experience trying this with two lenses for image acquisition on the same rig it's not just a case of pan adjustment, you need some roll and possible tilt. Your camera lens is a long focal length compared to the guide scope so it's going to be much more sensitive to the slightest angular adjustment, this should be somewhat mitigated by it's larger sensor size (so larger FOV), have you got a shorter lens to try it with first?

[Killpond]

10 hours ago, Elp said:

From my experience trying this with two lenses for image acquisition on the same rig it's not just a case of pan adjustment, you need some roll and possible tilt. Your camera lens is a long focal length compared to the guide scope so it's going to be much more sensitive to the slightest angular adjustment, this should be somewhat mitigated by it's larger sensor size (so larger FOV), have you got a shorter lens to try it with first?

Good shout but when I aligned them they were pretty well matched besides the vertical alignment. Just checked on astro tools and suprised at how close they are 😮

They also both have roll adjustment, the Fuji lens in the collar and the mini cam in the scope. If I could add more vertical offset to the guide cam they would line up perfectly. Think I got lucky with the magnification.

 

Edited September 11, 2023 by Killpond

[Elp]

Good you got it working well. The roll I was referring to isn't rotation of the lens roll as the lens will still be in the same position, it's an offset roll where the whole lens lifts in X and Y (following an arc), that way when you pan it's got more chance of zeroing to the main lens centre of view (rather than being above or below it). It'll make more sense when you look at your rig when it's east/west biased, both lenses are not on a parallel plane to the horizon, they're angled. If you've got it working, that's great. It's much harder when both lenses and camera sensors are the same.

[Killpond]

1 hour ago, Elp said:

Good you got it working well. The roll I was referring to isn't rotation of the lens roll as the lens will still be in the same position, it's an offset roll where the whole lens lifts in X and Y (following an arc), that way when you pan it's got more chance of zeroing to the main lens centre of view (rather than being above or below it). It'll make more sense when you look at your rig when it's east/west biased, both lenses are not on a parallel plane to the horizon, they're angled. If you've got it working, that's great. It's much harder when both lenses and camera sensors are the same.

Ahh, I see what your saying. This could still be an issue I guess since the weight distribution means the Fuji is pretty much centre and the guide scope is off axis.

It's frustrating that Fujifilm is so poorly supported globally. Not being able to dither or use it as a main camera (at all with the ASIair, or limited with INDI) is really annoying since I'm spending time solving issues instead.

I'm pretty much pulling the trigger on a Askar FRA400, ZWO 533MM Pro, ZWO EAF, ZWO EFW 8x1.25 and filters at this point.

Edited September 11, 2023 by Killpond

[Elp]

I don't think Fuji owners are alone. It was only very recently with app version 2.0 that Sony cameras were added, and they didn't implement it very well.

[Richard_]

If you do decide to go down the dedicated astro route, the below item from First Light Optics may be of use. It allows you to attach a dedicated astro camera (like the ASI533) to an existing Micro Four Thirds lens. The description includes Fuji lenses, but I thought these were a different mount to M43, so perhaps it would be worthwhile asking FLO if it's compatible with your lens (they are really responsive and helpful!). 

If it works, at least you won't have to buy a new lens/telescope... Yet

https://www.firstlightoptics.com/zwo-accessories/zwo-t2-to-micro-four-thirds-adaptor.html

 

PS you'll learn to enjoy problem solving with this hobby!

[Killpond]

10 minutes ago, Richard_ said:

If you do decide to go down the dedicated astro route, the below item from First Light Optics may be of use. It allows you to attach a dedicated astro camera (like the ASI533) to an existing Micro Four Thirds lens. The description includes Fuji lenses, but I thought these were a different mount to M43, so perhaps it would be worthwhile asking FLO if it's compatible with your lens (they are really responsive and helpful!). 

If it works, at least you won't have to buy a new lens/telescope... Yet

https://www.firstlightoptics.com/zwo-accessories/zwo-t2-to-micro-four-thirds-adaptor.html

 

PS you'll learn to enjoy problem solving with this hobby!

Ahh the joys of Fuji again The lens focus (and other rings) is fly-by-wire so turning the focus ring does nothing but tell the camera to change focus that in turn instructs the lens to move inside the housing using some complex electo-magnetic guide rail (at least that's my understanding of it). As soon as the power is taken away the lens just flops about inside (Not even joking, you can hear it).

So yeah, this solution would be fine if it was a manual lens, but unfortunetly it's not.

I'm problem solving with the right tool for the job I guess

Edited September 11, 2023 by Killpond