Over the years, I’ve constructed (and spent a small fortune on) components for my astrophotography that could one day culminate into an array-type device. I’ve seen examples of amateur RASA telescope arrays, most recently that of Bray Falls at Starfront Observatories, and I wanted to see if I could get develop a similar setup to be used under my Bortle 3 skies in southeast Ohio.
My first lens for astrophotography was a Rokinon 135mm f2 ED UMC, so I figured I would get more of these lenses for my passion project. This 8.5 h integration image was taken on a moonless night from Bottle 3 skies using three Rokinon 135mm lenses, two ASI2600MC cameras, and one ASI2600MM camera.
Using a Bambu Lab P2S, I designed and 3D-printed the lens clamp system for my two color cameras and had the monochrome + 135mm combo tracking on a separate mount. In the future, I wish to assemble the three cameras and lenses together in the same lens clamp system. I’ll have to design and print this triple-clamp part, but I plan on using an engineering-grade filament that I can incorporate metal hardware into as it prints to reduce any possible flexture.
I don’t yet have my dream filters for the mono setup, or any for that matter, so for this image I used an IDAS NBZ high-speed dual narrowband filter as a narrowband luminance and added on dual-narrowband color data from one of the color cameras in post. I know this isn’t the best approach, especially since I was only able to collect 20 minutes of color dual-narrowband data due to various issues with tilt from my hastily-printed filter drawer. This will need to be re-printed as well.
For now, here is the result! I can’t wait to get the rig finished and out under clear skies soon as I work the kinks out. I hope to be able to capture some pretty deep images this year, and ideally get a future version of this setup moved to a remote imaging site under clearer, Bortle 1 skies.
Equipment: 3 Canon EF Rokinon 135mm f2 ED UMC Lenses 1 ZWO ASI2600MC Pro Camera 1 ZWO ASI2600MC Air Camera 1 ZWO ASI2600MM Air Camera 2 ZWO Canon EF Filter Drawers 1 3D-Printed Filter Drawer 2 IDAS NBZ HS Ha+Oiii Dual-Narrowband Filter ZWO AM5 + TC40 Tripod SW SA GTi + Tripod Jackery 500 BatteryAcquisition: 254 x 60s RGB 50 x 300s Mono Ha+Oiii dual-narrowband 4 x 300s Color Ha+Oiii dual-narrowband Total: 8.72 hours Bortle 3
Processing
Siril:
Stacked each camera’s data
Registered to monochrome data
Cropped edge artifacts + field rotation
Graxpert background extraction
SPCC for RGB and color dual-narrowband
Starnet ++
Graxpert denoise
GHS color data
GIMP:
Levels for mono and color dual-narrowband data
Blended dual-narrowband luminance with color data
Blended in RGB data
1 Comment
Over the years, I’ve constructed (and spent a small fortune on) components for my astrophotography that could one day culminate into an array-type device. I’ve seen examples of amateur RASA telescope arrays, most recently that of Bray Falls at Starfront Observatories, and I wanted to see if I could get develop a similar setup to be used under my Bortle 3 skies in southeast Ohio.
My first lens for astrophotography was a Rokinon 135mm f2 ED UMC, so I figured I would get more of these lenses for my passion project. This 8.5 h integration image was taken on a moonless night from Bottle 3 skies using three Rokinon 135mm lenses, two ASI2600MC cameras, and one ASI2600MM camera.
Using a Bambu Lab P2S, I designed and 3D-printed the lens clamp system for my two color cameras and had the monochrome + 135mm combo tracking on a separate mount. In the future, I wish to assemble the three cameras and lenses together in the same lens clamp system. I’ll have to design and print this triple-clamp part, but I plan on using an engineering-grade filament that I can incorporate metal hardware into as it prints to reduce any possible flexture.
I don’t yet have my dream filters for the mono setup, or any for that matter, so for this image I used an IDAS NBZ high-speed dual narrowband filter as a narrowband luminance and added on dual-narrowband color data from one of the color cameras in post. I know this isn’t the best approach, especially since I was only able to collect 20 minutes of color dual-narrowband data due to various issues with tilt from my hastily-printed filter drawer. This will need to be re-printed as well.
For now, here is the result! I can’t wait to get the rig finished and out under clear skies soon as I work the kinks out. I hope to be able to capture some pretty deep images this year, and ideally get a future version of this setup moved to a remote imaging site under clearer, Bortle 1 skies.
Equipment: 3 Canon EF Rokinon 135mm f2 ED UMC Lenses 1 ZWO ASI2600MC Pro Camera 1 ZWO ASI2600MC Air Camera 1 ZWO ASI2600MM Air Camera 2 ZWO Canon EF Filter Drawers 1 3D-Printed Filter Drawer 2 IDAS NBZ HS Ha+Oiii Dual-Narrowband Filter ZWO AM5 + TC40 Tripod SW SA GTi + Tripod Jackery 500 BatteryAcquisition: 254 x 60s RGB 50 x 300s Mono Ha+Oiii dual-narrowband 4 x 300s Color Ha+Oiii dual-narrowband Total: 8.72 hours Bortle 3
Processing
Siril:
Stacked each camera’s data
Registered to monochrome data
Cropped edge artifacts + field rotation
Graxpert background extraction
SPCC for RGB and color dual-narrowband
Starnet ++
Graxpert denoise
GHS color data
GIMP:
Levels for mono and color dual-narrowband data
Blended dual-narrowband luminance with color data
Blended in RGB data
Siril:
GHS tweaks
Star recomposition
AberrationRemover script
Cosmic Clarity superres
Cosmic Clarity sharpening
VeraLux Curves