ZWO ASI178MM Monochrome Camera

[DeepSolar64]

My wife ordered last Wednesday for me a ZWO ASI178MM Monochrome CMOS Astrophotography Camera. Hopefully this will enable me to foray into solar imaging further than I am able to with iPhone or Nikon DSLR. I will certainly need the expertise of imagers here to guide me along. It's an entirely new type of photography for me. I should have the camera on Monday or Tuesday. My main use for digital imaging is to help me document what I see on the Sun visually.

Thanks for any coming assistance!

James

https://optcorp.com/collections/zwo/pro ... o-asi178mm

[JochenM]

That should be a good match for your scopes, James. I'm sure you'll get lots of enjoyment out of that camera (I know I have).

[Martin_S]

James, congratulations on getting a new camera. A tilt adaptor might be on your Christmas wish list. there are some great tutorials on this site to keep you busy on cloudy days.

Martin

[arnedanielsen]

Congratulations, James!

Best regards,
Arne

[EGRAY_OBSERVATORY]

Hi James, the ZWO ASI 178MM certainly has well-proved its' worth with my two Lunt 60mm scopes, where an image capturing the whole of the Solar-disk just fills neatly into each frame, without lots of the black-stuff showing.

Did you check with the FOV Calculator as https://astronomy.tools/calculators/field_of_view/ to check which of your scopes this or any other ZWO camera would be best for your application ??

There is of course a benefit of having a wider field-of-view, as makes alignment to the disk - easier, unless a fixed-mount and GO-TO is used.

Cheers
Terry

[Alto]

I hope it's 'better' than the altairastro version - I can rarely get more than 5-6 fps full frame. Apparently a faster frame count can be obtained by using a USB port directly on the motherboard

[EGRAY_OBSERVATORY]

Yes Alto, was the same here with my Altair GPCAM's. Just keeping one for WL is OK, but the ASI178MM's certainly are better for Ha and Cak.

Terry

[Alto]

Cheers Terry, I do have a zwo 178, but it's colour - intended originally for an allsky setup, but I've delayed installing to see what images of Mars will be like when cloud allows!

[eroel]

James:
Congratulations, you will like the camera it works very nice.
Best wishes and hope to see your shots soon.
Eric.

[rsfoto]

Hi James,

Congratulations. Now you have a lot of new things to learn.

[Rusted]

Well done James!

Now you have absolutely no excuse not to post new images every day the sun shines.
Or we'll certainly want to know the reason why!

A USB3 port helps the fps cause. No more than 3m [10'] USB3 cable.
You get a nice and floppy 'freeby' 2m [6'] USB3 cable in the camera packaging.

I prefer SharpCap for capturing. It's simple to use, obvious and foolproof.
NO indecipherable symbols or ancient hieroglyphics!
Start at 500 images Mono8 in AVI.
Keep your exposures around 5-6ms and use Gain to make the picture like a pencil drawing in density.

Followed by Autostakkert to stack your video. Simple and obvious to use.
Try stacking 75 images out of 500 at first.
A nice short capture reduces wind wobbles, thermal agitation and drift.

GENTLY sharpen your final still in ImPPG. "Spottiness" is overdoing it.
Aim for a natural, realistic look. I mostly use the default settings and it works for me.
Just use the sliders in the "wiggly worm" box to sharpen and brighten by dragging the + cursors around.

Save as a 16 bit .Tiff with a useful title like date and capture time as a minimum.

Then colour, crop and polish in an image handling software. [Free?]

Enjoy.

[ffellah]

Congratulations on your new ZWO178 camera, James. I have one and it is good with short focal length scopes. Enjoy !

Franco

[krakatoa1883]

Very good camera for solar imaging, particularly for full disc captures but nice for hires work too without the need for very slow f/ratios. I strongly suggest Firecapture for working with it, just start with the basic tools as described here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJ1SpbCmM9U

then gradually add more and more functions.

[EGRAY_OBSERVATORY]

I agree with Rusted James, by keeping it simple at first with SharpCap and AutoStakkert and remembering to convert the TIFF image to JPG of course - for your excellent daily reports and images on SolarChat - please.

Have fun !

Terry

[rsfoto]

Keep your exposures around 5-6ms and use Gain to make the picture like a pencil drawing in density.

Hi,

Here I disagree using gain and limiting your exposure time to 5-6 ms. The camera makes at 8 bit 60 frames per second and 30 frames per second in 14 bit or pseudo 16 bit.

60 frames per second allows you to theoretically go up to 16.7 ms exposure time and 30 frames allow you theoretically the double or 33.4 ms.

Gain introduces NOISE and noise is not good ... You will hardly get rid of noise in the processing. Avoid it by all means. If you need to use Gain then the sky conditions are not good. IMHO

With my ASI 290MM Cool I need an exposure time of around 8 to 11 ms according to the sky conditions.

In regard to processing software the best I can recommend is to grab everything what is on the free market or maybe paid market and play with all. Yes I know that is time consuming but you will find what best suits you ...

Since ages I use for AVI processing AviStack as I have seen that RegiStax introduces some strange thick details. Maybe because I do not know how to use it

OK, the more you get into imaging the more questions will arise but here are a lot of experienced imagers and all have different workflow and everyone will say his is the best :-)

I tested a lot of software until I found my workflow.

It is your decision at the end ...

[DeepSolar64]

James, congratulations on getting a new camera. A tilt adaptor might be on your Christmas wish list. there are some great tutorials on this site to keep you busy on cloudy days.

Martin

What does a tilt adaptor do?

[DeepSolar64]

Congratulations on your new ZWO178 camera, James. I have one and it is good with short focal length scopes. Enjoy !

Franco

It may indeed work better with my SMII60 than it will with the SMII90.

[DeepSolar64]

Hi James,

Congratulations. Now you have a lot of new things to learn.

That's an understatement!

[Martin_S]

James, congratulations on getting a new camera. A tilt adaptor might be on your Christmas wish list. there are some great tutorials on this site to keep you busy on cloudy days.

Martin

What does a tilt adaptor do?

It helps eliminate those annoying newton rings that you get with monochrome cameras.

Martin

[DeepSolar64]

James, congratulations on getting a new camera. A tilt adaptor might be on your Christmas wish list. there are some great tutorials on this site to keep you busy on cloudy days.

Martin

What does a tilt adaptor do?

It helps eliminate those annoying newton rings that you get with monochrome cameras.

Martin

Thanks Martin, I can see a use for that!!

[rsfoto]

James, congratulations on getting a new camera. A tilt adaptor might be on your Christmas wish list. there are some great tutorials on this site to keep you busy on cloudy days.

Martin

What does a tilt adaptor do?

It helps eliminate those annoying newton rings that you get with monochrome cameras.

Martin

Hi Martin,

I have two monochrome cameras and no Newton rings.

I would say before starting in spending in something which later will no be used and sometimes does not even cure the problem is to wait and see if you get Newton rings or not.

I have two tilters and both just collecting dust. I thought I needed them and then it came out that not.

IMHO

OK, all setups are different ...

[DeepSolar64]

The inner two boxes are the SMII90 with and without a 2x barlow. The outer two the SMII60 without a barlow and with with a focal reducer. The narrow view will plage me with the 90 because I currently use an altazimuth mount so I must manually track. This would be easier on the 60. would lowering the camera's resolution to 2mp help the SMII90?

I need to invest in at least a Sky-Watcher AZGTI or SolarQuest mout for the 60. To equip the 90 would be more expensive.

astronomy.tools.png (296.44 KiB) Viewed 412 times

[EGRAY_OBSERVATORY]

What does a tilt adaptor do? James,
Simply tilts the camera very-slightly in the eye-piece holder to eliminate "NEWTON RINGS."
Only get one if the problem exists and no other way to prevent those NR's...

[rsfoto]

Hi James,

There is a tiny mistake in your calculation.

The pixel size is 2.4 micron x 2.4 micron and not 2.4µ x 3.0µ

[EGRAY_OBSERVATORY]

I try again with those two ZWO images