I have a C8, Starizona focal reducer, Celestron OAG, ASI174mm, ZWO filter drawer and ASI071MC Pro. This image train is inserted into a Baader SCT Click lock. A lot of weight. A ZWO 2" seven position filter wheels weigh 1.4lbs before filters, 2" five wheel is 17.6 oz. I'm not sure I'd be able to balance the OTA on my AVX mount. I use an ADM saddle so I can slide the OTA forward to achieve somewhat a balance. With an OSC I just use one filter at a time. $80 vs $299/$399 also. I can always upgrade to a filter wheel in the future.
Filter wheels do have more weight and the AVX gets a bit temperamental when you start packing on the pounds. I love my filter drawer and going for integration I only use one filter at a time. If you’re bouncing between wheel or drawer, like you said, the drawer is a lot cheaper and you can always upgrade later. Using a drawer, the only inconvenience I see is if you’re switching targets within the same night and need to go from narrowband to broadband. You’d have to stop and switch filters manually.
I have a 1.25" filter wheel and two 2" filter draws but normally I use the draws. Due to my location and current weather patterns it is very unusual that I will image a target for more than four hours so there is no real benefit of having the wheel. I do occasionally use it, usually when capturing LRGB data with my mono camera as I don't currently own a 2" set of these filters and would not normally capture more than an hour or so of data per filter anyway.
@@Hidden.Light.Photography I use 6.5 / 7nm Ha, OIII, SII filters for narrow band targets with the mono camera and L-Pro, L-eNhance with the OSC camera, although for some targets like galaxies and clusters I just use an IR/UV cut filter. These all seem to give good results depending on the target.
Thanks for your insights. I would like to use my OSC to do some narrowband imaging with the ASKAR C or D series filters. I’m torn between the drawer or wheel as I would like the ease of a wheel but the drawer is less expensive and probably meets my needs of infrequent shifts. What I can’t find though is if one can buy a second filter holder for the drawer to ease shifts? Also, is there a way with NINA to automatically pause the sequence to effect the shift (assuming I have N.I.N.A. report the stoppage to me via text)?
I love my narrowband filter as it yields amazing results! Yes, you can buy extra drawers for the ZWO and Starizona filter drawers. I’m not 100% positive on that with other brands though. As far as NINA, you are able to set a delay start for your sequence in the basic sequencer and you are also able to set another delay start for each additional sequence you have set for the night. I don’t believe NINA has notifications, so what I would do is set an alarm for the approximate finish time and use the delay sequence to give you time to get to the scope and swap filters. What are your thoughts for target switches during the night?
I am still learning how to use the NINA Advanced Sequencer, but I viewed Patriot Astro’s video on the NINA Plug-In called Ground Control that provides notifications. Sounds interesting for allowing e-mails, texts, and other actions during N.I.N.A. sessions. Regarding your comment on target switches, I am not sure what you mean. I typically just shoot one target using the Legacy sequencer but want to do more once I gain more experience with NINA and get better quality images based on equipment upgrades. I currently lose 1/3 of my subs because of Alt/Az tracking issues when I Blink and another 1/3 because of Seeing and using an old DSLR in WBPP either registration or local normalization failures.
I need to check out ground control. I never heard of it, but this is what I love, learning something new!! My apologies, when you were mentioning switching filters I assumed you meant to change targets. But yea, if you needed to stop mid sequence to change or do something and you it was preplanned, run as many sub frames as you want for the first sequence and set up a second sequence for the remaining. I would still run a time delay and I’m sure the ground control can be set up to let you know when the first sequence stops. I’ve never played with the advanced sequencer as I’ve never had a reason to, but I’m going to be running mono by the end of the year so I’ll start getting on advanced sequencer.
I also meant to address your WBPP issues. Is everything matched between lights and calibration frames? Generally when you see those issues there’s a problem with a setting. I would check to make sure the exact same camera settings were used between lights, darks, flats and dark flats. Have you examined in statistics and fitsheader?
@@Hidden.Light.Photography Thanks for your continued interest in my issues. I found that my WBPP issues can be minimized in local normalization by selecting PSF Signal Weight rather than PSF SNR. It resolves about half of the failures. I use Biases as well as all the other calibration frames from the night I image at the same ISO, exposure time and image train configuration. My issue really is Seeing (Bortle 6), Alt/Az mount, and DSLR (no FITS data) limited to 30 second exposures. I have recently upgraded the mount and camera but it’s been cloudy the last 3 weeks.
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Thanks for the video, this all helps.
You are very welcome! Are you currently running a filter drawer or filter wheel?
@@Hidden.Light.Photography Neither yet. Just planning an AP train - probably going wheel though.
Very good! Keep me posted if you get one and how you like it :)
I have a C8, Starizona focal reducer, Celestron OAG, ASI174mm, ZWO filter drawer and ASI071MC Pro. This image train is inserted into a Baader SCT Click lock. A lot of weight. A ZWO 2" seven position filter wheels weigh 1.4lbs before filters, 2" five wheel is 17.6 oz. I'm not sure I'd be able to balance the OTA on my AVX mount. I use an ADM saddle so I can slide the OTA forward to achieve somewhat a balance. With an OSC I just use one filter at a time. $80 vs $299/$399 also. I can always upgrade to a filter wheel in the future.
Filter wheels do have more weight and the AVX gets a bit temperamental when you start packing on the pounds. I love my filter drawer and going for integration I only use one filter at a time. If you’re bouncing between wheel or drawer, like you said, the drawer is a lot cheaper and you can always upgrade later. Using a drawer, the only inconvenience I see is if you’re switching targets within the same night and need to go from narrowband to broadband. You’d have to stop and switch filters manually.
I have a 1.25" filter wheel and two 2" filter draws but normally I use the draws. Due to my location and current weather patterns it is very unusual that I will image a target for more than four hours so there is no real benefit of having the wheel. I do occasionally use it, usually when capturing LRGB data with my mono camera as I don't currently own a 2" set of these filters and would not normally capture more than an hour or so of data per filter anyway.
That makes perfect sense. What filters are you running?
@@Hidden.Light.Photography I use 6.5 / 7nm Ha, OIII, SII filters for narrow band targets with the mono camera and L-Pro, L-eNhance with the OSC camera, although for some targets like galaxies and clusters I just use an IR/UV cut filter. These all seem to give good results depending on the target.
What bortle do you image in?
@@Hidden.Light.Photography Bortle 5 , any worse and I would need to upgrade my narrow band filters.
What kind of sequence do you run with mono to utilize the filters?
Thanks for your insights. I would like to use my OSC to do some narrowband imaging with the ASKAR C or D series filters. I’m torn between the drawer or wheel as I would like the ease of a wheel but the drawer is less expensive and probably meets my needs of infrequent shifts. What I can’t find though is if one can buy a second filter holder for the drawer to ease shifts? Also, is there a way with NINA to automatically pause the sequence to effect the shift (assuming I have N.I.N.A. report the stoppage to me via text)?
I love my narrowband filter as it yields amazing results! Yes, you can buy extra drawers for the ZWO and Starizona filter drawers. I’m not 100% positive on that with other brands though. As far as NINA, you are able to set a delay start for your sequence in the basic sequencer and you are also able to set another delay start for each additional sequence you have set for the night. I don’t believe NINA has notifications, so what I would do is set an alarm for the approximate finish time and use the delay sequence to give you time to get to the scope and swap filters. What are your thoughts for target switches during the night?
I am still learning how to use the NINA Advanced Sequencer, but I viewed Patriot Astro’s video on the NINA Plug-In called Ground Control that provides notifications. Sounds interesting for allowing e-mails, texts, and other actions during N.I.N.A. sessions.
Regarding your comment on target switches, I am not sure what you mean. I typically just shoot one target using the Legacy sequencer but want to do more once I gain more experience with NINA and get better quality images based on equipment upgrades. I currently lose 1/3 of my subs because of Alt/Az tracking issues when I Blink and another 1/3 because of Seeing and using an old DSLR in WBPP either registration or local normalization failures.
I need to check out ground control. I never heard of it, but this is what I love, learning something new!! My apologies, when you were mentioning switching filters I assumed you meant to change targets. But yea, if you needed to stop mid sequence to change or do something and you it was preplanned, run as many sub frames as you want for the first sequence and set up a second sequence for the remaining. I would still run a time delay and I’m sure the ground control can be set up to let you know when the first sequence stops. I’ve never played with the advanced sequencer as I’ve never had a reason to, but I’m going to be running mono by the end of the year so I’ll start getting on advanced sequencer.
I also meant to address your WBPP issues. Is everything matched between lights and calibration frames? Generally when you see those issues there’s a problem with a setting. I would check to make sure the exact same camera settings were used between lights, darks, flats and dark flats. Have you examined in statistics and fitsheader?
@@Hidden.Light.Photography Thanks for your continued interest in my issues. I found that my WBPP issues can be minimized in local normalization by selecting PSF Signal Weight rather than PSF SNR. It resolves about half of the failures. I use Biases as well as all the other calibration frames from the night I image at the same ISO, exposure time and image train configuration. My issue really is Seeing (Bortle 6), Alt/Az mount, and DSLR (no FITS data) limited to 30 second exposures. I have recently upgraded the mount and camera but it’s been cloudy the last 3 weeks.