So the 22″ Dob is still out of action with the encoder cable needing repairing from a recent issue with snagging. I’ve ordered some RJ9 connectors to replace the one on the RA axis that is broken. So instead I thought I would open the dome and given the perfectly clear weather with no chance of rain, I would image Arp xxx with the 12″ that Bob Trevan had recently imaged with his 17″ and leave the scope running.
Due to the brightness of the sky when I started it was impossible to find a guide star, thus I have decided to perform almost lucky imaging of 1min exposures. Again given the background brightness this time of year, if I were to try lucky imaging of this faint object of say 1/10th of a second, it would not appear.
So I have set the scope running with 240 images to take in luminance and will come back in the morning and check the results.
Tonight was a visual night. GingerGeek and I used the 22″ Obsession Dobsonian to view some of the wonders of the late Spring sky.
We started with Venus with the aid of a Moon filter. Whilst Venus is bright and not too overwhelming in the eyepiece, the contrast afforded by the addition of this particular filter aids the clarity of the image as Venus sits on the bright backlight of the night sky this time of year. Venus is in a gibbous phase and you could clearly see a concave arch to the edge of Venus that was missing. The seeing was very steady and we were able to push to 179x with the 13mm Nagler.
Next up was Mars. Whilst it took a while for it to appear in the astronomically twilight sky, I swept the area North East of Venus and landed the target after a few moments. Mars was so very small compared with Venus, obviously red as seen without a filter in this case and slightly shifting in colours due to the seeing. By the time we had finished looking, Mars had appeared in the night sky.
Now the sky was getting darker we wanted to start on the deep sky objects. It became apparent very quickly there was a problem with my alignment. This was a problem I faced the last time out and the trouble is with he RA encoder. The RJ11 cable has been pulled and needs recrimping. So for tonight it was about star hoping only 🙂
We then went on to look at globulars M3, M92, planetary nebulae M57 the Ring nebula and M97 the Owl nebula. We tried to get M101 but the sky brightness would not allow it. We also looked at Mizar and Alcor that I could see from 11:30pm as a double, and we looked at Polaris and it’s double star companion SAO 305 through the scope.
The planetary nebulae were seen through an OIII filter and Tele Vue Nebustar filter. I thought the view was slightly clearer through the Nebustar filter, maybe due to the slightly wider bandwidth which includes H-Beta. The Ring nebula was very crisp and I thought I could discern the central star which is 12th magnitude. Our friend Bob was kind enough to lend me a set of eyepieces he recently acquired. The Tele Vue 10mm Radian eyepiece gives 230x through which we could see the central white dwarf.
Whilst looking at the globular clusters we pushed the magnification to 288x with the 8mm Tele Vue Radian. Both this eyepiece and the 10mm gave fantastic views with the globulars sparking with pinpricks of lights from the 1,000s of Suns!
I’ve always liked what PegasusAstro have been doing with their astronomy equipment and I already own an original FlatMaster120, UPBv1 and a UPBv2.
Overview
Packaging – The mount transport box is (21cm x 34cm x 34cm) which is larger than the AM5 transport box. Weight/Size (6.4 Kg compared to ZWO AM5 5 Kg). The build quality follows the same high quality and blue anodised styling of recent products.
On opening the packaging I found damage to the mount knob indicated a possible rough handling in transit with plastic shrapnel in its plastic bag. This was superficial and did not impact the function or integrity of the mount.
There was no hand-controller supplied in the box but the manual hints that a hand controller can be connected to the ST-4 (EXT) port but no detail on if that is compatible with any existing hand controllers, so for now we have to use the Unity PC application, ASCOM access or the mobile phone application (Android).
The USB2.0 port is better than others I have encountered on other mounts such as iOptron and it grasps the cable securely and does not feel loose or feels like it would just drop off. This is especially useful as I tear down each night so let’s see over time if it maintains the positive connection it has at the moment. I connected the mount USB and power to the UPBv2 sat on top of the scope.
The carbon fibre tripod has no stone bag which can be found on other astro/photography tripods. You could suspend some form of weight from the leg spreader that might help prevent the tripod from tipping over with heavier scopes.
I found the Altitude adjustment a bit loose and takes a bit of getting used to even though the NYX101 has altitude tightening bolts which themselves seem to shift the altitude which again affects polar alignment if you are not careful.
Due to the compact nature of the mount there is no room for a GPS receiver so this function is relied upon either from your phone or by pushing the values from Unity or via Uranus device. If you push from your phone and you have Unity running then Unity will not see the change until you restart Unity.
I like the SW tripod (adapter required) and M12 counterweight compatibility, LX200 protocol support, polemaster placement support. There is a polemaster mounting plate but this is a permanent fixture via screws with no quick release mechanism. However there was a post on Cloudy Nights by PhilippeL on a release adapter he made, CAD link here.
Experience
Usage
Set your park/home positions and then enter in your location/altitude via Unity/Mobile phone app so that the mount understanding things like horizon limits.
As with other mounts, care needs to be exercised that your scope does not collide with the tripod legs, this is still a risk when using the pier extender with longer length scopes.
Unity Software
I couldn’t find a change history or date on the released Unity Platform on the website so it’s not easy to look back when things happened but you can use this link to check the currently available version. I used version 1.8.1733.15, when upgrading the existing Unity software the update process will remove all older versions including the ASCOM drivers and then install the latest version.
I do seem to lose wireless connection to my house router randomly even though the mount was positioned within 6ft of it. I had setup the router to give the mount a static IP address via DHCP but I don’t know it loses the connection – DHCP lease time is set high.
Firmware Update
When I first looked at configuring the NYX-101 to connect to my house network I had no end of trouble getting a connection. The only way I could achieve a connection was to have both the PC/laptop and mount connect to one of my travel routers which itself was also connected my the house wifi.
I soon worked out that the “Smart Connect” feature of my house wifi router was attempting to connect the ESP32 wireless (2.4GhZ) of the NYX to the 5GhZ band. Once I had put the MAC address of the NYX-101 into the exclude list of the house router 5GhZ band then it would reliably connect to the 2.4GhZ band. From that point onwards everything worked as expected and I could then successfully perform the firmware update to 1.15.
The 1.19 firmware (released the week 13th March 2023) also brought a pleasant surprise of the motor noise being reduced when slewing. This is a welcome change since making any noise in a suburban garden location in the early hours of the morning when people sleep with their windows open is highly undesirable.
Resetting park & home
I actually turned off the mount by accident whilst the mount was pointing somewhere in the sky so it lost its position and didn’t know where park and home was. This is easily rectified by moving the mount via one of the applications to the correct marks and setting the home and park positions again. This issue was mostly solved with a later firmware update where the mount now remembers where it is pointed once power is restored. However on performing a meridian flip (no slew & center) and then instructing the mount to home resulted in the mount not being it’s predefined home location.
Mobile App (Android)
Originally there was only Android11+ support but after raising a support ticket (support@pegasusastro.com) to request that the documentation state that the linked app only supported Android 11 I also requested a pre-Android 11 support. This actually appeared pretty quickly on the website so kudos to PegasusAstro for the fast response.
I do suffer regular disconnects from the mount when using the mobile app via the hotspot. I’m not sure why this is as I was sat right next to the mount, could be down to an idle time-out ?
I also see the NYX-101 disconnect from my house wireless router in Unity but could locate no reason why (DHCP lease was valid), I could find no entry in the Unity log files or see no reason on the router. Now this could possibly be either interference from other 2.4GhZ networks or down to the Aluminium casing, would an external aerial resolve this problem ?
There is no way to reconnect to the wireless other than shutting down Unity so as long as you have a USB connection then everything should continue working.
Mount/Altitude Limits & Meridian Flip
To begin with I set the meridian and altitude mount limits in Unity and then test the automated meridian flip using ASCOM simulator for the camera. Regardless would I did the mount would stop 10 degrees because hitting the Meridian. It slowly dawned on me that I had set the meridian limit to -10 which I thought was 10 degrees after the meridian but the value should have been +10 so it was actually stopping 10 minutes before the meridian ……. dooh !
Unity hard limits for Elevation & Meridian
Once I made the change then both NINA and SGPro performed the meridian flip just fine. There is also a switch to enable automatic meridian flip to prevent any potential crashes but I opted to leave this disabled so the mount would just stop tracking but NINA would continue taking new subs in both simple & advanced scheduler.
One item that would really help here in a text box with optional input to set either limits instead of having to grab the slider to see the current setting – I can query/set this in the API but it’s not easy to view and change using the slider method.
Polar Alignment
I used the polemaster software to perform a polar alignment but decided to utilise SharpCap to compare the alignment procedure and difference. Because SharpCap requires the scope to be slewed 90° so the scope weight was now on on horizontal the RA axis dropped causing the mount to shift and results in the PA being 4° off axis.
This would happen regardless even if I tightened up the axis bolts. Talking to another user he suggested at using a counterweight but to me this would negate the mount as a portable mount.
Guiding
Using the OpenPHD guiding reference document (link), it appears the that the harmonic gears have a period of 430 seconds with a periodic error of +/- 20 arcsecs or less. Two complete periods are required for the Permanent Periodic Error Correction (PPEC) before guiding any improvement will be seen, this is pertinent for the imaging train in use at the time. If you change the imaging target the model will re-initiate the PPEC learning cycle.
The recommendation is to set the guiding interval to 1 – 1.5 seconds and try to be within 30 arcsecs of polar alignment error. I certainly found keeping the FSQ85 setup to around 1.5 seconds resulted in better guiding graphs compared to 3 second intervals.
Support
After initially purchasing the mount I took my NYX-101 along to Astrofest 2023 (UK) for Evans to look at (by prior appointment) as I was not entirely happy with the resonance during slewing. I compared my mount against two other NYX-101 mounts in my astronomy society and it definitely sounded like it had been treated roughly during delivery transit. Although Evans did a great job to investigate the mount during the show, due to the noisy nature of the exhibitor floor it was not obvious that it had been resolved until I was in a quiet environment back at home.
On contacting PegasusAstro I was offered to have the mount picked up by DHL and couriered back to Greece for inspection. The whole process from DHL pickup was professional from picking up to receiving the mount back, the service was excellent and he mount was backed with me 7 days later. The courier communications was good but I received no notes or communication on what was done (board serial number was the same) under I enquired. The most important thing the mount operation was much better and more akin to the other two reference mounts I had listened to; my gratitude to Evans and the team for their patience with me.
It had been reported on various forums that the ZWO ASIAir had suddenly stopped working with the NYX-101 and some heated speculation quickly arose as to the reason why this occurred. ZWO was quick to dispel any conspiracy theories and rightly put their hands up and stated it was a bug in ASIAir software (link) which would be resolved in the 2.1 beta release (you will also need the latest firmware). Kudos should go to ZWO for setting for the story straight and resolving the issue to the benefit of the astro community.
First Light Use
So Dave asked me to come over to the observatory for the evenings of 26th & 27th so I could do a test run on the kit I would be taking to Tenerife later that Summer. At this time the M101 Supernova SN 2023ixf so I decided to image it alongside Dave using his 17inch RDK and Bob’s 24 inch RDK.
Using the QHY Polemaster I noticed that when I rotated the mount for alignment that the chosen calibration star moved away from the rotation circle – is the mount slightly misaligned ?
The guiding document available here were extremely helpful in testing out various settings. Certainly I was seeing some trailing around 3 seconds but that could have been due to the PA issues or balance. I ended up using Predictive PEC and setting the interval to 1 second just to see what would happen. I still noticed large variations every now and then and it was not as smooth as I’d hoped for.
Slewing to a target after plate solving it was clear that the mount had moved outside my FoV at first slew. This was unusual for me as my CEM60/NEQ6 first slews were always in the FoV, this issue may be related to an situation observed by Chris Woodhouse and can be rectified by following his forum post.
Chris asked me to confirm his experience of overshoot when slewing in the DEC axis causing the target not to be in resulted field of view. Chris had raised a support ticket for this issue and PegasusAstro were investigating.
Closing Thoughts
The NYX-101 is more expensive that the competing ZWO AM5 but the NYX-101 offers more weight carrying capacity (20 Kg versus 13 Kg without counterweights) and compatibility with those already own QHY Polemaster, SW NEQ6 or similar tripods.
The direct open API (REST) via Unity or access via ASCOM Alpaca allows me to query components and it’s easy to script up web status pages quite easily.
If you only ever plan to use light imaging equipment and are already invested into the ZWO eco system then the AM5 might make more sense but if you wanted to use other vendors equipment then for me ZWO is a closed ecosystem with limited flexibility.
If using USB3 cables for any equipment such as CCD/CMOS cameras then it is wise to invest in a high quality shielded cable as USB3 tends to have issues in the presence of 2.4GhZ. I used 5Ghz wireless from my Mele Quieter3c mini PC to avoid this problem but I would advise to use good shielded cables in all situations.
I’m looking forward to taking the mount on the upcoming trip to Mount Teide, Tenerife to see how well it performs under dark and clear skies 😀
Wishlist
The following wishlist is based on my experience of using the NYX-101 alongside the Ultimate Power Box v2 (Firmware 2.4) and NYX-101 (Firmware X.Y.Z) via the Unity software (1.9.1825.32) :
Would be nice to see dust covers provided in the box for all the various ports on the back of the mount.
An external aerial port might be useful for the included ESP32 wireless connection ?
An option to power other Pegasus items such as the UPBv2 from the aux power port on the mount ? This would mean that then I would only have one cable going up/down from the scope to the mount which is especially useful for those who are mobile and don’t use the NYX mount in a permanent setting.
Include a hand controller in the default offering or document compatibility with any existing hand controllers. Could utilise the USB port instead of relying on the ESP32 internal module ?
Display the MAC address of the ESP32 module in the Unity app (wi-fi network tab) so it’s not necessary to hunt for it in the router’s client connection pages.
A disconnect/reconnect button for an existing wifi connection definition.
An editable display box for both the meridian and altitude limits where I can enter the desired value as I can only know what the settings are by actually grabbing the sliders or reading/setting the position from the REST API.
API call to set/get horizon & meridian limits as a profile similar to the location. This would allow the user with different scopes/piers/tripods to store different hard horizon/meridian and auto meridian flip settings.
If possible add a NYX-101 uptime value to Unity and API similar to other products like the UPBv2 to show how long the NYX-101 has been powered on.
If possible add a timer field to the wireless tab to indicate how long the mount has been connected to the configured wireless access point and/or the USB connection.
The NYX-101 health status in Unity sometimes doesn’t not render correctly on smaller/different aspect screens between Unity releases such as a Dell 13.3″ laptop.
API call to provide NYX-101 health status if the information is not already available via other API calls.
API call to indicate if a new firmware (inc version) is available as it is indicated in Unity ?
A changelog history for NYX-101, Unity & UPB between versions.
Update
As of May/June 2023 there is now a XT60 cable available to run from the AUX port to run to the UPBv2 and now I only need an adapter cable to fit my 10 Amp PSU with a XT60 connector.
14th June : Firmware 1.21 released by PegasusAstro and the patch notes show this release fixes the DEC axis overshoot experienced by Chris Woodhouse :
DEC motor accuracy improvement during slews. In previous firmware declination axis tends to overshoot.
Wi-fi hotspot channel width was reduced from 40MHz to 20MHz to improve channel data integrity.
Wi-fi hotspot can turn ON and OFF.
Wi-fi hotspot channel can be selected from 1 to 11 (11 is the default).
Reset home is not allowed when mount is hard encoder limit.
Whilst trying to process my limited data on M101 I noticed the Pixinsight AnnotateImage Script had an option to output the solved objects to a text file.
What I decided I wanted to know was the distance for each of the identified objects so it was time to break out PythonJupyter Notebook and connect to SIMBAD via the very useful Astropy module.
First we need to iterate over the contents of the solved objects text file and push them into a Python list data object (objects).
Now we have a list of object names we can send this to the SIMBAD data service via the query_objects function to retrieve information on each of the objects in the list. However, for the purpose of this exercise I’m only really interested in the Z_value (RedShift) and maybe the Radial Velocity, using the Hubble Constant I could calculate the light year distance. Instead of calculating it myself I use the Planck13 class to return the value for the lookback_time function. This returns a value in Gyrs where 1,000,000,000 light years = 1 Gyr.
I really need to read up more on the Astropy API so I can deal with the errors shown above and look to perform inline sorting for the highest Z value. Regardless of the errors most of the objects were returned and based on the Z value the furthest object returned was PGC2489445 at some 3.04 billion light years.
DSW invited me over to the IMT3 observatory for an imaging weekend to image M101 and the recent supernova2023ixf discovery. DSW was using the 12inch RDK and I decided to put the FSQ85 on the Pegasus NYX-101 to test out the setup ready for our Tenerife trip to Mount Teide.
I ran the QHY268C at high gain mode, gain 56, offset 30 and -20℃. I finally managed to cure the noise banding I was experiencing on the QHY268C but using a fully shielded high quality USB3 short length cable that I run from direct to a Pegasus UPBv2 that sits on top of the scope.
Although it’s mid summer and the Moon was bright and approaching full the phase, the sky conditions on the first night appeared to be okay at first sight. Before processing I decided to check on data quality via the blink module in PixInsight it was obvious that they were a lot of unusable subs due to high cloud and using them would have ruined the quality of any resulting stacked image.
Running the data stack of raw images through the PixInsight Subframe Selector to analyse the PSF SNR versus noise it clearly shows that I could only use 7 frames (35 minutes) didn’t drop below 0.08 from night one whilst all the data from night two should go straight into the bin along with most of night one 🙁
Pixinsight SubFrameSelector
Given I don’t have enough data to do the end result justice due to my poor PixInsight skills I decided to invert the images – I really should subscribe to Adam Block Studios (Shout out !)
Inverted image of M101, supernova 2023ixf and surrounding area
Running the AnnotateImage Script labels the various galaxies in the image which I enjoy looking up to see which type they are, magnitude and how far away they are.
Annotated FoV for area around M101, supernova is not labelled
Zooming in to M101 to see the Supernova better, it is located to the right of NGC5461 and indicated by the two arrows.
M101 with SN2023ixf indicated by the arrows
Light Curve
The AAVSO have a light curve plotted from measurements submitted by amateurs, just enter “SN 2023ixf” and submit here. It was still around 11th magnitude on 18th June but there does appear to be a slight decline in the brightness curve.
GingerGeek came round again tonight for another full night of imaging.
Focus position at 19,506 for Luminance at 22:30 hours.
Started with M100 a galaxy in Coma Berenices. LRGB at 300s sub frames as I have not imaged this galaxy before. However I found this was too close to the Moon so I will revise another night. So I moved onto M10 for RGB, as I have luminance data from Spring 2020 I took 4-6 of RGB as M10 was then too low as it passed the Meridian.
Unfortunately due to the Moon and on reflection looking at the luminance data from April none of the data is of significant quality to be able to use, so I will have to reshoot.
