New to imaging after a few years lay off

[Dave grim]

Hi guys 

I'm after some help please I've just ordered a refurbished Lenovo T480 laptop with 32gb memory and 1tb ssd I'm planning on using it for processing images of deep sky . I haven't bought any Astro equipment yet so was after help really . I was thinking of ZWO AM5 mount , William Optics Zenithstar 81 , William optics guide scope , ZWO ASI 120mm guide camera , ZWO ASI533 colour camera and ASIair plus 256 gb to control everything , been reading lots of stuff on this and watching you tube vids was thinking of going this route as everything seems very easy to set up . Or do people think I should go down the mini pc route , I would want to upgrade scope and possibly mount in 3/4 years so very open to suggestions please 

cheers 

Dave 

[ollypenrice]

The 1 inch sensor of the 533 strikes me as a bit small for a deep sky camera. In any upgrade I'm sure you'd want something larger. Many deep sky objects are surprisingly extended.

CMOS colour cameras are good, but what is your level of light pollution? If it's high you might find mono more productive.

Olly

[AKB]

1 hour ago, ollypenrice said:

The 1 inch sensor of the 533 strikes me as a bit small for a deep sky camera

The diagonal measurement seems to be 15.97mm (according to FLO) so about 0.6 of an inch.

Your point still stands that bigger is better, of course, but one inch is nearly as big as an ASI2600?

Tony

[Adam J]

2 hours ago, Dave grim said:

Hi guys 

I'm after some help please I've just ordered a refurbished Lenovo T480 laptop with 32gb memory and 1tb ssd I'm planning on using it for processing images of deep sky . I haven't bought any Astro equipment yet so was after help really . I was thinking of ZWO AM5 mount , William Optics Zenithstar 81 , William optics guide scope , ZWO ASI 120mm guide camera , ZWO ASI533 colour camera and ASIair plus 256 gb to control everything , been reading lots of stuff on this and watching you tube vids was thinking of going this route as everything seems very easy to set up . Or do people think I should go down the mini pc route , I would want to upgrade scope and possibly mount in 3/4 years so very open to suggestions please 

cheers 

Dave 

I would always go mini pc as ASIair it way too limiting from my perspective in terms of what you can use with it (only zwo devices), I dont like the idea of allowing a single company to become my only viable supplier.  

As for the rest, its true that the AM5 will be an great place to start in terms of mount, however its very pricy £2580 with tripod....so a large part of your budget is going to drop on it. Its effectively pushing you into getting doublet optics and a smaller OSC sensor. Other cheaper options still provide ample performance at your intended focal length.

iOptron HEM27 Hybrid Harmonic Drive Equatorial GoTo Mount | First Light Optics

or even the AM3.

That would let you get a triplet and corrector.

Starfield Gear80 80mm f/6 Triplet APO Refractor | First Light Optics

and potentially a larger senor like this: 

Altair Hypercam 26C APS-C Colour TEC Astronomy Camera 16bit (altairastro.com)

All in all you will have a more balanced and higher performing system for your money. 

The AM3 is going to handle up to a 100mm refractor easily and the HEM27 certainly will and more. 

Heck even the mini PC is likely to be cheaper than the ASI Air I paid £140 for my mount PC 5 years back and it runs everthing great, you don't need a high performance model a celeron with 8gb ram is fine. 

 

Adam  

 

 

[Elp]

What is your overall budget, and specifically what DSO targets do you want to image? DSO covers widefield and also galaxies the majority of which are quite tiny.

The list you've put together is decent, as mentioned above the mount is a large proportion of budget but should be your main focus of expenditure as well as the tripod it'll be mounted on unless you plan on making a pier yourself which will be the most stable. You'd also have to consider whether you're likely to mount a heavier or larger volume scope afterwards.

You don't need the WO GS, the 30mm SVbony one works fine once you've focused it. You also don't really need the asiair plus, the mini does what you need from it and the WiFi range and connection is much better (plate solving and annotation is slower than the plus, but it's a none issue for me, I've in fact got two minis, and a plus with the latter not being used as much). So these actions will save a bit of money.

Based on my first paragraph will steer you towards what camera due to the FOV it will provide with a given scope. In general larger sensor is better (you can always crop after) but your backspacing has to be better tuned so you can get a flat field of stars across the complete frame, file sizes are larger but again not much of an issue. Main factor then becomes budget. APS-C size from the 2600 is pretty generous and I think the camera we'd all ideally want to start with. The difference in fov is stark compared to a 533, which is capable but can be sometimes restricting, in my case I combine data from different cameras and the inconvenience of having to mosaic the 533 to get the same field as my 183 for example is enough to put me off using it at times. For small targets it's fine. The 294 offers more room to breathe but I will not recommend this sensor to a beginner due to the flats and background extraction issues it causes. I personally when starting to automate everything didn't see an issue going ZWO, and still haven't three years later other than the asiair software updates being iffy and causing issues, I simply use older versions of the software and concentrate on acquiring the data rather than updating the software for features I don't need.

You get more flexibility with fov capture if you have more optics at hand. Often I use camera lenses over my scopes to capture wider fovs without changing camera (my 183 is my workhorse).

Edited January 5 by Elp

[DaveG64]

Thanks I’m replying from another user name as I couldn’t get back on with my other account for some reason kept getting kicked out . Adam J I see what you are saying but don’t mind being tied to one company for now as obviously just starting I do  like your recommendations though what do you think about the IOptron HAE 29 imate with ipolar that way you can run everything through the Mount via drivers not sure how you power things like cameras etc though I suppose through a power block like the Pegasus Astro power box .Elp I like your advice too yes I understand that a good proportion of expenditure should be on the mount , I will have about £5000- £6000 to spend so would be willing to spend £3000-£3500 on a decent mount and tripod then buy cheaper cameras and scope then upgrade those in a couple of years 

[Adam J]

10 minutes ago, DaveG64 said:

Thanks I’m replying from another user name as I couldn’t get back on with my other account for some reason kept getting kicked out . Adam J I see what you are saying but don’t mind being tied to one company for now as obviously just starting I do  like your recommendations though what do you think about the IOptron HAE 29 imate with ipolar that way you can run everything through the Mount via drivers not sure how you power things like cameras etc though I suppose through a power block like the Pegasus Astro power box .Elp I like your advice too yes I understand that a good proportion of expenditure should be on the mount , I will have about £5000- £6000 to spend so would be willing to spend £3000-£3500 on a decent mount and tripod then buy cheaper cameras and scope then upgrade those in a couple of years 

Honestly, I cant make a recommendation on imate as am not familiar with it.  But so long as you have a guide camera then I will say that you don't need to pay more for  Ipolar. My opinion is that nothing gets close to NINA at the moment, it just does it all.  I guess that if it's cheaper than a mini pc and HEM27 combined and Ipolar is well integrated then it could be attractive for that reason. 

Edited January 5 by Adam J

[Elp]

I wouldn't get an imate mount, if something goes wrong with the internal computer you're stuffed. Keep the computer controller external.

If you're using a computer controller you don't need ipolar.

[ollypenrice]

2 hours ago, AKB said:

The diagonal measurement seems to be 15.97mm (according to FLO) so about 0.6 of an inch.

Your point still stands that bigger is better, of course, but one inch is nearly as big as an ASI2600?

Tony

The diagonal of the 2600 is 28.3mm which, for me, seems an awful lot bigger than 15.97mm...

I agree with the thrust of Adam J's analysis of budget and priorities.

Regarding tying yourself to one manufacturer or system, I would say don't.  Leave yourself with as many options as possible for when software starts acting the goat and for when a new option appears on the market. Although this may not be an option for you, I can tell you as someone who hosts a number of remotely operated rigs that a basic desktop near the mount, with a lot of USB ports and no hubs or astro-dedicated computing hardware, is very, very reliable.

Olly

 

 

[alacant]

4 hours ago, ollypenrice said:

the 533 strikes me as a bit small

+1.

I've never understood the logic in paying €large for telescopes which produce a nice big flat field. Then discarding most of it by using just a small bit in the centre.

[Elp]

You'll see the benefit of large flat fields when doing mosaics. Otherwise as you imply, not worth worrying about too much.

[AKB]

2 hours ago, alacant said:

I've never understood the logic in paying €large for telescopes which produce a nice big flat field. Then discarding most of it by using just a small bit in the centre.

…because they often come with nice big apertures?

[AKB]

3 hours ago, ollypenrice said:

The diagonal of the 2600 is 28.3mm which, for me, seems an awful lot bigger than 15.97mm...

Ah yes, but not a lot bigger than the 25.4mm which you originally quoted for the 533. 

I don’t have an axe to grind, I was just trying to correct diameter stated for that camera.  Sorry to the OP for going off topic!

Tony

Edited January 5 by AKB

[Mandy D]

2 minutes ago, AKB said:

Ah yes, but not a lot bigger than the 25.4mm which you originally quoted for the 533. 

A 1 inch sensor, paradoxically, is not 25.4 mm diagonal nor side length. It all goes back to the videcon tubes, where the tube diameter was measured, but the imaging component in the tube was much smaller. There are great articles on Wikipedia that explain this.

 

[AKB]

Just now, Mandy D said:

A 1 inch sensor, paradoxically, is not 25.4 mm diagonal nor side length.

I stand corrected. 

[ollypenrice]

9 hours ago, AKB said:

Ah yes, but not a lot bigger than the 25.4mm which you originally quoted for the 533. 

I don’t have an axe to grind, I was just trying to correct diameter stated for that camera.  Sorry to the OP for going off topic!

Tony

Hi Tony, I haven't found anywhere which gives that as the diagonal. Here, for example:

https://www.astroshop.eu/astronomical-cameras/zwo-camera-asi-533-mc-pro-color/p,64475#specifications

Had the chip been as you thought then it would indeed have been insignificantly smaller than the APSc.

Three loud cheers for Astroshop EU in the link above because they give the chip size in mm, x axis and y.  Why on earth is this vital information not stated clearly on every spec sheet? It is infuriating. I've been banging on about this for years. You need these dimensions for plugging into planetaria to give simulations of field of view. This is certainly something the OP should do before choosing any camera.

Olly

[Elp]

Zwo always give xy dimensions, as well as all the useful information you'd need. I don't like their graphs though, some are non linear scales so misrepresent the FWD curves for example when comparing cameras, which you can also compare specs side by side on their website up to three cameras at a time unless if they've changed the site as there's a new store one of theirs uploaded recently.

[DaveG64]

Thanks I’m replying from another user name as I couldn’t get back on with my other account for some reason kept getting kicked out . Adam J I see what you are saying but don’t mind being tied to one company for now as obviously just starting I do  like your recommendations though what do you think about the IOptron HAE 29 imate with ipolar that way you can run everything through the Mount via drivers not sure how you power things like cameras etc though I suppose through a power block like the Pegasus Astro power box 

[DaveG64]

Hi guys I’ve decided to go for the Starfield gear 80 f6 triplet that Adam J recommended so what would be a good CMOS /CCD camera to go with this I was thinking about £1000- £1300 

[ollypenrice]

https://www.teleskop-express.de/shop/product_info.php/info/p14967_TS-Optics-ToupTek-Color-Astro-Camera-2600CP-Sony-IMX571-Sensor-D-28-3-mm.html

In the great tradition of SGL this is over budget but not excessively so. I use one of these and also the ZWO equivalent. I'm happy with it. We use it with a Samyang 135, viz

I think it is all but certain that, if you buy a small chip, you will crave a bigger one and buy twice.

Olly

[Adam J]

1 hour ago, DaveG64 said:

Hi guys I’ve decided to go for the Starfield gear 80 f6 triplet that Adam J recommended so what would be a good CMOS /CCD camera to go with this I was thinking about £1000- £1300 

Honestly I would go with the Altair I recommended:

Altair Hypercam 26C APS-C Colour TEC Astronomy Camera 16bit (altairastro.com) 

It is exactly the same camera as the one Olly just recommended but under a different brand and cheaper even.

Its the same sensor as the ASI2600mc and will perform exactly the same and you will have UK support from Altair. 

I know its not in stock but 2-3weeks is not a long time to wait considering the savings. 

Horsehead Nebula (Barnard 33) (Dustin_Lee_Astrophotography) - Full resolution | AstroBin

Example image.

If you must have ZWO then you choices in that range are:

ASI071

ASI533mc / mm

ASI294mc 

I don't recommend the 294mc for a beginner, the ASI071 is a older but still capable sensor and the ASI533 is as discussed small.....

A difficult choice, but I might actually say the ASI071MC Pro....see this video, its a look at the 2600 vs the 071 sensors. 

 

Adam

 

 

 

[ollypenrice]

22 minutes ago, Adam J said:

Honestly I would go with the Altair I recommended:

Altair Hypercam 26C APS-C Colour TEC Astronomy Camera 16bit (altairastro.com) 

Adam

 

 

 

Agreed.

Olly

[DaveG64]

If I went for a non ZWO camera and then obviously mini pc route would I not need a Powerbox too of some sort to power all the ancillary equipment 

[Adam J]

13 hours ago, DaveG64 said:

If I went for a non ZWO camera and then obviously mini pc route would I not need a Powerbox too of some sort to power all the ancillary equipment 

DC HUB 2 v2 - Deep Sky Dad

or via FLO but it will cost you more:

Deep Sky Dad DC Hub 2 v2 | First Light Optics

Adam

Edited January 7 by Adam J

[Adam J]

13 hours ago, DaveG64 said:

If I went for a non ZWO camera and then obviously mini pc route would I not need a Powerbox too of some sort to power all the ancillary equipment 

Looks like FLO also sell Mini PCs but you might get the same model cheaper on AMAZON. 

Beelink GKMini 8GB Memory 256GB SSD Mini PC | First Light Optics

Adam