Hi everyone, I am getting new equipment, specifically, a new 7 position 36 mm filter wheel, a new 8 inch Skywatcher imaging Newtonian, and I got a set of 36 mm optolong lrgb and narrowband filters, my question is, does anyone image with a similar setup? Also my camera is a qhy 163 mono, I would appreciate any advice on getting the best performance from this setup, such as what kind of coma corrector is best? Best way to collimate scope, etc. Any help will be much appreciated!
New equipment
I threw away (literally) my Optolong kit. Narrowbands suck, particularly the OIII one: very bad halos around stars. Take in consideration that TS, Tecnosky and many others sell Optolong marked with their names but are produced by Optolong.
I suggest Baader, Astronomik or Astrodon (ascending order of quality). Someone told me about Chroma as equivalent to Astrodon, but I’ve never heard user reviews about them.
With my sensor (it’s a micro 4/3 format as yours) I use 27mm filters and I’ve seen many using 1,25”. Astronomik has 27mm, but you can also buy 1,25” and disassemble the ring: basically the diameter is the same. Smaller are cheaper and you would afford a better quality kit😉
I suggest Baader, Astronomik or Astrodon (ascending order of quality). Someone told me about Chroma as equivalent to Astrodon, but I’ve never heard user reviews about them.
With my sensor (it’s a micro 4/3 format as yours) I use 27mm filters and I’ve seen many using 1,25”. Astronomik has 27mm, but you can also buy 1,25” and disassemble the ring: basically the diameter is the same. Smaller are cheaper and you would afford a better quality kit😉
Optolong's current generation of narrowband filters should be good - a buddy of mine does testing for them and he says they're all halo-free now. And I have their hydrogen alpha filter and it's definitely halo-free (can't say that about my ZWO Ha filter). I also own a Chroma OIII and love it. I plan on getting more Chroma filters (and probably more Optolong filters for my other camera).
I run two telescopes now, but I mainly image with an 8 inch f/3.9 Newtonian from Explore Scientific and a ZWO 1600 on an AZ-EQ5 (slightly different flavors of the same gear as you). I use the Explore Scientific HR coma corrector and love it. For broadband, I generally shoot at unity gain for 150 seconds and for narrowband, I generally do 300 seconds except on very dim targets.
Are you going to be doing off-axis guiding by any chance?
I run two telescopes now, but I mainly image with an 8 inch f/3.9 Newtonian from Explore Scientific and a ZWO 1600 on an AZ-EQ5 (slightly different flavors of the same gear as you). I use the Explore Scientific HR coma corrector and love it. For broadband, I generally shoot at unity gain for 150 seconds and for narrowband, I generally do 300 seconds except on very dim targets.
Are you going to be doing off-axis guiding by any chance?
I haven't had a problem with my optolong filters, I've had the 1.25 inch ones, but I got some vignetting, with my qhy camera at lower than f 5, so I stepped up to the 36 mm, got a good deal on a set from cloudy nights, and hot the zwo 7 position wheel, I am not planning on off axis guiding, I generally use my at 60, or a 50 mm guide scope, I will look into the explore scientific coma corrector, and I would love to have astrodon, or baader filters but they are out of my price range, thanks for the advice, also , what is the backfocus for the explore scientific corrector?
It's 55 mm with the 42 mm ring on it, and a little less with the 48 mm ring on it (but I can't remember how much).
I believe that the explore scientific one comes with the m42 and m48 adapters?
Yes, as well as an adapter for visual use.
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