ASIAIR Plus + EAF on the EdgeHD makes OAG Focus Super Easy!
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 15 ต.ค. 2024
- If you get an OAG, you will not only have to achieve focus on the main camera, but simultaneously on the guide camera too. This may sound pretty daunting, but if you also own an ASIAIR and the EAF, setting this all up is super easy.
The video will also shortly show how to upgrade the firmware on your EAF.
#asiairpro #asiairplus #zwo #optolong #ioptron #cem40 #celestron #edgehd #williamoptics #gt81
My links
----
TWITTER: / mjschoenmaker
INSTAGRAM: / astrokoplamp
TELESCOPIUS: telescopius.co...
----
Music/Sound effects:
Space - Saturn Dust - / @saturndust
"Subscribe Button" by MrNumber112 • Free Download: Subscri...
----
Edited in #Shotcut www.shotcut.org/
![[DRIP] ‘Love, Maybe’ PREVIEW](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/U7hwHp95m1k/mqdefault.jpg)
Thank you so much. That course adjustment with the guide camera has been plaguing me, because I relied solely on the helio focuser. I now know, that my next time out will be a success! Here we go with attempt number 5 tomorrow night!
Good luck and clear skies!
Thank you for this very well produced video as usual! It's exactly what I wanted and now it's much clearer to me! 👌🏻👍🏻
Great to hear! Thanks for watching. And if you think of further questions, don’t hesitate to ask 👍
Thanks for this and your other videos on the Edge 8 HD, the OAG, the .7 focal reducer and all the accessories that go with it! We have the exact same setup except I have an EQ6 R PRO. I'm headed out to Bortle 1 and 2 skies this weekend with all my gear, so I'm pretty pumped. Thanks again for all your help, Martin! Liked and Subscribed! Aaron.
Bortle 1 🥹 The best conditions I have experienced so far was Bortle 4-5. Clear Skies!
@@KopLamp I live in Bortle 5 and drive an hour to get to Bortle 3. Bortle 2 and 1 are more like 3-4 hours away.
This weekend should be epic, except for that pesky full moon!
thank you for the video on this . your set-up is amazing . Will be watching this again once my OAG arrives. thanks again 👍
Glad you enjoyed it! And I hope your OAG arrives without clouds 😅
Bedankt Martin! Erg duidelijke video. Goede tip van de video modus!
Just bought the Celestron OAG and ASI174MM Mini for my C8. Just in time helpful video.
That is a nice coincidence! Feel free to report back on how it went.
Another excellent well commented video. It is all about the basics.
Glad you liked it! I intend to ad more shorter (not shorts!) videos on just the basics. First though, I have other ideas on my video-todo-list ;-)
Interesting video and cool setup Martin. What helical focuser are you using? Clear skies
This helical focuser is part of the Celestron OAG. So I guess the answer is Celestron.
Thanks, it's really well explained. I wonder however, whether you always find guiding stars at the long focus lenght (i am using a Lodestar, which is extremely sensitive, and sometimes (poor seeing conditions) it's hard... Moreover, does plate solving of the ASIAIR work well with the C11? It's a narrow FOV at 2800mm.. (or with the reducer at 2000). thanks, Tony
Plate solves sometimes fail but that is mostly due to external factors such as high clouds, not dark enough (52°N) or the focus being off.
Finding a guide star works almost always with the 174MM mini.
My scope is by the way the 9.25”. No idea whether or not it would be just as smooth with an 11”
Thank you! I will give it all a try.
Your songs made me laugh especially when you said “no roses.”
Wonderful! (Get it? Wonderful? 😅) I totally forgot about that silliness 😇
Thank you, I'm feeling very lucky, I have virtually the same set up and am at this stage of the process. Have spent hours measuring spacers and combining them to get close to the published perfect back focus, and, of course, today is raining and blowing a gale. Will be adopting your approach asap. Quick question, is updating the eaf firmware needed to achieve this, because I noticed zwo advise, as far as cameras go, if they are working not to update. Just wondering. And again thanks for the video and humour. 👍
I did the firmware upgrade to get a bigger focus range. Originally the max value was 65000 but now it is 1000000.
This helps when changing from daytime viewing to nighttime viewing. But also when switching from native focal length to reducer. Sometimes the focus movement would exceed the original range. Not a problem perse as you can simply change the current position back to 0 in order to have new room to move (if I make sense). With the fw upgrade this should be a thing of the past.
I also now could put my focus back to its night time position afterwards. Technically the firmware upgrade wasn’t needed as I started with setting it to 60000 and only had to move down.
Thank you.
At little off topic. I haven't gotten to the point of installing my Celestron OAG and ASI174MM Mini. Like you I want to use the ASIAir to manage the equipment but for the life of me I can not get reliable GO TO functionality from the ASIAir. My set up is C8 SCT on an AVX mount. My current camera is an ASI585MC planetary but I also have a Nikon D5100 DSLR which is also supported by ASIAir. I know you have the AM5 mount. I'm also interested in the ASI294MC since its on sale now. When I use the ASIAir Plus 256 (V2.1.1 10-74) with either camera more often then not GO TO doesn't work. The mount will slew close but wont't center then it will go off to another part of the sky. I'll restart everything and sometimes it may work. If I then change to the 6.3 focal reducer then seems to be a little more reliable but the next session it won't work and ASIAir seems lost. Have you had any plate solving and go to issues with your ASIAir using the ASI294? I'm wondering if ASIAir just doesn't work well with the Celestron AVX mount. When I do get on an object and get it centered I'll plate solve and perform Sync to Mount but the next target ASIAir gets lost. But when it is working, maybe 1 out of 3 attempts it will find and center. I don't know if its the long focal length (2032 or 1280 with 6.3 focal reducer) or the small sensor of the ASi585 but the large APS-C sensor has issues also.
Regards to the OAG are there any issues using it with the ASI294. Any shadows from the prism? Is it easy to calibrate away the amp glow. Are you taking Flats at exposures greater than 3 seconds. I've read reports of owners of ASI294 having calibration issues. Thanks.
I will have to do some more calculations but it seems to me that your camera gives you a field of view of 0.31° x 0.18°. The vertical FOV is just below the platesolve limit of the ASIAIR Plus 0.2°
Platesolving only succeeds for objects between -60° and +60° declination, so that can also cause intermittent success.
I’ll follow up with a more detailed answer, but the basic gist is what I wrote above.
Thanks. I'm at 37° latitude. I checked in astronomy.tools the FOV calculator the ASI585 show 0.31° x 18* at F/10 and with the 6.3 focal reducer 0.5° x 0.28°. I guess 0.28° is cutting it too close. I read on the online forums ASIAir plate solving limits is 0.2°. The 2018 manual show 0.4°. They also recommend setting the BIN to 4. So do you keep the BIN to 4 to find targets and then change to BIN 1 to start the imaging session? I plugged in the specs for a 100mm telescope and the FOV changes to 1.16° x 0.65° at F/10 for the ASi585. I can see why users with small refractors aren't having issues. Are you having calibration issues with your ASI294MC? I've heard complaints about calibration issues. The other cameras I'm considering are ASI533MC Pro (.32° x .32°) , ASI071MC Pro (.67° x .44°) at F/10. ASi294MC Pro is .54° x .37°. A focal reducer increases those values. Do you always use a focal reducer when imaging with your C8 Edge? Thanks
I also noticed in the Sensor Suitability the smaller the sensor more likely to over sample especially at F/10.
This reply was hidden in a "held for review" section, so I didn't see it immediately (because it contained a link).
Your latitude is not wat matters. The declination of the objects you try to do a platesolve at, is what matters. Too close to the celestial pole and platesolves get increasingly difficult. The improved processing power of the later ASIAIR models make smaller field of views possible to run platesolves, so that is why you previously saw 0.4 degrees mentioned as the lower limit.
I manage to platesolve successfully with my ASI294MC Pro and the EdgeHD 8 (but also the 9,25) at f/10.
Thanks for the slap in the side of my head 🤣🤣 Having all kinds of issues in the cold at night trying to set up this on my 9.25 Edge - never thought of doing it in the day. Duh....
Hope you got it sorted! And… sorry for the slap 😅
Good explanitory video for the OAG. What do you enter as the FL of your "guide camera" when using an OAG??
The same as your main optic.
@@KopLamp : Ok, thanks for the info. Am I clear is thinking that the back focus should be the same for the guide camera as the main camera?
@microreniassance2929 If you have your backfocus correct on the main camera and you are in focus with it, then focusing the guide camera should get you to where you need to be.
Good info. Thanks. I'm going to try getting everything in focus in the daylight and then tuning it up at night. There's so much contradicting information about back focus, it's a wonder anyone withoug a degree in optics can figure it out!@@KopLamp
Ok, got it!
Great video! I also make the sound of the noise of my AsiAir and my mount gets turned on lol! Clear skies!
There are far worse habits possible 😅
@@KopLamp 😂😂😂
Great Video! I have a dumb question. How do you calibrate the EAF for max in/out? I can't find any videos on this. I have the Celestron Electronic Focuser and it has a calibration routine to find the max in/out of my EdgeHD8. However whenever I use it, my AVX disconnects from the ASIair +. So I finish focusing then restart the ASIair+ and go from there. So I decided to go with the EAF, but can find anything about determining the max in/out focus. What am I missing? Thanks.
You usually don’t really get within the outer limits of your focus travel. I recommend making sure you have the latest firmware in the EAF so the max amount of steps increases.
What I did was manually focusing on the Moon and then setting the current EAF position in the ASIAIR to something like 30000.
@@KopLamp Thanks. Thats what I ended up doing!
Thank you for this video.
You’re welcome. Hope it helps easing the learning curve 💪
I am about to get this OAG for using with my GSO 6 inch RC. But I live in Bortle 6-7 city sky. Afraid if I can get enough guide stars to see in that narrow FOV ? I have QHY 5LIIM guide camera. Do you get enough stars for guiding?
I had issues initially, but since I have the ASI174MM mini all problems are gone. Also bottle 6-7
I recently bought an Edge HD 8 and I got the 174 MM Mini for it. Have you had issues with it guiding during auto-focus routine? I usually get focus and disable the EAF due to fears of the OAG going haywire during an imaging session. Do you adjust focus for your OAG whenever you put in a filter in your drawer?
I use the ASIAIR system. During an autofocus the system is not taking subs (except for gathering the focus info) and as such guiding is not a huge concern then.
Turning off the EAF during an image run essentially negates most of the benefits of having an automatic focuser. Usually when imaging, temperature shifts (and in case of the SCT telescopes, shifting of the mirror) make it necessary to refocus once in a while.
Changing filters indeed is another reason for doing a refocus. Unless your filters are par-focal.
@@KopLamp thank you for your reply! I was thinking back on my issues using the edge and the OAG :) I encountered guiding issues during my imaging session when my EAF needed to refocus. Perhaps that was more directly related to the guide camera I was using at the time (ASI 290 MM Mini) I recently purchased the 174 but have not had clear skies to really get good use out of it
I took the same gear-acquisitioning-route. I bought the 290MM mini first for the OAG. Guiding went ok, but finding a guide star was difficult at times. I had Stellarium setup in such a way that I could use the ocular plugin to also visualize the FOV of the guide camera in the OAG. That way I could frame my targets in such a way that both before and after the meridian a bright enough star would be available for guiding.
Now with the 174MM mini I never worried about finding a guide star again. Although.... I recently upgraded from the EdgeHD 8 to the 9.25, and - same as you have experienced - sky conditions haven't been favorable enough to get enough time under the stars to come to the same conclusion for the 925.
Thanks Martin.
You're welcome. Hope it helps.
hey there, what tripod are you using for the AM5 and the PE200 pier? thanks
In the video I use my iOptron Literoc tripod.
Top video. Want ik krijg de tracking maar niet voor elkaar met de OAG. Heb zelfde guidecam maar niet de mini.
Bedankt voor het kijken. Ik heb wel eens mensen gezien die een niet-mini-camera inzetten voor guiding. Ik hoop dat mijn video je helpt en het voor elkaar laat krijgen.
which tripod are you using with the AM-5 Martin?
When out traveling I use the TC40 carbon tripod. When at home I have a PE200 which allows me to mount the AM5 on my iOptron Literoc tripod
Have almost the same setup as you cs8 edge Hd, would i need a OAG for planetary watch/Phtography. ?
Thanks for watching. Whether you need an OAG is depending on what you mean with photography. If you want to stick to planetary, I would not go for an OAG. Guiding is more meant to help pointing during long exposures. With planetary you will be mostly wanting to get the shortest exposures possible. You will most like be filming instead as a video is many short exposures in a row ;-) With those short exposures, the guiding-errors of the mount are not your biggest concern.
Thanks for your reply, at this time Planets will do for now..heheeh just need to get the back focus correct.( have watch your vidoe on back focus) will probably watch both of these videos many times.
OMG, OAG on EDGE HD with EAF on ZWO AM5 and ASI Air. Acronyms to learn 😂
I’ve explained EAF as I noticed it might be reason for questions. But you gave me a video idea, thanks!
By the way:
Off Axis Guider
High Definition Edges
Electronic Automatic Focuser
Automatic Mount (5th version before release?)
Don’t even know the meaning of ZWO nor ASI 😇😅
Doesn’t help much 😅 astronomy-imaging-camera.com/tutorials/naming-rule-of-asi-cameras/
Cheer`s
Great explaination Martin, I have the same setup and must change my gain to 400 to guide, do you have the same issue?
I guide on high gain indeed. Not really an issue in my experience.
@@KopLamp Thanks