Holidays are coming, ready to bring your refractor in remote areas ?
I live in Hong Kong in a small remote village by the sea, it’s a really a cool place.
From my rooftop I have a 100° field of view covering north to southeast where I can connect my telescope to the grid while “enjoying” a Bortle 7/6 grayish sky which makes me envy Cuiv the Lazy Geek in Tokyo!
Observing conditions are bad most of the time with an average of 10 decent nights a year.
If I want to cover the whole sky, I could pack my stuff and walk 400m to a darker location, where I can reach the magnificent Bortle 5, once a year...
So don’t even think of going to Hong Kong for astrophotography but from there you can easily fly to Okinawa, Borneo up to Australia to enjoy much better condition in the wild, or take the train to Tibet!
Then, I travel whenever my schedule and the moon allow, but not that many time tho.
This is where the problem of the power supply for your configuration arises.
For over a year now, I've been working with Powerbanks, which have been a game-changer for me, as you can easily carry up to two in the cabin when flying without weighing down your backpack, assuming that an extra kilo for two batteries won’t ruin your back.
Thanks to the new Power Delivery (PD) technology, now mature, you can deliver the right voltage up to 20 volts @ 5A to all your equipment.
PD comes with a protocol allowing negotiation of up to 100W power delivery to supply equipment connected over USB-C cable.
In a nutshell, PD can arbitrary and dynamically change the voltage according to the connected compatible electronic device.
Your phone will ask for 9 volts while your Bluetooth earbuds will claim for 6.
Of course, your mount, your CMOS camera and even your heater don’t have any idea of their requirements but this can be achieved with the proper PD cable.
A type C to 2.5mm PD cable or just a 2.5mm dongle with the PD chipset embedded into the USB plug
So, the first step will be to find the PD cable suiting the need of your equipment as long the requirement doesn’t exceed 20 Volts @ 5A.
Usually the proposed outputs are 5, 9, 12, 15 and 20 volts at 100W max.
Always check the specs of your DC power before and be aware of the size of your socket (2.5, 2.1mm …) but also where is located the positive current, mostly in the center.
JORINDO, provides among other brands this type of cables which costs around 3USD (yes, 3USD) on AliExpress (Yes, I live in China) and can also be found on Amazon at a higher price…
The store: https://www.aliexpress.com/store/4643089
A 12v cable: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005001512019528.html
Once you got the cables, you can go for the power bank. As a traveler, I’m trying to be the lighter on equipment, from 7kg with Askar ACL200 to 12kg with FRA500, including the tripod.
My max power-hungry config could be the following:
This config will need 8.8 Ampere for a 6h of night slewing and tracking leading to a consumption of 52,800mAh (A x H x 1000).
As there is no power bank of this size (not allowed in a plane), you must split in two to fit the airlines requirements as a carry-on luggage.
As an example, we will use those two similar models which are roughly in the same price range < 75USD, with 3 USB ports and weight about 500g each…
The ANKER 537 @65W with 24,000mhA
The EGO HYPER 30 @130W with 30,000mhA
And let’s do the math to have the best fit with always the same formulas in one way or another:
Volts x Ampere = Watt and AvailableHours = mhA / (TotalAmp x 1000)
On the ANKER
with a TotalAmp of 3.8A and 6.32h of juice
On the EGO
with a TotalAmp of 5A and 6h of juice
Those are good approximation as you can imagine, nor with saying a mount is more power hungry when slewing than tracking and you are rarely shooting when aiming to target!
On the other side, if your PC configuration has been optimized in Windows 11, you will draw less power as specified.
Roughly, you can expect a full night of shooting without any problem.
Below, I’m using just the ANKER 537 to power my camera and my mount, and I had enough juice for 3h30mn of action!
And yes, the mount on the USB-C2 with 12v @1.67A is still operating fine with the camera plugged into my portable computer.
I must say, HEM15 is not power hungry at all !
And with my computer's luminance set to minimum, not that obvious on the photo, I could have recorded over 6 hours that night, far more than my powerbank but with RisingSky software.
NINA is much more demanding and the Mele PC is the config of choice in that case.
I live in Hong Kong in a small remote village by the sea, it’s a really a cool place.
From my rooftop I have a 100° field of view covering north to southeast where I can connect my telescope to the grid while “enjoying” a Bortle 7/6 grayish sky which makes me envy Cuiv the Lazy Geek in Tokyo!
Observing conditions are bad most of the time with an average of 10 decent nights a year.
If I want to cover the whole sky, I could pack my stuff and walk 400m to a darker location, where I can reach the magnificent Bortle 5, once a year...
So don’t even think of going to Hong Kong for astrophotography but from there you can easily fly to Okinawa, Borneo up to Australia to enjoy much better condition in the wild, or take the train to Tibet!
Then, I travel whenever my schedule and the moon allow, but not that many time tho.
This is where the problem of the power supply for your configuration arises.
For over a year now, I've been working with Powerbanks, which have been a game-changer for me, as you can easily carry up to two in the cabin when flying without weighing down your backpack, assuming that an extra kilo for two batteries won’t ruin your back.
Thanks to the new Power Delivery (PD) technology, now mature, you can deliver the right voltage up to 20 volts @ 5A to all your equipment.
PD comes with a protocol allowing negotiation of up to 100W power delivery to supply equipment connected over USB-C cable.
In a nutshell, PD can arbitrary and dynamically change the voltage according to the connected compatible electronic device.
Your phone will ask for 9 volts while your Bluetooth earbuds will claim for 6.
Of course, your mount, your CMOS camera and even your heater don’t have any idea of their requirements but this can be achieved with the proper PD cable.
A type C to 2.5mm PD cable or just a 2.5mm dongle with the PD chipset embedded into the USB plug
So, the first step will be to find the PD cable suiting the need of your equipment as long the requirement doesn’t exceed 20 Volts @ 5A.Usually the proposed outputs are 5, 9, 12, 15 and 20 volts at 100W max.
Always check the specs of your DC power before and be aware of the size of your socket (2.5, 2.1mm …) but also where is located the positive current, mostly in the center.
JORINDO, provides among other brands this type of cables which costs around 3USD (yes, 3USD) on AliExpress (Yes, I live in China) and can also be found on Amazon at a higher price…
The store: https://www.aliexpress.com/store/4643089
A 12v cable: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005001512019528.html
Once you got the cables, you can go for the power bank. As a traveler, I’m trying to be the lighter on equipment, from 7kg with Askar ACL200 to 12kg with FRA500, including the tripod.
My max power-hungry config could be the following:
This config will need 8.8 Ampere for a 6h of night slewing and tracking leading to a consumption of 52,800mAh (A x H x 1000).
As there is no power bank of this size (not allowed in a plane), you must split in two to fit the airlines requirements as a carry-on luggage.
As an example, we will use those two similar models which are roughly in the same price range < 75USD, with 3 USB ports and weight about 500g each…
The ANKER 537 @65W with 24,000mhA
The EGO HYPER 30 @130W with 30,000mhA
And let’s do the math to have the best fit with always the same formulas in one way or another:
Volts x Ampere = Watt and AvailableHours = mhA / (TotalAmp x 1000)
On the ANKER - The Dew Heater @9W will match the USB-A1
- The Mount @24W will match the USB-C1
with a TotalAmp of 3.8A and 6.32h of juice
On the EGO
- The Camera @36W will match USB-C1
- The Mini PC @24W the USB-C2
with a TotalAmp of 5A and 6h of juice
Those are good approximation as you can imagine, nor with saying a mount is more power hungry when slewing than tracking and you are rarely shooting when aiming to target!
On the other side, if your PC configuration has been optimized in Windows 11, you will draw less power as specified.
Roughly, you can expect a full night of shooting without any problem.
Below, I’m using just the ANKER 537 to power my camera and my mount, and I had enough juice for 3h30mn of action!
And yes, the mount on the USB-C2 with 12v @1.67A is still operating fine with the camera plugged into my portable computer.
I must say, HEM15 is not power hungry at all !
And with my computer's luminance set to minimum, not that obvious on the photo, I could have recorded over 6 hours that night, far more than my powerbank but with RisingSky software.
NINA is much more demanding and the Mele PC is the config of choice in that case.
