I’ve seen many, many people asking for the ZWO CAA, or Camera Angle Adjuster. Finally, after what feels like years of asking. ZWO has delivered.
The ZWO Camera Angle Adjuster is an electronic camera angle rotator that is an accessory for your astrophotography sessions.
Now, it’s not as if camera angle rotators are a new thing for the astrophotographer. They have been around for a while now. One leader of that market is PrimaLuce with their ARCO series of field rotators. However there are offerings also from Pegasus with their Falcon as well as the Deep Sky Dad Field Rotator 1. Therefore the ZWO CAA enters an established and competitive field. It will be interesting to see how the CAA fares against these competitors.
However, let’s not pretend as if ZWO does not have a considerable share of the market. They’re one of the biggest, if not the biggest name in astrophotography at the moment. A lot of imagers have something from ZWO attached. This is evident from the amount of people who have been regularly asking “where is the rotator?” from ZWO on Facebook forums.
Why Use The ZWO CAA?
One question may loom: “Why should I use a camera rotator”? Yes, most of us will just undo the locking screws on our telescopes and rotate the camera. However, the benefit of electronic rotators like the ZWO CAA is automation.
The ZWO CAA can integrate of course with the ASIAir and ASIStudio. But it has an ASCOM driver. This is a hugely popular third-party driver that is responsible for so much. With the Camera Angle Adjuster integrating with ASCOM, this accessory can be controlled by other programs you may already love using.
Automation is a huge thing these days. It’s basically setting up the telescope and equipment to do the imaging session for you. In the past, you had to use software like Sequator. Though automation is much more accessible with other software such as Astrophotography Tool, or more relevantly for this article the ZWO ASIAir.
Using software like the ASIAir, you can easily program an entire night’s astrophotography in using your smartphone. You can choose your target, how many sub-exposures to take, how many sub-exposures to take and then park. Or change what filter and when, even multiple targets per night using the Plan mode.
Planning A Session
It’s that plan mode where I can see the ZWO CAA really coming in to its own. Using the plan mode I can choose multiple targets per night, with multiple sub-exposure plans and what filters I wanted to use if I had a filter wheel attached. So I could, for example program in:
- 12 images of 10 minutes on NGC1499 with a Hydrogen-Alpha filter.
- 12 images of 5 minutes on M42 with a Light Pollution Reduction filter.
- 20 images of 3 minutes on M31 with no filter.
- 12 images of 10 minutes on NGC7635 with a dual-narrowband filter.
That would be quite a fun, productive evening’ astrophotography. Making great use of the entire night sky at different intervals. As one target sets, you can slew over to a new one.
The issue previously would be that those targets would all want a different rotation on the camera. Unless you didn’t mind totally cropping parts of the galaxy or nebula out by just having the wrong framing. The ZWO CAA aims to change that now by including rotation in the planning stage.
Weight Of The ZWO CAA
Considering the ZWO CAA screws directly onto your telescope’s focuser tube, it is the first part everything else will attach to. Therefore your Camera as well as any filter wheels you’re using have to attach to the CAA also.
By the looks of it, the side with the chin will connect to the telescope. If you look closely at the image, you can see M54 threads which are suitable for ZWO Full Frame series refracting telescopes. However if your telescope needs an M48 connection, the ZWO CAA comes with an adaptor in the box.
One fear I’ve seen on the forums is the weight the ZWO CAA can carry. As previously mentioned, all your filters, wheel and camera are attached to the camera angle adjuster.
However, ZWO claim the Camera Angle Adjuster is “highly rigid”, and can withstand torques of 25cNm. That really doesn’t mean much to most people. To try and make sense of this: if you hold an apple core out at arms length, the weight you feel is about the stress the ZWO CAA can turn at.
That’s not to say it’s weak, of course. It’s all relative. The ZWO Engineering department have tested it and claim it’s tight, rigid and stable with an ZWO ASI461 (that’s the crazy medium format camera), a 7 position 50 Electronic Filter Wheel and an additional 1kg added (about a bag of carrots).
We’re talking a load of about 3.2kg by my estimation (about 7lbs). ZWO claim though their test weight was about 4kg (8.8 lbs). Time will tell when actual real world examples by users comes through. I’ll definitely be trying to get my hands on one of these for review also.
ZWO CAA Speed
ZWO claim the ZWO CAA will also spin at 7.5°/second and can therefore complete an entire revolution in 48 seconds. It would make sense for software such as ASIAir to do the camera rotation during the slewing stage to reduce wait times. Not that 48 seconds is a long time to wait. It just makes sense.
They’re announcing an accuracy of 0.02°/step also. This is… extremely accurate. Again I’m not sure how I could test this personally. But once the real world examples comes through, we can see how reliable and accurate it really is.
Final Thoughts
Whilst this is just a broad overview of the new ZWO CAA product, I’m only going by what’s been announced on their website and sales pages. Initially I was quite appalled by its opening price of £299. I felt that was a lot for a one-trick pony accessory that I feel is quite niche. But when I looked into the competitors, it’s the cheapest camera angle adjuster I can find currently.
I’m eager to see just how this performs. I haven’t personally felt the burning need for one. Yes, there’s been nights where I wish I had an electronic adjuster. But it will definitely have its use and will open up accessibility and options for more people to have more complex plans. Especially in places like the United Kingdom with our wonderful 10 clear nights a year.
Being able to make use of every moment imaging at night and changing rotation, including matching rotation for long-term projects will be helpful. I’m eager to test its build quality and feel how it feels in the hand. How reliable it is, how easy it is to use. So far I have found ZWO products to be very user friendly. I expect no less from the ZWO CAA.
The ZWO CAA can be pre-ordered from First Light Optics now, ZWO directly or your favourite retailer. They’re expected to ship mid-January.