2 cameras shooting simultaneously

[AstroViking]

Hello everybody,

 

am glad to join the community, located North of Copenhagen.

 

I run my gear for astrophotography on a AM5 with carbon tripod, with ASI EAF and 

computer.  My scope is an Altair Wave 115 EDTX with the 0.8 reducer. (it is pictured in my profile)

 

Now i am thinking to add a 60 (maybe 70) mm high quality triplet guide scope.  Is it possible with the AsiAir plus 256GB

to have 2 shooting sessions running, hence having both the mainscope and the guide scope shooting at the 

same time ?  And if not the AsiAir, is there another computer that can do that ?  

 

I am asking because, if there is one thing I learnt the past year (besides listening to experienced astro guys

like Glenn, Luke, Cuiv, Trevor etc. )it is that clear skies are random, why it's important to squeeze as much time

as possible out of the nights.

 

Many thanks

Clear Skies 🙂

Kenneth 

 

Edited March 31 by AstroViking

[RaDec]

Morning Kenneth and welcome to the forum. 

[AstroViking]

Thank you very much and happy Easter 🐣👍

[Carastro]

I image with a dual rig, but I have to run 2 laptops as if I try to download data from 2 cameras onto 1 laptop it all hangs instead of downloading.  

However I am a bit of a dinosaur with IT stuff, so don't take much notice of me, it could just be my slow laptops and ancient cameras. 

 

Welcome to BYA by the way.

 

Carole    

[GazAstro]

Welcome Kenneth, you'd probably need 2 asiairs or a highish spec laptop running something like NINA.

[TerryMcK]

Hello Kenneth welcome to the forum.

You would need to mount both scopes on a common bar using your guide scope for the guiding. That is 3 scopes complete with ancilliary equipment, cameras etc. all on one common rail. Then you have to consider the mass of that lot and whether your mount can handle it. I know that ZWO specify that the AM5 can handle 20kg with a counterweight but triplets with their glass are heavy beasts.

 

As Gaz says you would probably need two ASIAirs, one of them controlling the mount and connected to two cameras (one for main camera and one for guiding) focuser/filter wheel - the other ASIAir would then be just connected to the second scope camera/focuser/filter wheel. However I'm not sure you can synchronize ASIAirs so that when the mount is dithering at the end of exposure then both cameras are not capturing. Nor am I sure that you can syncronize the shutters to open at exactly the same time/duration.

 

You can do that on NINA but unfortunately that is Windows only. You can get away with just using one computer with NINA to do all tasks if using something like a MELE Quieter 3 which is a relatively powerful but tiny fanless computer around the same size of the AIR. The ASIAirs internally use Raspberry PI4 computers which are relatively low powered.

 

I still have a few Raspberry Pi4's that I used for a while and they run Astroberry which, like NINA, can be configured to syncronize multi camera rigs. Although you do have to use 2 PIs to make sure you don't overload the computer when downloading images. USB3 can be quite a bandwidth hogger. You can of course use USB2 but that can take some time to download large subs.

 

Good luck and please let us know what you decide to do.