With the improvement in weather it has been a great opportunity to try out some new technology that will help me continue imaging. The major detraction in the last few years has been the weight and setup time to do imaging. At the same time some products have been emerging to address this problem.

My main change has been the addition of a harmonic or strain wave telescope mount. These mounts are easily half the weight of my regular mount, don't require counterweights for lighter optical tubes and take half the time to set up.

The North America Nebula was a suitable test object that was easy to acquire. With the dual band filter that I'm using to address light pollution I was able to easily do 5 minute guided exposures with this new mount.

With this change in gear I've been busy building new workflows and as with all new things I'm just scratching the surface in how this will change my imaging practice. So far I'm pleased with the changes.

Mount: ZWO AM5 Harmonic Drive
Telescope: Televue 76 with .80 Reducer with IDAS NBZ filter
Imager: ASI183MC (OSC)
Guider: ZWO 120mm with ASI290MM
Capture: ASIAir Pro
Image Components: 300 second guided lights (12), darks (20), bias (60)
Processing: Pixinsight and Adobe Photoshop 2023