ZWO ASI120MM S USB3.0 CMOS Astronomy Camera

Well I just got my ASI120MM S USB3.0 camera through via DHL. Ordered it direct from ZWO Optical on AliExpress and paid £250, then had to pay an extra £19 on import duty etc. But still a bit cheaper than buying from 365Astronomy – they were also out of stock at time of ordering.

The video shows below me unboxing it, and what it looks like.

This is a still image of my desk at 1280×960 on the ASI120MM S with the CCTV lens attached.

ASI120MM S USB3 Camera

I used the default capture software AMCap to get this still. Remember to install the correct drivers from the CD or from the ZWO website before you plug the camera into the PC.

ASI120MM S CMOS Camera

The CD is quite good it comes with ASCOM, PC drivers and ST4 software, as well as all the different ZWO camera driver versions. There is also some PC and Mac software on the disc. PHD2 and oaCapture for the Apple Mac and FireCapture and SharpCap as well as PHD2 for the PC.

I have now installed the camera on my observatory PC. The install was easy. I also installed the ASCOM drivers as well FireCapture and SharpCap 2.

I began with SharpCap 2, but found the best fps I could get was around 70fps at 640×480 (it was 30fps at 1280×960). Other people had reported around 100fps. So I loaded FireCapture – which I must say seems to have a lot more functionality than SharpCap.

I tried my tests again in FireCapture and at 640×480 I was now getting 106fps-116fps. So it seems which software you use makes a difference, unless some other settings were different.

It appears that the ASI120MM S is a very sharp camera and so far I am very impressed with it.

QHY5 vs DMK21 for Guiding

I have always used my QHY5 for guiding, most of the time attached to a Skywatcher 9×50 finderscope and it has worked quite well.

But while at Kelling Heath this year I purchased an Altair Astro 80mm guidescope. Did I need to? I don’t know, may be a 60mm would have been a good upgrade as opposed to going for the larger 80mm. But anyway, I have now started to realise that the original QHY5 does suffer from some image degradation in the form of banding. (I do already use simple dark frames with the QHY5 camera).

Now instead of purchasing a QHY5 II Mono, I have been thinking about using my DMK21 AU618 camera instead.

I know the DMK21 sensor is half the size of the QHY5, so finding a guide star may be harder – but I bet the quality of the image will be a lot better. Plus it would mean I would not need to purchase a new camera but use the DMK21 that I already own.

So on the next clear night I shall try out the DMK21 for autoguiding and see what happens and report back.

UPDATE: 11th November 2014

Well last night I went out and tried the DMK21 for guiding. It worked OK, in Maxim DL the guiding calibrated OK. But the actual guiding itself was not that smooth, certainly not as smooth as when I use the QHY5.

I don’t think the small sensor and field of view is a major problem, as I found lots of stars in the field of view. But it could be because the DMK21 is only 640×480 – the sensor is so small you can’t bin the camera, so it lacks the sensitivity that you can get with the QHY5 camera when you bin the images as it’s 1280×1024 pixels.

Colourful Harvest Moon Image

Harvest Moon

Here is a very colourful harvest moon taken on 10th September 2014.

I took it on a tripod with my Canon 550d on a 300mm lens.

A Photographic Atlas of Selected Regions of the Milky Way

Photographic Atlas of Milky WayEdward Emerson Barnard’s A Photographic Atlas of Selected Regions of the Milky Way was originally published in two volumes in 1927. These two volumes contained a great deal of information including photographic plates of the most interesting portions of the milky way, descriptions, charts and data. At the time only 700 copies were ever printed, this made the original edition a collector’s edition.

This edition has now been reproduced which contains both volumes of Barnard’s Atlas. This edition now contains high-resolution images of the original photographic plates and charts. There is also a fold-out section with a mosaic of all 50 plates combined into a single panorama.

The main parts of the book include a catalogue of 349 dark objects in the sky, of which 182 were printed in the Astrophysical Journal in January 1919. There is then the catalogue of 352 objects in J2000 co-ordinates.

The first plate and chart is the region of the double cluster in Perseus, each section contains a description of the area and what it contains as well as the objects that are located on the plates and there positions. There is then the chart and plate which are opposite each other on the pages.

The plate images themselves are of very good quality for their age with the charts showing you important objects that can be found on the plates.

At the end of the book plate 52 contains a mosaic of 50 plates taken from the atlas. The end of the book contains a few pages about the life of Edward Emerson Barnard who lived from 1857-1923.

Overall this is a very good book, and the book still seems very much like a collector’s item.


The Photographic Atlas of selected regions of the Milky Way is available at Amazon

Moved from Vista to Windows 7 and added Samsung SSD’s

Well that was a short life for Vista on my observatory PC. I only upgraded from Windows XP Pro to Vista Business in January, but I wanted to add an SSD (Solid State Drive) to my observatory PC to speed things up, so now was a good time to install Windows 7 Professional.

Why Professional? Well, so I can control the observatory PC from the house using the in-built Remote Desktop Connection software.

I have already installed SSD’s in both my laptops and the speed increase is amazing, no more noisy spinning hard drives for me. The price of  SSD’s has also decreased. I bought a Samsung SSD 240GB for my home desktop PC and a Samsung SSD 120GB version for the observatory PC. They cost (in 2014) £85 for the 240GB and about £50 for the 120GB version.

I have decided to keep the previously used hard drives inside the PC but use them for storage of the images and video when they are being recorded by the telescopes, so leaving the SSD drives with just Windows and my astronomy programs on.

 

Scientific Astrophotography Book Review

Scientific AstrophotographyScientific Astrophotography – How Amateurs Can Generate and Use Professional Imaging Data

A chunky book in the Patrick Moore Practical Astronomy series at over 330 pages, as this is a serious subject of contributing to the science of astronomy.

The book is split into three main sections. The first section takes you through your equipment required for making scientific findings. This section takes you through the telescope, mount, cameras, filters and on combining the right telescope with the right CCD camera. There is also a chapter on external factors, namely the weather.

The second section talks about the areas you may be interested in following, whether its lunar imaging, deep sky imaging, planetary imaging, solar imaging or minor planetary imaging. There is then a chapter on planning your observing and imaging session. There is also a chapter which discusses imaging file formats, and how to collect and calibrate your images.

The final chapter in this section is about putting it all into practice and it lists various procedures for collimation, polar alignment, setting up your guidescope, how to focus and about getting your dark, flat, bias and light frames. This chapter also lists the procedures for imaging deep sky and solar objects – large and small.

Now once you have acquired your data part three covers processing and analysing your data. This includes astrometry, photometry, spectroscopy and planetary topography and feature analysis.

There is then a chapter on how to submit your findings to scientific organisations. The last chapter is quite nice as it talks about amateur astronomers getting access to the professional level observatories.

There are five appendices; the first covering acronyms used in the book, the second is a training syllabus, the third contains photometric uncertainty calculations, the fourth is good as it gives you example imaging setups, with a cross section of the authors imaging setup. The fifth appendix lists where to find software on the web.


Scientific Astrophotography is available at Amazon

One Shot Colour Astronomical Imaging Book Review

One Shot Color Astronomical ImagingThe book begins describing in detail what a colour CCD is and how it works. The next chapters then go through all the equipment you will need to undertake astronomical imaging. including mounts, telescopes, dew prevention, light boxes.

The next chapters go into detail about planning your imaging sessions and getting your equipment setup. There is then a chapter on focusing and framing your objects. The book also gives a chapter over to calibration which includes taking dark frames and flat frames. How to take exposures and auto guiding is covered.

The next couple of chapters then go into some detail on how to process your images. Histograms, stacking images, luminance layers, calibration, and sharpening, blurring, deconvolution and digital development are all covered.

The final chapter covers imaging other objects including solar imaging, comets, asteroids, photometry, astrometry and hunting for supernovae. There is a nice glossary at the rear of the book together with a list of the Messier and Caldwell objects and how to find them.

It’s a shame the images in the book are in black and white, as having colour images would be a lot better. I also had a number of pages in my version of the book with badly printed images; a number of images had lines across them.

This is quite a new book published in 2012, but it does feel slightly dated in some places. The author has used a Meade LX200 in his images with screenshots from the Meade DSI software. I don’t think a lot of people use this camera anymore other than as a guider, as there are a lot better cameras now on the market. Another point that when talking about taking Mosaics, Photoshop is mentioned, but not that there is an automatic piece of software called ‘Photomerge’ that can create mosaics for you, or there is the free Microsoft ICE software.

But please don’t think One Shot Color Astronomical Imaging is just for people with colour CCD cameras or those with DSLR cameras, as the book contains lots of good advice and tips for any imager – even if you have a mono CCD camera. This is a great book for imaging as it takes through all the steps required in order to generate pleasing images.

One Shot Colour Astronomical Imaging is thoroughly recommended if you want a good overview of how to get into imaging no matter whether you have a mono or colour camera.


One Shot Colour Astronomical Imaging is available at Amazon

3000 Deep Sky Objects – An Annotated Catalogue Book Review

3000 Deep Sky ObjectsIn this book from Springer part of the Patrick Moore series, Ted Aranda has chosen 3000 objects that he viewed over a number of years using his own homemade binocular telescope.

The book contains a number of different objects including bright stars, double stars, variable stars, galaxies, globular clusters, nebulae, open clusters and planetary nebulae.

The book begins with an introduction on how to use the book, what the author used to view the objects and what each parameter means in the book and how to use the catalogue itself.

The main catalogue of objects is in the second part of the book, where you will find the objects divided into the seasons.

Each deep-sky object entry shows you the classification of the object e.g. ga for galaxy. You then get the astronomical catalogue number, the RA and Dec co-ordinates and in what constellation the object exists. Depending on what object you are looking at there is then more information. This may include visual magnitude, size, separation sizes for double stars etc.

Under each object there is then a description and further notes on the object written by the author.

At the rear of the book is an appendix about how to make your own star atlas, as well as a nice chapter on how to build your own binocular telescope with some good colour images of the author’s telescope. An index listed by object is also included at the end of the book.

Overall this is quite a thick book at over 550 pages and it contains many objects, it’s very thorough and nicely laid out. But this book is not really for me, I like a lot of colourful images to see what it is I should be looking at. I would have liked to have had less objects in the book but instead have images with most of them, even if they were just black and white images.

3000 Deep Sky Objects is available at Amazon

A Question and Answer Guide to Astronomy Book Review

A Question and Answer Guide to AstronomyA Question and Answer Guide to Astronomy book contains 250 astronomy questions and answers.

This is a brilliant book if you want to get to the bare facts about astronomy and learn simply about the main topics you want to know.

The book is divided into 10 sections, these are: Stars, The Solar System, The Earth, The Moon, Celestial phenomena, The Universe, Life in the Universe, History of astronomy, Telescopes and Amateur astronomy.

Each question is answered very well in simple terms and no answer is too long. Each answer comes with colour photographs or diagrams in most cases. This is really a book that you can read from cover to cover or just pick up for reference.

The type of questions in the book does vary a lot from the simple – Why do stars twinkle? to What is the anthropic principle? Are we alone in the universe? What are sunspots? Was there ever life on Mars?

I can thoroughly recommend “A Question and Answer Guide to Astronomy” – it’s a great book if you are interested in astronomy and want answers.

A Question and Answer Guide to Astronomy is available at Waterstones