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Mounts with strain wave gear from ZWO, iOptron and PegasusAstro

April 19 2024, Stefan Taube

Innovative manufacturers have been offering astronomical mounts with a special drive design for a few years now. You can find these in the shop under the Harmonic / Strainwave link.

These mounts are equipped with a so-called strain wave gear. It is also known under the protected brand name Harmonic Drive.

The advantages are:

High load capacity with low dead weight
High torsional rigidity: no counterweights required
Relatively inexpensive, as industry standard
No swivelling error (“backlash”)
Very high reduction ratio
Compact dimensions
Maintenance-free and backlash-free in the long term

The strain wave gear is used for the axes of industrial robots, among other things. It is therefore a standard and does not need to be specially developed and built for astronomical mounts.

Although the periodic gearbox error is also high for strain wave gears, the error typical of worm shafts, which occurs when the direction of rotation changes (“backlash”), is eliminated. This means that the strain wave gear reacts immediately to the control impulses, so that the periodic error can be compensated very well by autoguiding.

For large mounts, such as the Skywatcher EQ-8, the mounts from 10Micron or the CGX-L from Celestron, a worm shaft is still the first choice, because optics with a long focal length require a very low periodic gear error and a counterweight cannot be dispensed with for heavy optics, even with a strain wave gear. In addition, the advantages of strain wave gears in terms of compactness, weight and price are lost as soon as a mount with a high load capacity is required.

There is therefore an ideal range of load capacity in which mounts with a strain wave gear can play to their strengths. The requirements for mobile astrophotography with small to medium-sized optics fall within this range. The harmonic mounts from brands like iOptron, PegasusAstro, RainbowAstro and ZWO are designed precisely for these requirements.

You can find all mounts with strain wave gear under the Harmonic / Strainwave link in the shop.

Typical strain wave gear to industry standard

Tags: Mount, PegasusAstro, Montierung, ZWO, Rainbow Astro, iOptron
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The Universe at your fingertips: Seestar S50 – now available in stock!

April 10 2024, Jan Ströher

The universe with one click! Seestar S50
The Seestar S50 is a compact smart telescope with a 50mm aperture for anyone who is fascinated by the universe. Just imagine being able to create fascinating astrophotos of stars, galaxies and nebulae at the touch of a button. All with zero effort, no requirement of prior knowledge and of professional quality.
Intelligent technology, a compact all-in-one design and an intuitive app make this possible. The secrets of the universe are now literally in front of your eyes.

“Leo’s Triplet”, taken with Seestar S50 (Photo: Carlos Málagon)

The advantages at a glance:

Just like the big players: True apochromatic lens with 50mm aperture for crystal clear images which with instantly enchant any viewer
GoTo, auto focus and live tracking – watch along live as the image is created before your very eyes
With a free app as the central control point for unforgettable tours of the skies
Simple astrophotos: Set up telescope, open app, and go
Battery for 6 hours of astrophotography at a time
Welcome to the future of astrophotography!

The ZWO Seestar S50 is currently available directly from our stock – so grab it quickly!

Tags: ZWO, Astrophotography, Deep-Sky, new products, smart telescopes
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ASIAIR – astrophotography has never been so easy!

December 17 2018, Elias Erdnüß

The brand ZWO is, especially thanks to its powerful and user-friendly CMOS astrocameras, a frequently heard name in amateur astronomy.

With the ASIAIR control unit, ZWO now promises to fundamentally change the astrophotography scene! It’s a compact computer (Raspberry Pi), that is secured to the telescope of the mount. The device can do everything you expect a computerised telescope system of the 21st century to do!

Mount, camera, filter wheel, and autoguider are connected with the ASIAIR. Via an app for Android or iOS, everything can be controlled centrally and wirelessly via WLAN from the smartphone or tablet. You’ll no longer need to take your laptop with you to autoguide and to use cooled astrocameras. There are also advanced functions such as plate solving at the press of a button.

ASIASI communicates with the telescope mounts via the instrument neutral distributed interface (INDI) and so is compatible with most available GoTo mounts. The only snag: The device only supports ZWO cameras, autoguiders and filter wheels.

Other manufacturers like PrimaLuceLab with the EAGLE 2 are following similar approaches to computerisation. This one may feature higher performance and a wider range of functions, but there’s also the user-friendly ASIAIR for just a fraction of the price.

Tags: Astrophotography, ZWO, Telescope Accessories
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New: Pro camera by ZWO and more accessories for astrophotographers

December 8 2017, Stefan Taube

We would like to present to you a small selection of items that we included in the range recently:

ZWO camera ASI 1600 MM Pro Mono

The ASI 1600 series is the favourite model range by ZWOptical. The ASI 1600 cameras have a relatively large sensor and a small pixel size. There are, therefore, models without cooling that are used mainly by planet photographers and DeepSky cameras that can be used by anyone. We offer the cooled models in a set with special filters and a filter wheel.

The spearhead of this model range is the new ASI 1600 MM Pro Mono. It is ideal for astrophotographers who want to capture faint nebulae with exposures lasting for hours. The incorporated 256 MB of buffer memory provides loss-free transfer even with USB 2.0.

ZWO-ASI-1600-Pro

Orion camera StarShoot AutoGuider Pro Set

If you want to take exposures of several minutes, you should think about tracking control. With this procedure called autoguiding, the mount must run in a controlled fashion because the camera mount must always be exactly oriented towards the desired area of the sky for the shot to be successful. A separate camera is mostly used with its own optics for autoguiding. The camera continually follows a star and gives control impulses to the mount if the star moves.

Thanks to sensitive camera sensors with a high resolution, these autoguiders can be made to be compact. A very well-made example is the new set from the camera StarShoot AutoGuider Pro Mono and the Ultra-Mini Guidescope by Orion.

Orion-StarShoot-AutoGuide

Baader MPCC V-1 Mark III Newton coma corrector set 2”

Newton telescopes are very popular with amateur astronomers because they cost relatively little money and can gather a large amount of light. As with any optical design, Newton telescopes suffer from image aberrations. On the edge of the field of view, the stars are exploded forming a “comet”. What are referred to as coma aberrations are particularly noticeable in astrophotography. The manufacturer Baader-Planetarium offers an excellent coma corrector that is also included in the set with the matching adapters: Baader MPCC V-1 Mark III Newton coma corrector The special feature of this coma corrector is that it does not increase the focal length of the optics. There is as much light as without the corrector, so that the exposure time does not have to be increased.

aader-MPCC-Komakorrektor

Oklop padded bag for the Newton 150/750

About the Newton telescope: We now offer padded carrying bags by Oklop. They are made so a specific telescope fits perfectly and can be transported securely without taking up a lot of space.

We offer, for example, bags for the Newton telescope 150/750, Newton telescope 150/1000 or the Celestron telescope SC 1100. Other bags by Oklop can be found here.

Oklop-Tasche-Newton

Tags: Baader, Orion, ZWO, Telescope Accessories, Oklop
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DeepSky-Set: Cooled camera ASI 1600 with filter and filter wheel from ZWO

March 13 2017, Stefan Taube

ASI 1600 MM series cameras from ZWOptical have really found their place in astrophotography. With its small pixels, the highly sensitive CMOS sensor offers high resolution, and this even in connection with a relatively big sensor diameter.

We now offer the cooled black and white camera of the ASI 1600 series in a set with a motorized filter wheel and suitable filters: ASI 1600 MMC DeepSky-Imaging-Set for a price of 2,019 Euro. You save 29 Euro when compared with individual prices!

A camera with active cooling is optimal for taking photos of nebulae and galaxies, because the cooling reduces sensor noise and thus enables long exposure times. This enables you to even take photos of very faint objects in the sky.

Even though the cooled ASI 1600 is available as colour or black and white camera, only the black and white camera offers the full resolution of the sensor. Ambitious photographers therefore favour this variant. In order to show the colour of the celestial object you just simply take photos through three colour and one luminance filters – the latter to increase brightness. The computer then uses these four images to produce a colour image (L-RGB method).

The filters are placed into a filter wheel, so that the camera does not have to be removed and realigned again for each filter change. The filter change simply takes place by turning the wheel. The filter wheel in the Set with the ASI 1600 is electrically powered and controlled via the camera, meaning you do not need an additional cable connecting to your computer. You simply use the camera control to change from one filter to the next, and this, above all, without having to touch anything.

The four filters in the DeepSky-Imaging-Set were specially developed for the ASI 1600. The colour weighting has been optimized for its sensor, which in this case is a high-quality interferential filter. Since the filters are parfocal to one another, the focus position does not change when changing the filter. Besides the three filters for the red, green and blue channel, the set also contains an UV/IR band-rejection filter for luminance.

Just as the graph concerning the filter transparency (transmission) of the set indicates, the filters block out the disturbing light of many street lamps, but are highly sensitive in the red range of the H-Alpha and SII-line. The transmission rate is greater than 92%.

With the ASI 1600 MMC DeepSky-Imaging-Set you receive a high-quality, yet reasonable, camera system with almost unlimited possibilities!

Tags: Telescope Accessories, ZWO, camera
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Astrophotography: New cameras from ZWO

May 30 2016, Stefan Taube

The cameras from ZWO, which can be recognized by their distinct red housing, have taken astrophotography by assault. Based on the big success of the low-priced planet cameras ASI-120, ZWO now extends its product range bit by bit and now also offers advanced cameras with USB 3.0 and CMOS-sensors.

We are able to offer you two new series of these cameras:

ZWO Camera ASI

ASI-290: A very good all-purpose camera with small pixels, high image frequency and low read-out noise. The camera is equipped with the CMOS-sensor IMX290 from Sony. This chip is particularly light-sensitive because it is exposed from the back. Such sensors are elaborate in production, but now they are available to hobby astronomers for a reasonable price.
ASI-1600: This camera is equipped with a huge 16 megapixle CMOS-sensor with 21.9 millimetre diagonal. The sensor is normally installed in Olympus cameras. With this camera you can fill a large field of view.

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All camera models are available as colour or black and white variants, but also with or without active cooling. I.e. there are four versions each for you to choose from.

Black and white cameras have the advantage of a higher sensitivity and resolution when compared with colour cameras. However, it takes a higher effort to successfully shoot colour images: You need colour filters and a fllter wheel.

A cooled camera allows for longer exposure times, because the sensor noise is suppressed. However, you need a separate electric power supply and, for long exposure times, a suitable mount with tracking control. Due to the increasingly high sensitivity of the sensors, uncooled cameras also become more and more popular for the photography of low-luminosity DeepSky objects. Beginners and casual photographers are therefore already very well equipped with the uncooled models of the ASI-290 series.

Tags: ZWO, camera, Telescope Accessories
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