Please be aware, ZWO has announced they no longer recommends mounting the ASI Air system to the side of the mount, as it can run into the tripod causing damage. Instead, it is suggested to mount the ASI Air to the side of the saddle. Thank you!
The ASI AIR also works better mounted on top of the telescope than on the side of the dove tail. I have had mine for a year and it has been an excellent mount,.....and my other mounts are Astro Physics. The AP has more capacity and is a bit more precision....but I am getting amazning guiding and images with my AM5 with both 80mm APO refractor and my 8" SCT either with a .7 focal reducer or with Hyperstar setup. The latest software now does All Sky Polar Alignment if you have the ASI AIR's and it is very accuragte. I agree that a heavier tripod is best if you have a heavier setup. I have a metal tripod with pier extension from Ioptron (was modified to work wit the AM5. It is a rock solid setup. I am convinced the counter weight is more to keep the heavy setups from toppling over rather than to improved guiding ;-) I don't use a counter weight with the refractor but do with the 8" SCT. PE is not really able to be compared to a ring and pinion type drive so not cyclical repeats. But the big advantage seems to be the absolute 0 backlash of a hyperdrive. I alway get pin point round stars. You did get a good one my max and min PE is about 20% higher but still very good and half or better of the max allowed by ZWO. The real proof is that I get excellent guiding using my off axis guide scope....60mm aperture and 240mm focal length.
@@paskoh The 8" SCT is a Celestron HD with either .7 focal reducer or Hyperstar. Guiding is with an Astromania 240mm fl 60mm aperture guide scope and the ISA 290 guide camera. This is the setup on my AM5 mount. I get great guiding and nice round stars edge to edge. I also have an Astromania 70mm aperture 400mm fl refractor for use on my 11" SCT/Hyperstar setup for my AP 1100 mount.... but that is a much larger/heavier guide scope so avoid that on the 8". Both scopes are achromats and work great for guiding and are rock solid and a very nice helical focuser. The same guider camera is used in both cases. I don't use an-off axis guider thus far.
Good to see a considered video on this that isn't just a sales pitch, great job. Interesting to see that it can handle a 925, I have the XLT 925 so good information. Like you say it does seem like the eco system is changing and tying people into one platform, I just hope Zwo doesn't push everyone else out of the market.
I doubt they will... if anything they will either follow suit or make their own hardware more seemless to connect.... maybe getting 3rd party deals. Its how Android kept up with iphone
Water damage? You and me both! Our home took huge damage from Hurricane Fiona and set us back about $40K. It set my own work on my natural history channels back by almost six months. Just now starting to get into the work again! BTW, I have had my eye on ZWO AM5, so I am really glad to see you reviewing it. I've always liked your work--very frank.
Hi Cody, sorry to hear about the water damage. We're going through some too but fortunately covered by insurance. But the pain of having the house tore up...😪😪 Thanks for the great review as I have been considering this mount for portability.
Hello Cody, I like the review and it is quite informative. I just missed one information. How did you mount the mount on the AVX tripod. A short video would be very interesting. Keep going with your videos and best wishes for your house. Greetings from Vienna.
Thanks for the review! I am glad to see I wasn't the only person having guiding issues with the carbon fiber tripod. Now I am back to using the iOption LiteRoc 2.5 tripod and no more oval stars. The iOptron and ZWO CF tripods are basically the same but maybe it's just the way it is when you want to shoot longer FLs. I guess the tripod works fine for smaller rigs. Thanks again, awesome review.
So sorry to hear about the water damage you had. That's terrible, but I'm glad you are recovering. Good luck with it. This is a great review, and some terrific photos at the end! Thanks so much. I'm hoping Agena ships my AM5 this month! (I missed the last shipping cutoff date by ONE DAY! Ouch...) I really can't wait. Thanks again and best of luck with the repairs.
Great review. I've already added an AM5 to my Christmas list. Looks a great alternative to lugging the massive weight of an EQ6-R head. There are no clutch locks to allow balancing the mount? I assume the harmonic nature of the mount removes the need to balance load?
I feel your pain also - I am small in stature and 77 Y.O. and I have a rough time lifting my EQ6-R Head on to the Tripod...Maybe I need a Pulley system...Ha...Love the zwo amd5
I think out of all the points you made, the comment about the cover plate being childish was the one that hit home the most. I regret not pre-ordering the AM5 to get the blank plate. I guess I'll either have to deal with it or bust out the sander and spray paint.
Hey Cody, would you consider doing a follow up video after a year or so in use with am5 and 9.25” together. Any issues with images and tracking and guiding. Have been getting mixed responses from CN. Also would be interesting if you could highlight the performance of AM5 when the 9.25 scope is used at its native 2350mm focal length. Thanks
Thank you for sharing your experience with this mount. How well did it handle your SN-10. F/4? I have two, one on an EQ6R-pro, also one on an older basic EQ6. I have a variety of scopes, including a SN 10 that I have modified without its diagonal, helical focuser and camera mounted on corrector plate. I have spare EQ6 big tripod that I can use. How much counterweight have you got on your Dec shaft and what length shaft have you fitted? I have my own hobby machine shop. Clear skies, Greetings from the Southern Cross Observatory-Tasmania 42 South.
Great video, I'm getting ready to buy one of these! Do you find that you need to have a dovetail counterweight when you have all the imaging optics on the back end of it?
<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="164">2:44</a> the subject of Polar Alignment is not covered. Hey why not inform the watch how to do a polar alignment with just the hand controller. For example, I thought I polar aligned my AM5 with a compass. Click goto on the cell phone app and the mount went 180 degrees in the opposite direction. <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="440">7:20</a> Please explain what the numbers mean, my AM5 is 8.7/4.1
How well does your ASIAIR pro work without any antenna mods?-I have two units unused-it would be nice to hear from someone who uses it without mods. Thank you & Clear skies from 42 South.
I'm a newbie to this hobby. Doing a lot of reading and video watching. Your backfocus helped big time. This scope and ZWO accessories are close to where I'm heading. The edgehd has mirror locks. When you add the EAF, what do you do with the locks? If during a session and you need to tweak the focus, do you have to unlock first? If you don't (or forget), will it break the scope? I haven't found anybody talking about this. Thanks.
Hi John, glad the videos have been helpful. If you use an auto focuser, always leave the mirrors locks loose! You can (and probably will) damage and/or destroy the focusing mechanism, or the auto focuser by keeping them locked. I only use the mirror locks when I’m using the stock manual focusing knob.
I just purchased the AM5 because of this video. I forgot to use the affiliate link but reached out to their support and said they would take care of it!
Excellent review as always. I think that many, me first and foremost, are also interested in knowing the settings you would give on Asiair plus for harmonic frames: exposure time (from 0.5 to1 sec ?), calibration step, Max Dec and Max RA duration, RA and Dec Aggr. Thank you very much
Cody are you still using the avx tripod? I am having trouble finding one but you can find the CPC 1100 tripod although I haven't found anyone that is actually using one with the AM5. Just wondered if it had enough stability to handle your EdgeHD (I have the 9.25). Thanks for your thoughts.
Old rule of thumb with EQ mounts is that you only use 50% of the mount capacity. It would appear that harmonic drive mounts ignore this and use the entire capacity. I would expect that the recommended mount for a 9.25 SCT would be a CGX with a 55 lb capacity. Comment ?????
It’s a Celestron Advanced VX tripod. I made a video demonstration here: How to Mount the ZWO AM5 to a Celestron AVX Tripod ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-jNvy1Lg1-1s.html
Hi Cody, Thank you for the video, very interesting mount. How do you know how to place the counter weights distance to properly make the right balance effect?, Clear skies!
Thanks for the video! I am having stability issues with my Edge HD on my AM5. I would like to use a counterweight but not sure which model to use. Could you please let me know what counterweight you are using. It looks like "Celestron 12-Pound Counterweight for Advanced VX"
Great review. I have a GSO RC10. This might be at the limit of the weight capacity. Different question: What about GoTo pointing accuracy without plate solving for visual use? Did you have a chance to test this?
Questions: how do you balance since it looks as if there is no clutch release, and how do you decide where to place the counterweight? I have a CGX I’m selling and moving to ZWO due to the integrated environment you mentioned. Thanks for any info you might provide. Clear skies!
Just eyeball the balance. The strain wave gears will take care of the rest. Counterweight should go at the bottom of the shaft to be effective but is only necessary with heavy loads.
Hi Cody, Thank you very much for your very informative video. I am about to buy a mount and am considering between a CEM40 GoTo LightRock or the AM5. Judging by your video, I think I know your decision, but is it true? My focus is on portable and precession. Your RC51 unit interests me because I use it myself. Do you have a video of this setup? Thank you and kind regards from Germany "CosMusic" Helmut
<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="300">5:00</a> 0.8-0.9 RMS would actually be quite disappointing for such a mount... I am more hoping for 0.6-0.8. At 0.9, depending of your pixel size, you probably have bloated stars and most details are started to be fuzzy.. that's because of this averaging around the right position. For a C9.25, unless you have a large pixel size, you do need to be at 0.6
6:00 if only 900mm, I don't see the point. With an AZ GTI which can sustain most lightweight lenses and telescopes, I can already guide at 0.8-1 for hours (depends of course of seeing). The only interest of AM5 is that you can put big scopes on it, which means larger than 900mm or very fast optics.
Hi Cody! Many thanks for all these informations and comments. Since 2 days i'm an happy owner of an AM5 mount. I've tried to fit this AM5 to my 4 years old AVX-Tripod unsuccessfully because the 3/8"-screw/bolt is showing a kind of resistance in the early beginning of the AM5-screw threat. I treat this kind of handling very careful always because i don't intend to damage the basic of AM5. Is this "resistance" "normal" or is a different 3/8"-screw/bolt with other slope required? Kind regards from Germany (Hamburg area) Winfried
Hi Cody! Thank you very much for this review. This is exactly the kind of video I was hoping someone would do. I recently bought a Celestron EdgeHD 9.25" and the AM5 to go with it, but then started having concerns about using the AM5 with such a telescope. Your video has reassured me that this combination is going to be ok and that the AM5 will handle the scope and accessories with ease. My AM5 should be here on Thursday or Friday so really looking forward to that now. I have 2 questions, if you could please answer them 1) I have been looking for weeks for a place to get the AVX tripod because I know I should not be using the TC40 tripod with the Celestron 9.25" but have been unable to find it by itself anywhere. Do you know of any place where to buy one? 2) How heavy is the counterweight you are using and where did you get it? I hope all goes well with your house and all the repairs
Hi there, I’m glad you enjoyed the review! Celestron doesn’t sell the tripod individually, unfortunately, so I had to find one on the used market. The counterweight is a 12-lb Celestron Advanced VX counterweight. I had an extra one lying around. These are sold individually, so you shouldn’t have trouble finding one.
Hello, Cody… I love your posts and watch them from the sidelines often. I do have a related question with the AM5… How do you decide where to place the weight on the rod since you cannot in clutch the mount? By sound? Power draw? Or does it not make a difference with these tough straineave drives? Thank you much!
I balanced my fully configured OTA with attached camera, EFW, OAG on a pencil to identify the center weight position and then mounted it close to the center of the mount. Don't know if it helped but gave me a feeling of confidence - coming from a standard equatorial.
What??? The logo is childish??? That's the only reason I bought this mount! I took the front plate with the logo and made a keychain out of it... Threw the rest of it away
Never say no on number 2 for real Lima, Luna is watching. your are not the face, you are not the ank you chi is oke your ki you must learn. we thank you for past,, good wish for you soul, Gooo and make mankind better open and tell them about the univers, moon and how the earth looks...
Great review. Been waiting a long time to hear how a heavily loaded AM5 would work. Impressive. I think Celestron HEAVY DUTY CPC 1100 TRIPOD might also work? Like the VX tripod it also has a spreader plate with a screw at the base that rigidly locks the tripod legs, and it can handle a lot of weight. Celestron still sells this as a stand alone product.
Hi Cody, Thank You so much for your clear, concise review of this mount. You do an outstanding job of bringing the facts and details. Excellent job. Joe D
I have the AM5 and recently used it over several nights at a dark site with the RASA and ASIAIR. Worked flawlessly - polar alignment was super easy and it’s almost hard to believe that the mount can do what it does considering how compact and portable it is.
Another really excellent review. Thanks. I noted your comments about the TC40 tripod for bigger OTA's. I've ordered an AM5 and the TC40 tripod, as well as the pillar extension. The largest OTA I'll be loading on it is a C8 XLT (12.5 lb). At home the AM5 will sit on a Nexdome pillar and I will just use the TC40 for other observing sites. With a couple of 10 pound weights in the tripod bag I assume the TC40 mount will be steady enough for the C8. My major concern is whether a scope on the TC40 can sit high enough for comfortable visual observations. Would welcome your comments on that.
Thanks for your video and advices. Had you some issues or problems with Asiair guiding, seems this kind of mount need another setting for guiding, thanks in advance.
Hello, what are your guide settings for RA aggression and DEC aggression in the ASIAIR? My stars have a point or look like they are trailing in one direction. Great video as I am loving my AM5. Periodic error on my mount is 23.1-7.9.
What has been your experience guiding your Celestron Edge HD / Celestron OAG combo with the AM5 . I'm reading that because o the PE of strain wave mounts that longer focal lengths , primarily over 1000mm are not recommended. I;m looking for total RMS error to be under 1" for a session over an hour. The AM5 seems to work fine on short focal lengths but doesn't it really work on 1400mm to 2032mm? Thanks
Would you be willing to share your AsiAir settings for the OAG guide cam when used with the AM5? I have a similar setup and am struggling to dial in my settings. I'm using an Edge HD8, 174MM mini camera as the OAG guide. cam, and AM5. I do have it on a stiffer tripod as well, Looking for your values for: Calibration step time, max DEC duration, max RA duration, Bin2 or not, stability, settle time, timeout, guide cam exposure length, RA aggressiveness, DEC aggressiveness. Thanks!
Hi Cody! Great review. Thanks for posting, hope all goes well with the house. Be careful about placing the Asiair on the side of AM5. ZWO has issued a warning not to do that due to possible cable snags and antenna bending for AA+. They updated AM5 user manual as well.
With a guiding error of 0.8 to 0.9. Is that still less than your pixel scale with such long focal length to get sharp stars? What camera did you test this with please?
So, unlike most eq mounts where people say to stay around half of the payload max.... mostly due to accuracy, gears and the worm strain... is an harmonic mount with counterweight, much closer to the max number stated by the manufacturer? I wont get to 44lb, but maybe 3/4 or so
Thanks for your review. I have had my AM5 mount for over a month and I have also had a very positive experience. You mentioned near the end of video to set the mount's altitude to 0 degrees before putting it in the case. I found I could leave my altitude as is (around 44 degrees for me) and it still easily fits in the case.
So, it does not have a handheld digital goto controller? I'm so use to my ioptron which is easy to dial in where I want to go without using a computer. Does this use a phone app? I have an apple phone and computer.
Great Video! Tks! Although the AM5, with carbon tripod, comes with its own threaded tension bolt and triangular spreader plate, did you use the AVX's bolt and plate and realized the bolt fits perfectly into the AM5's base?
@@medicineman4040 Nope, no answers. However, AM5 user manual p 25 shows center hole is 3/8-16. So, any tripod that has a center hole to allow a 3/8 inch bolt to go through should work. Note that the am5 does not have (or want to have) an alignment peg: e.g. probably have to remove it.
Good job, thanks for making this. Two questions if I may: Is there somewhere we can see your deep sky images? Where is your Bortle-1 sky location? Thanks.
The hand controller is needed to be able to update the software in the mount, so it is very important. Don't put it someplace where you won't be able to find it later in the future.
So I have AM5 used this seasson for the first time. I can't count exactly how long it was used but 5 months, 70% nights, 6h/night = 630h. I can say that this is another animal. I can say good bye to the Heq-5 and buy second AM5. It's one of the best machines I've ever had. Very reliable, precise, lightweight, but very powerful. I had issues with Heq-5 Pro in higher temperatures and some other problems but with AM5 nothing.
Thanks for the review. My AM5 is due soon. I thought it might struggle with my longest focal length scope, but sounds as though it will be fine. I’ll have and Edge 8 HD on it with the 9,7x reducer and it’ll be on a permanent pier in my observatory. Hoping to use it with my old Skywatcger tripod and a 65mm refractor for portable sessions - some targets are obscured by trees from my observatory. I have a Bortle 3 Sky so not as good as you but I can’t complain when some have to deal with Bortle 8 or 9! Have you tried it with PHD 2 and Nina? Hoping it will be fine as one of my cameras is an old QSI660 WSG8 and I still love it but can’t use it with the ASIAir. I do like the ASIAir and have the pro version - terrible WiFi! I agree with you that it works well but I’m not keen on how ZWO are trapping people in their ecosystem. The handset is poor, but, if you use the app on your phone or tablet together with the handset I can see it working well for visual observers. Would love to see a follow up where you go through your ASIAir setting with your Egde 9.5. Focus steps, calibration step size RA/Dec aggression etc. Thanks again and clear skies.
Thanks a lot for this video. I have this mount in my 2023 scope also. Also the EdgeHD. Unfortunately EdgeHD 8 & 9.25 are not on stock anywhere :(. However I see that your lovely AM5 works together with EdgeHD. Important input for me. Tx again!
Thanks for the great review. I recently purchased the AM5 mount to use on an iOptron Lite Roc metal tripod with the PE200 and a Celestron EHD 9.25-inch SCT at f/7, all controlled with the Asiair Plus. My guiding is horrible with RA over 2 arcseconds and Dec over 20 (twenty) arcseconds. The same optical train gives under 0.8 arcseconds in RA on my iOptron GEM45 mount with Asiair Plus. Why is the guiding on the AM5 unusable? Are there any special settings I need to use on my Asiair Plus?
Great video. I have had my AM5 since late August and finding it a pleasure to use. It is my first goto mount, having progressed from a star tracker. I use a RedCat and 533MC Pro on it, plus 120MM guide scope and of course an ASIAIR. I too get sub 1” guiding, normally around 0.6”. One thing I don’t you of have seen or not was that update from ZWO saying not to mount the ASIAIR on the side of the mount as you have, as there is a chance to could crash into the tripod and do damage. They say it should be mounted on the saddle and you can move the finder shoe position. But, and this is important, don’t put the two spare screws back into the holes as they are so long (without the thickness of the shoe) the ends will poke into the inside of the mount and could trap the wires. So take them out and put them somewhere safe. I am still trying to work out if I should use wifi or usb to connect the mount to the ASIAIR. Whatever method you have to plug a cable into the mount. If the mount had built in wifi rather than via the hand controller, then it would be a winner, but I understand the controller is acting as an external antenna.
Thanks for the tip, and I'm glad you've been enjoying your ZWO AM5 as well! I missed that announcement. I haven't had any trouble with the ASI Air Pro, mounted to the side, but I could certainly see this as an issue. I've pinned a comment letting everyone know! Good tip on the saddle. You're right about the hand-control. I either use the mount with the ASI Air wireless ability, or I directly connect it to my laptop for FireCapture. However, I mostly use my Celestron CGX for planetary imaging. It's incredibly stable and works amazing with FireCapture.
@@AstroBlender What if you're using the ZWO pier extension....collision change go down? AND more importantly, can you please test the pier extension with the AVX tripod. That would be very helpful.
Crazy … 🤔 Meanwhile I am doing stupid stuff with my 9.25 cpc deluxe. 😄 The heat was on when people said I would be disappointed. 🤷♂️ i totally wasn’t, im still trying to figure out PEC. So I did what I dislike most… I bought a paper book in the digital world… next star guide book 2
Did you use the Berkebach or other tripod adapter between the avx tripod and am5? I have the Berlebach coming. Maybe Agena could comment on this Agena us my go to, and where I got my am5 and everything else.
The counterweight seems mighty close to the tripod.....I think a pier is a must for a big scope, or when using the counterweight.... i see you push it forward... its great you can do that and not worry about balancing... Another reason to get a steel tripod with wider legs :)
This mount looks like it would fit the bill for me! What tripod did you use? Does it need some sort of adapter? I have a couple mounts for my Orion Atlas Pro. Thanks and great video!
Hey Cody, thanks for the video. Could you please make a small video explaining how to change the mount from EQ to Alt-AZ. It will be really help. So if you can demo how to use this mount when there is no visibility of north. I’m struggling a lot to do a PA to keep the mount facing north and then slewing the OTA to south. I know I’m doing something wrong. Thanks
Nice review. So what part of the US are these Bortle 1 skies you image from? And why do you still need to pack up on occasion and drive to a "dark sky" site?
The counter-weight 5 kgs is combined with the AVX-Tripod in a set regular. From dealer you'll purchased with counterweight separetely while the AVX-Tripo i havn't seen offered as single so far.
