Reasons You Need to Try Narrowband Astrophotography 

Totally agree!

Many thanks!

I have done some for DSS and photoshop but now I use ASTAP and Photoshop. Ill be doing some tutorials on those soon though. ASTAP is fantastic. Best kept secret for stacking that there is.

Hahah you got me. It is false color though.

If you combine 656 nm, the wavelenght of Hydrogen alpha (yellow, a lot of it) and 496 nm of the Oxygen III (blue), you will get green but, of course, only in your eyes... 😉

@@Daktariro it took me a while to understand it too but now its second nature.

Next week’s episode you will want to watch for sure.

Unfortunately not because there is not enough room between the camera and lens for the filter wheel. You can though use one filter at a time with some of the clip in or screw in adaptors.

Several. My early photos were with a Skywatcher 80ED then I switched to an Orion Achromatic 100mm f6. Now I use a 120mm f4.3 Orion Acrhomate for big stuff and a Sharpstar Ed61mm for wide field stuff. I also have a SVBONY 102 ED now.

Depends on the scope F ratio. If its slower then f5 then you 1.25" filters which are quite affordable. If tis faster then f5 then you will have to get the 31mm unmounted filters. This is for a 4/3ds sensor. If you go the ZWO533MM you could use 1.25" not matter what scope.

@@TheNarrowbandChannel Thanks! Right now I have 3 scopes… Celestron 8” Edgehd, Explore Scientific ED102CF and a William Optics Z61. So F/10, F/7 and F/5.9. Of course the sct and Ed102cf refractor are using reducers some of the time, so that speeds them up a bit.

@@astrophotonchaser Start with your small refractor the WO Z61. It is always easier to start with a smaller scope. You will spend several years photographing all the targets you can image with that scope.

On the guid scope I 3D printed that one. The one on the Newtonian is a Fairpoint Dew Shield. They run between 40-50$

The cheaper ED doublets are good too. Astro gear seams to hold its value quite well when trading up gear.

This conversion services could only be done on order sensors. Probably would have to go back more than 10 years now. The RGB filters are now barred inside of the sensor instead of on the top like they used to be. So removing them requires you rebuild the sensor. Very expensive and requires very specialized equipment. Some Chinese companies do it but it's for mostly scientific reasons.

@@TheNarrowbandChannel Yes, but I am suggesting 'ignore interpolation' combining the RGB filters and letting their data (buckets of light) go straight to a 1-Bit black and white file. It would quadruple your resolution.

@@leonarddaneman810 If that worked you could do that in post using the combined data as luminance. Cameras actually already sorta do this though. But it is still not as good as just having a straight mono camera.

@@TheNarrowbandChannel RGGB *Drizzle* helps recover OSC data at *full* resolution, no interpolation, not up-scaled. But the color ratio for the final data is still unevenly biased at 25% Red, 50% Green and 25% Blue. Oxygen-III photons certainly do collect in *both* Blue and Green pixels in OSC.

It should but will in no way be even close to what you can do with a Mono camera. I would advise you to experiment with it and get some practice with it. But if you grow to the point where it seams like you are spinning your wheels spring for a mono camera. skip the OSC cooled cameras since you will already have experience with some narrowband anyway.

@@TheNarrowbandChannel Very valuable tips, thank you so much! Money can only be spent once, so better not to make unnecesary "in between steps". Thanks again.

Ome cool thing about this hobby is that you can usually sell gear for close to what you payed for it. Thanks to cloudy nights.

@@TheNarrowbandChannel Well here in Spain stuff is taking out very frequently. 300 clear nights a year, Bortle between 2 and 4, depending on the exact spot. So we have the dark clear nights but we lack the economy to buy what we want😅

@@kayasper6081 Cloudy nights is a website that I was referring too. It's a popular place to sell used gear.

I will probably get a set from them to test out.

You will have to try and get a 2600MM. Its amazing. I need one but cannot afford it yet.

Two reasons I would recommend the 533. Its smaller so back focus and a lot of other things are just a lot easier. With the 2600 you have to get back focus perfect. Also you have to capture really good flats with that large sensor. Smaller sensors are just easier in almost every way. And if you are in a borate 8 sky ya narrowband is defiantly your friend. I also did a video about what things you should buy first. Its pretty general guidance though.

@@TheNarrowbandChannel I had this same question. As context, I have a 92mm F5.5 scope (w/flattener) and will have the ZWO AM5 mount (hopefully soon). I will also use a reducer/flattener which brings it to F4.4. Until now, I've only used an Olympus EM1miii for imaging and have gotten some good images but wanted to move into dedicated narrowband. I was planning on the 2600mm until I read this. Do the additional headaches associated with optimizing back focus and flats outweigh the benefits of additional resolution, for a portable setup such as mine? BTW will also be using an ASIAir to control all of this. Thank you very much for any feedback.

@@thomasheatherington357 Do not worry about resolution. A Mano camera by its very nature has more resolution then the same megapixel OSC camera. The bayer pattern that is used to create the color images blurs the photos. Essentially a 20mp OSC is equivalent to a 5mp Mono in the red and blue area. So any 9mp mono camera will be much better than something in OSC.

@@TheNarrowbandChannel Followup question, please. As context, I have already decided to move forward with my first dedicated astro camera being a monochrome camera. This based on (a) what I've learned through your channel (thanks!) and (b) the fact that I have an Olympus E-M1 mkiii to use as one-shot color (with the clip-in filter). My refractor-reducer combination, described above, was chosen in part to permit me to use the Olympus without vignetting. I was also planning on immediately selecting a camera with an APS-C size sensor for dedicated astro (ZWO2600MM), since my setup can make use of that size. However, I have no experience with dedicated astro cameras and, reading these posts, wondering if I should first gain experience with a smaller sensor camera (e.g., ZWO294mm) given the challenges and need to 'get everything perfect' with the larger sensor. Any suggestions? All comments welcome. Thanks much.

@@thomasheatherington357 Yes I would recommend the 294Mm over the 2600mm for this very reason. And the 294MM actually has a slight edge over the 2600mm as far as acquisition time goes.

About half of my images in the video were taken in 100% moon. I only really see a slight difference with Oiii.

@@TheNarrowbandChannel You are a much better imager then as I tried this a number of times and always got the same result. It's been tried and tested by others too.

@@hael8680 What bandwidth were your filters? If you were using 12nm filters and comparing your results to something like 3nm, that may be the source of your troubles.

@@Mhornfeck72205 5nm. There is still a effect even in a 3 mm.

You will have to watch the video I will be coming out with this week.

You do not have to use longer exposures. Its that you CAN use longer exposures.

Filters usually have a recommended speed range. My filters for example are good from f3.5 to f20

Yes. As long as there is no rain forecasted.

When I told my wife that I would not have to go driving off to remote locations anymore and that I would be home doing astrophotography instead. She was cool with the cost. Though Really I feel like I did not spend as much as I would have with a OSC. Watch my video on using achromats and how that ended up getting me ahead in $$$

Sky what camera do you have? Many ZWO camera have an alternate sensor window plate that you swap out to have the threads you need to put in a single filter.

@@TheNarrowbandChannel Thx for asking, I have only ZWO cameras, my main one is ASI585MC, which is a fairly new model.

@@skye7690 The included 1.25in noes piece will let you screw in a 1.25in filter. You should probably get a dual band filter though since that is a OSC cameras.

They were quite tame in the city. In tye country they are much more wild.