Episode 93 - Talking FILTERS w/James from Leviathan Optical

  ✨ Agena Astro | 🔭 High Point Scientific | 📦 Amazon | 🌌 First Light Optics

Welcome baaaack to The Astrocast! This week, Roo sits down w/James from Leviathan Optical to discuss the current state of Astrophotography, Filters for OSC Cameras, and of course, the Spectral Pro from Leviathan Optical. James is an incredibly talented and smart astrophotographer based in Dublin, Dr. James Murphy is an endlessly fascinating guy who I could talk to for 8 hours if I didn't have to make dinner with my wife occasionally.

I'm going to do my best to link to everything we discussed, but if I missed anything, please let me know! 

LINKS from this weeks Discussion:

Leviathan Optical Website

Get your Leviathan Spectral Pro at FLO!

Horizon Astronomy (if you're in Germany, check em out!)

John Walsh on Astrobin

Resources on Leviathan Optical (this is where you can find the tools/datasheets we discussed during the show)

Gallery showing results from Leviathan Spectral Pro (including my Heart Nebula)

Thanks so much for tuning in to the Astrocast, we'll be back with a new episode next week, and until then...as always - CLEAR SKIES!!!!

-Roo

Transcript

00;00;26;04 - 00;00;35;05
AC Song
10..9..8...7...

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AC Song
You are listening to, The Astrocast!

00;00;52;26 - 00;01;40;16
Roo
Welcome back to the Astrocast. I'm your host, Roo. Today is Wednesday, April 15th, 2026. So I hope everybody's doing well. Still, reeling from knife 2025. Man, what an amazing trip that was. And I'm here to tell you, I've got some really cool stuff coming up. Very much looking forward to sharing it. It's going to be a little bit, different than what you'd probably get from most creators.

00;01;40;18 - 00;02;04;18
Roo
You know, I was thinking about this, and after watching, some of the videos from some of the creators that were on the floor at Neve, I pretty quickly decided that I should not be the guy who just sits there and records table after table of, new products, because honestly, that's not what you guys are here for.

00;02;04;20 - 00;02;27;20
Roo
You're here because I would assume you like to hear, the story of astrophotography and how it excites me and what I enjoy about the hobby, etc.. So to that end, I am trying to tell the story of actually going to me. So I've got all of the media. Obviously. We just got back home yesterday in Charlotte.

00;02;27;22 - 00;02;51;24
Roo
Made quite a long trip driving there and back, and, I'm not really going to say anything more than that except to, stay tuned, because I am going to be dropping a very, very, very cool episode in the very near future. That I hope you all will very much enjoy. But, to that end, we have a very cool episode today.

00;02;51;25 - 00;03;22;14
Roo
So, I'm actually going to be interviewing a, friend of mine. His name is James. And if you have listened to the show at all before, you've probably heard me talk about, the filter that he has created, the Leviathan Optical Spectral Pro. And this is a, a phenomenal filter that has been made for people like me and possibly you, who shoot one shot color but want the best possible results.

00;03;22;16 - 00;03;47;07
Roo
From there, filter. If you're in a light polluted area. And I firmly believe after having tried many of the, light pollution filters on the market, that James has truly created something special with his products. Now, I will say we recorded this last week, and since then, first Light Optics has actually agreed, to stock the Leviathan Spectral Pro.

00;03;47;07 - 00;04;09;20
Roo
So James is located in Dublin, Ireland. And obviously shipping here to the States can be a bit confusing, but we have a lot of listeners in Europe, who shop via First light Optics. So if it's something that you're interested in getting your hands on, you can do that now. At first, light optics, I will have a link in the show notes, that you can use.

00;04;09;20 - 00;04;28;18
Roo
It's my, own affiliate link to get the first light optics. And from there, just click on that link and then search for Spectral Pro or Leviathan Optical and it'll, come right up for you. But I won't spoil too much. Other than that, I just wanted to make sure you know that it is actually available on one of the stores.

00;04;28;18 - 00;04;47;17
Roo
And if you're in the States, you, of course, can reach out to James. And I'm sure he'd be, happy to talk to you. You can also order from his website directly, and he does ship internationally, so I'll have all of that information for you in the show notes, so be sure to check that out. Make sure to tune in, later this week.

00;04;47;19 - 00;05;09;27
Roo
I've got three pending episodes that are all really awesome in their own ways. So super excited to, finish editing those and drop them for you. And a whole lot more to come on needs. So stay tuned for that. But for now, I will pass it over to Pastor. We have a very special guest joining us this week on the Astro cast.

00;05;09;29 - 00;05;26;24
Roo
I have actually, spoken about his work quite a few times over the last year, and I have been, very, very happy to be a, demo tester for him. So I'd like to welcome from Leviathan Optical. James, welcome to the show. James, how are you today?

00;05;26;26 - 00;05;30;19
James
I'm doing great. Thanks for having me on. And it's, nice to catch up again.

00;05;30;25 - 00;05;31;24
James
I know, man, we,

00;05;32;00 - 00;05;49;10
Roo
We got to talk on the phone a couple weeks ago, and we have wanted to do this for a long time. But we just haven't been able to make it happen. Because obviously, we had a time difference, and we're both very busy, and it's just like there's always something going on. So it's cool that we were able to finally, like, nail down a time and make it happen.

00;05;49;16 - 00;05;51;04
Roo
I missed the first one.

00;05;51;06 - 00;05;53;07
James
And I apologize.

00;05;53;07 - 00;06;03;05
Roo
For that because we had actually apparently already set a date last weekend and I completely or two weekends ago, and I completely, missed it. So my, my bad for that, but

00;06;03;08 - 00;06;04;07
James
Oh, that's all right, I think.

00;06;04;11 - 00;06;07;01
James
I think the messages were, confusing.

00;06;07;01 - 00;06;08;13
James
So I think we'll.

00;06;08;13 - 00;06;17;12
Roo
Do like one thing I noticed in there's not a good solution for this, unfortunately, I have like so many different messaging platforms.

00;06;17;15 - 00;06;18;15
James
And I have.

00;06;18;15 - 00;06;21;14
Roo
Learned that I can't have notifications on.

00;06;21;14 - 00;06;23;24
James
Them, like, at all.

00;06;23;25 - 00;06;49;03
Roo
Because I just will constantly be being the, you know, I'll be trying to eat dinner at 7:00 at night. Me and my wife were like watching TV or something. It's ding ding ding. So like I decided, you know, six months ago to just like, all right, I will do this on my own schedule. Turn off all the notifications, but when you got something that you want to pay attention to, that can make it tricky because you're not getting the ding ding ding in your ear all the time.

00;06;49;03 - 00;06;51;00
Roo
And yeah, I kind of sucks, but.

00;06;51;03 - 00;06;52;29
James
Yeah, it's it's it's.

00;06;52;29 - 00;07;02;11
James
Tough and it's, it's it's hard to manage then like because I do the same like oh you have like all notifications are all apps except for is like a few specific individuals.

00;07;02;11 - 00;07;03;10
James
Yeah.

00;07;03;13 - 00;07;05;09
James
So it's easy for things to slip by.

00;07;05;16 - 00;07;05;27
James
Yeah.

00;07;05;28 - 00;07;12;14
James
And then it's annoying again, if the apps update and reset your, notification settings and if.

00;07;12;17 - 00;07;13;18
James
They know this.

00;07;13;18 - 00;07;41;25
Roo
Is a bit of a tangent, but like, I've been getting more and more anti smartphone over the last year, like, I don't know, it's just it makes me cringe. Like, don't get me wrong, I love playing on my phone just as much as the next guy. But like the whole all the social media, like I only get on social media now really for for the astro cast, like I do the Facebook page, because I know a lot of people follow there and I'll post updates there occasionally and stuff, but otherwise I kind of try to stay off of it because it's just, I don't know, man.

00;07;41;25 - 00;07;45;04
Roo
It's a it's a war zone out there and it's not good.

00;07;45;06 - 00;07;50;05
James
And it's kind of addictive. It's well, it's hard to not look at your phone in a moments piece.

00;07;50;05 - 00;07;52;04
James
Of, absolutely.

00;07;52;05 - 00;07;57;25
James
And honestly, since starting the business, I've had to be more online than ever. So it it's actually gotten harder.

00;07;58;02 - 00;07;58;29
James


00;07;59;01 - 00;08;08;01
Roo
Your location probably makes that difficult. What? Where where are you right now? Tell them. Tell them where you're from.

00;08;08;04 - 00;08;09;12
Roo
Yeah. I think your.

00;08;09;12 - 00;08;10;22
Roo
Accent kind of give it away.

00;08;10;25 - 00;08;12;09
James
Yeah, well, it's funny.

00;08;12;09 - 00;08;14;19
James
When I'm in Dublin, people always ask me where I'm from.

00;08;14;22 - 00;08;18;21
James
Oh, do they? Yeah. Why do you think that is?

00;08;18;23 - 00;08;36;13
James
Because I've lived abroad. Then after living abroad, I've always worked in international group, so I've kind of just picked up, international English. So the foreign English speakers, I sound Irish to Irish speakers, I sound foreign,

00;08;36;15 - 00;08;40;01
James
That's interesting. I never considered that. I was just say you do have a bit of a.

00;08;40;01 - 00;08;51;27
Roo
Unique, characteristic to your voice that I haven't had a lot of Irish friends over the years, but I've talked to a few, and, it does have a little bit of a unique draw to it. So I'm in the state.

00;08;51;27 - 00;08;52;07
James
Well.

00;08;52;09 - 00;09;13;05
James
There's a funny story to how I kind of learned that I have to learn that the hard way is I yeah, I lived in the States, but it was like a holiday in the States for like three months in San Diego. And for my first week there, I was having the strangest conversations with people. I was talking to people, and they were just like, not answering me back in ways that made sense to what I said to them.

00;09;13;05 - 00;09;14;16
James
But they're being very nice.

00;09;14;18 - 00;09;15;19
James


00;09;15;22 - 00;09;21;02
James
And it was only on the seventh day, and I was lying in bed at night, and I kind of thought, it's my accent. They don't understand.

00;09;21;02 - 00;09;27;27
James
Me. But they're trying to be polite. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think he said the.

00;09;27;27 - 00;09;37;07
James
Next day I tried this. I tried this one trick where I just start pronouncing more like all the letters and all of the words, and all of a sudden people started to understand me a lot better.

00;09;37;14 - 00;09;42;04
James
Wow. Go figure. It's funny because, I mean.

00;09;42;06 - 00;09;46;18
Roo
I guess you don't really consider it. It's just your voice, right? It's such a natural part of yourself.

00;09;46;20 - 00;09;47;00
James
Yeah.

00;09;47;00 - 00;09;55;15
James
Yeah. But then soon after I was, like, living in the Netherlands for nine months, and, so I was working with a lot of, you know, Dutch, Belgian, French, German.

00;09;55;15 - 00;09;56;27
James
That's cool.

00;09;57;00 - 00;10;04;04
James
It then. Kind of. So I ended up speaking this like international in English for like quite a long time before I came home again.

00;10;04;06 - 00;10;05;13
James
I wonder if that's.

00;10;05;16 - 00;10;10;12
Roo
More and more typical these days as we become more of a global society. I bet you it is,

00;10;10;14 - 00;10;16;29
James
I think so as well. A lot of people say I have an American accent that's probably just from, like, watching a lot of American TV.

00;10;17;01 - 00;10;18;03
James
Yeah, yeah, because.

00;10;18;03 - 00;10;30;07
Roo
You were telling me. And this is something I'd always been curious about. Forgive me before we get into too much, but you said that, like, a lot of the pop culture stuff in Ireland is exported from the US, so, like.

00;10;30;07 - 00;10;31;18
James
Oh, yeah. Absolutely.

00;10;31;18 - 00;10;34;10
Roo
So TV, music, all that kind of stuff.

00;10;34;13 - 00;10;43;02
James
Yeah. Like, I almost say that like within certain groups of my frame groups, I at least, the American media is essentially culturally dominant.

00;10;43;04 - 00;10;45;08
James
Wow. That's crazy. I mean.

00;10;45;08 - 00;10;52;24
Roo
I guess I guess it makes sense. But man, I tell you, in this day and age, it's it's, Oh, it's crazy man.

00;10;52;26 - 00;10;53;14
James
Yeah.

00;10;53;16 - 00;11;11;14
James
I haven't said that. No, there is like, at the same time, like, I really like Irish culture resurgence because like, Irish media in Ireland is having its own resurgence recently. I was telling you before when we last spoke, there's a band called The Kneecap, and I was recommended you watch their movie. And this is kind of more of a modern age.

00;11;11;14 - 00;11;14;17
James


00;11;14;19 - 00;11;26;03
James
Aspect of Irish life, even though, like, you know, they're from Belfast and it's quite different to Dublin, but, you know, it's really inspired a lot of people to get more into like, Irish language and Irish culture.

00;11;26;06 - 00;11;45;25
Roo
That is very cool. I think it's probably number one on the list of places that me and my wife would like to visit together. We even went so far as to buy a travel guide to Ireland when we were at Barnes and Noble one night. We've never done that for any other country, so it's definitely up there. Actually, I've got a friend, actually a coworker, Cassidy.

00;11;45;27 - 00;11;56;02
Roo
She travels to Ireland every year for a couple of weeks. They just love it. And I don't know if she's got family there. As well, but she travels there quite a bit. But you said you you had moved around a lot.

00;11;56;03 - 00;11;57;00
James
What?

00;11;57;03 - 00;12;01;28
Roo
Why were you moving around, if you don't mind me asking? Was it work related or pleasure or.

00;12;02;00 - 00;12;02;24
James
Well, I haven't.

00;12;02;24 - 00;12;22;21
James
Moved around that much, but, What, like, I don't that internship, there's a program called J-1. So most students, when they leave school, there's a program where you can go and do work abroad in the United States for. I think it's like 3 to 6 months. I stayed for three months, and then after that I did an internship with the European Space Agency.

00;12;22;21 - 00;12;30;09
James
So I was living in, Leiden in the Netherlands for like nine months quite soon after. Yeah.

00;12;30;12 - 00;12;32;01
James
And then like.

00;12;32;04 - 00;12;54;09
James
Oh, really cool. Like, it's like, one of the. Yeah, it's it's really, it's like what? It's like one of the most fun jobs. It's one of the most incredible places you can work. And it's a bit mind blowing that, I was accepted. I wasn't expecting to be expected because, like my university, they had this program and said, you need to spend at least two months working.

00;12;54;12 - 00;13;09;28
James
And I didn't like any of the options they were given me, so I started, I asked them, can I go on my own? And, I applied to some and this is one of the ones I applied to. And I was accepted. So I never really expecting it. It was like the dream, and it was like.

00;13;10;00 - 00;13;12;19
Roo
Out there in the universe. And see if it comes back, right?

00;13;12;23 - 00;13;13;04
James
Yeah.

00;13;13;04 - 00;13;39;03
James
Exactly. Yeah. And I got the call to go. So I went, but I managed to extend it for like nine months instead. And it's great. And like when you first walk down the corridors and you see they have like life models of the satellites and the spaceships and things like that, and like, that's the first thing you do when you walk in, you walk down this long corridor with all of these like, instruments and satellites and rockets, and it's like really inspiring.

00;13;39;03 - 00;13;44;09
James
Like the first thing you do when you walk in there and it kind of it gives me goosebumps.

00;13;44;12 - 00;13;54;14
Roo
That is really cool. What did you what did you get to do while you were there interning? I mean, I, I know an internship doesn't necessarily mean anything glorious, but what what did you get to do to do?

00;13;54;16 - 00;14;12;06
James
So I was working with the space environments and effects department. So largely what they were responsible for doing was like with satellites in particular, modeling the radiation environment that a satellite in a certain orbit would be, susceptible to. So.

00;14;12;07 - 00;14;13;08
James
Wow.

00;14;13;10 - 00;14;14;00
James
So if, you know, like.

00;14;14;00 - 00;14;15;01
James
The nice thing.

00;14;15;03 - 00;14;33;16
James
The magnetic field of the Earth, you've got an atom belt, so you've got, protons and electrons circulating over those magnetic fields, and they can impact some of the instrumentation on satellites. But you can also have, you know, the particles from deep space coming in and interacting there.

00;14;33;18 - 00;14;37;20
Roo
And depending on where you are in orbit, you get more or less. Right?

00;14;37;20 - 00;15;15;27
James
Exactly. Yeah. On Earth, it's not such a problem because, like, the atmosphere, absorbs a lot of that radiation. But satellites in space are really sensitive to it, especially because the skins of the satellites often have to be, razor thin or even for. Yeah. So what what you're doing in that department is, not only modeling the, you know, the particle load coming in on the sensors and sensitive electronics, but then modeling how thick the shielding should have to be or maybe instead, if you can't make a tick because a way to re orientate the satellite.

00;15;16;00 - 00;15;17;17
James
A different part of the orbit.

00;15;17;19 - 00;15;20;08
James
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. See?

00;15;20;10 - 00;15;24;19
Roo
That's very interesting stuff. You know, it's.

00;15;24;21 - 00;15;25;20
James
And you said the.

00;15;25;20 - 00;15;35;05
Roo
The the shielding are extremely thin. And I guess that makes sense because they want to make it as light as possible for getting into space. Right. Because every gram is money.

00;15;35;08 - 00;15;39;18
James
Yeah. And sometimes, you can just make a thicker aluminum or.

00;15;39;20 - 00;15;40;16
Roo
Yeah.

00;15;40;18 - 00;15;46;07
James
Sometimes you have to make a thinner or. Except that that's the life cycle of the instrument.

00;15;46;10 - 00;15;58;01
Roo
Now, when you would test these things, was it theoretical testing or did you guys have a way of actually like bombarding different materials with radiation to see how they would react?

00;15;58;04 - 00;16;18;14
James
So if you imagine what the European Space Agency, it's like, they have a lot of testing in-house, but, a lot of the instruments in this specific departments are made by subcontractors and some of the different companies, so that some of these instruments would be made by, by the companies, and they might have done in-house testing on the sensors with the.

00;16;18;14 - 00;16;20;28
Roo
Different you have to do kind of design and model.

00;16;20;28 - 00;16;21;24
James
It all out and how.

00;16;21;25 - 00;16;54;06
James
Exactly. So you're working together with the contractors in that case. So for this specific department, we were we worked with the contractors data, testing, but also in the European Space Agency, they have their own testing facilities, which are, very cool, actually. And I was saying on the first day that we walked through, there that the best one was the, you know, just nondestructive testing, but the best one I got to see was the destructive testing lab, where you're you're just smashing things into other things to see when they break.

00;16;54;06 - 00;16;54;23
James
It was.

00;16;54;26 - 00;16;55;24
James
Amazing. That is that.

00;16;55;24 - 00;16;57;04
James
Was quite cool to see.

00;16;57;07 - 00;16;58;22
James


00;16;58;25 - 00;17;17;07
James
But the, the other thing like walking through there, they brought, they brought us through as a group because they were introducing this on our first day, and they handed out this random thing and they said, what is that smell like? And, you know, we said, well, that's burning electronics. And they're like, yeah, that was part of like the AC system on the ES.

00;17;17;07 - 00;17;23;01
James
So I got to hold something, watch and smell something like a piece of electronics that had brought on the es.

00;17;23;01 - 00;17;25;05
James
Oh that is really cool.

00;17;25;12 - 00;17;28;22
James
So they had brought there to like do a post analysis.

00;17;28;24 - 00;17;40;16
Roo
Man, that is super duper cool man, I love that. What do you think about the ES? Looking like it's going to be the orbited in the coming years? You got any, thoughts or feelings on that?

00;17;40;18 - 00;17;41;12
James


00;17;41;14 - 00;17;48;18
James
It's complicated. It's cool that it's up there. I think it should stay up there. It's comfortable.

00;17;48;20 - 00;17;51;12
James
I it's definitely other things I've got.

00;17;51;15 - 00;17;58;13
James
Other things are going to go up as well, I think. I think they should keep it going because it's such a great legacy over time.

00;17;58;13 - 00;18;00;26
James
I agree. And that's that's.

00;18;00;26 - 00;18;03;00
Roo
Kind of where I feel like I understand.

00;18;03;05 - 00;18;03;12
James
Like a.

00;18;03;13 - 00;18;20;07
James
Scene from the space race as well, because like after the space race, there has been a decline in the interest in space, but the doing it, how exciting things are that are in space is like a little less since the space race. And this is one of the last really cool things.

00;18;20;07 - 00;18;22;20
James
Yeah, that we can secondly.

00;18;22;23 - 00;18;23;10
James
Yeah, like.

00;18;23;10 - 00;18;39;22
Roo
Frequently hear from the ground as well. And I mean my wife just rolls her eyes and she's like, I get at the i.s.s.. But like for me, I'm like a kid in a candy shop every time I see it go overhead, you know, when it comes and goes after, you know, months at a time, and then all of a sudden you're seeing it every other night for a week.

00;18;39;22 - 00;19;00;13
Roo
I just, I don't know, I light up every time I see the ISS. I actually was able to capture it when we had the, the big Aurora storm on May 10th, 2025 2024. Other, you remember the huge one that broke out and, actually one of my photos I captured the ISS trailing for, I think, 10s.

00;19;00;20 - 00;19;10;24
Roo
It was a ten second exposure with Aurora and the ISS, and no one knows that. Looks at the photo there. Just see a smudge of light. But I'm like, that's the eyes. Because I looked it up in Stellarium the next day when I got home.

00;19;10;24 - 00;19;18;28
James
So well, what matters is that, you know, and that other people exist, or some other choice. People will know and we all know it's cool.

00;19;19;00 - 00;19;23;23
Roo
Absolutely. Well, James Webb, thank you for coming on the show to talk with us. We're just.

00;19;23;23 - 00;19;24;25
James
Going to take a quick.

00;19;24;25 - 00;19;45;12
Roo
Break, and we'll be right back with James from Leviathan Optics. All right. Welcome back to the Astro cast. I'm your host. We're sitting here with, James from Leviathan. This is, one of the more interesting origin stories I have heard. It's funny, we just started naturally kind of getting into your background, but I always ask people like, how did you get into what you do?

00;19;45;12 - 00;19;58;01
Roo
And how did you get into the, hobby of astronomy. But it sounds like it's largely been space in astronomy or what have you has been a passion of yours for quite some time. Judging by what you've been telling me so far.

00;19;58;04 - 00;20;21;07
James
You know, I think that's partially true, and it's partially not true. Because, like, I, unlike a lot of other guests I've heard on the show and maybe some a lot of other people do talk who are really into the hobby. I can't really admit to having, like, a huge passion for astronomy my whole life because that to be honest, I didn't know that much about it until I went to college and studied it.

00;20;21;07 - 00;20;49;21
James
And it's like it's another story. I ended up, studying physics with astronomy in college, but it was only true that exposure that I actually started to really enjoy working with physics. And then in particular space science, space technology, and, like, I suppose the other thing that I think binds all people who are into astronomy and astrophotography is probably, you know, the fundamental questions about the universe that we live in.

00;20;49;21 - 00;20;54;10
James
And I think that's what really drove me into enjoying astronomy as a hobby.

00;20;54;10 - 00;20;55;15
James
Yes.

00;20;55;17 - 00;21;20;10
James
Because, and I suppose not to make it too complicated, but it comes back to light pollution in the end. Like where I grew up, we had no, night sky to look at. Like, maybe you'd see a few dots. Yeah. And so I never really had a night sky to inspire me. And then it wasn't until I actually studied physics with astronomy that I actually learned about all the cool things that are up there.

00;21;20;12 - 00;21;25;10
James
So that's really then what started the passion for me as well.

00;21;25;12 - 00;21;37;23
Roo
So light pollution is, it's the bane of my existence. And many other astronomers non astronomers, animals, insects, you name it.

00;21;37;25 - 00;21;39;10
James
How did you.

00;21;39;12 - 00;21;52;16
Roo
What made you start looking into light pollution specifically? Like out of all the things that you can study and and work in or work towards, what was it that drew you towards light pollution?

00;21;52;19 - 00;22;11;22
James
Well, I suppose during when I was in college is when I started acquiring astrophotography equipment to do it on my own, like I bought a broken mount, some badly collimated Newtonian and things like that. It was missing parts. And obviously in college you don't have a ton of money to spend on astrophotography. So I was just, repair.

00;22;11;22 - 00;22;16;13
James
It took me a couple of years to repair that stuff. And you kind.

00;22;16;13 - 00;22;19;16
Roo
Of figured out how it all worked and everything as you repaired it.

00;22;19;19 - 00;22;45;17
James
Yeah, exactly. Like I disassembled the mount and reassembled it, and figured out that what? Drivers we needed to connect to different components. And there was a specific driver that needed a CD install to a specific adapter, that there was just a lot of, like, small things like that. And it was only kind of after I'd finish college, my PhD then that I actually started using that equipment and doing astrophotography.

00;22;45;19 - 00;23;02;28
James
And I got some my first images that were really cool. Obviously, I imaged Orion and it was cool. I got to see the nebula and I was like, wow, I've been studying this stuff, for my whole career. And I finally just donut myself. I finally just did it, the astronomy. And it was like such a cool moment.

00;23;03;00 - 00;23;19;05
James
And then it was very quickly I realized, wow, I've waited all this time, and I process the data, and I had to realize how much the light pollution was impacting the image. So I started looking on the market for light pollution filters, and I just didn't like any of them.

00;23;19;07 - 00;23;22;01
James
Yeah, so that's understandable.

00;23;22;04 - 00;23;43;07
James
And at the same time, I'd been working in a company doing optical engineering for like two years at the time, and I had made a bunch of these ten film filters for different, internal instruments. We had, so I was like, well, I know how they're made. I know the I, I know the suppliers and other manufacturers.

00;23;43;07 - 00;23;48;23
James
I know what drives the costs. Like I May 2018, why don't I make one for myself.

00;23;49;00 - 00;23;49;15
James
Yeah.

00;23;49;21 - 00;23;53;16
James
And that's the, that's that's why I think that's.

00;23;53;16 - 00;23;54;23
James
That's that's.

00;23;54;25 - 00;24;04;16
Roo
The it's so great. And so like grassroots and organic right. Solving for a problem that you had you're already working for the company. Why not give it a shot. Right.

00;24;04;18 - 00;24;24;16
James
Yeah. Well I didn't actually do it while I was working with the company is the other thing. It just happened to be a bit serendipitous with what's happening in my life. So I was working in Galway at the time, and, well, at the time, me and my wife were thinking we'd moved back to Dublin and the company wasn't keen on, you know, having me work remotely.

00;24;24;19 - 00;24;38;11
James
So it was just serendipitous that I wanted to do this filter. I'd wanted to work independently and have my own business for a long time. So, you know, that starts, and the timing just worked out that I could just go and do it.

00;24;38;13 - 00;24;40;14
Roo
That's so cool, man, I love that.

00;24;40;17 - 00;24;41;19
James
Yeah.

00;24;41;22 - 00;24;53;25
James
So one of the one of the reasons that I really wanted to do the filter is that if you look at the measured light pollution from different cities, a lot of people say, no, we only have to worry about led.

00;24;53;27 - 00;24;54;04
James
Which.

00;24;54;04 - 00;25;09;24
James
Is largely the case, like APD is the biggest problem we have at the minute. But there's also most, you know, communities like the local councils, probably not all of them have upgraded from sodium.

00;25;09;26 - 00;25;10;11
James
To 100.

00;25;10;12 - 00;25;12;09
Roo
Sodium, 100%.

00;25;12;11 - 00;25;31;16
James
Yeah, not all of ten to with CFL compact fluorescent. And then there's metal halide. So in fact the light pollution spectrum is not just LED. It's actually quite it's a complex mix of all of these. Yes. If you look at measured spectrum from a bunch of different cities, you can see that. I mean, each city has a different mix.

00;25;31;18 - 00;25;43;25
Roo
Makes sense. Right? Because the cities exactly the same. Everybody's using different technology and different finances depending on if you're a rich city or, you know, less rich city than you might have older lights or newer lights.

00;25;43;28 - 00;26;04;27
James
Yeah, exactly. So what I did then was I took a lot of these measured spectrum, and I looked at the, you know, the manufacturer data for the lights as well. And I over plotted them on some of the available filters on the market. And it was from that I could say, okay, well, they have higher order bandwidth is a really strong source of light pollution.

00;26;04;27 - 00;26;13;00
James
So I don't want to buy that filter. And I just did that with basically all of them to the point where I realized, well, the filter I want isn't there.

00;26;13;05 - 00;26;19;01
James
Oh, man. Yeah, the millier. Yeah. So.

00;26;19;01 - 00;26;29;13
James
I it's I think it's the same with a lot of the guests that you have on here where they kind of they want to do this thing in astronomy, but they realize the exact thing they want doesn't exist. So they go on making that.

00;26;29;13 - 00;26;45;07
Roo
That's why the show exists. And so every guest tells that story in one way or another. I love it. So what was it like? What was it like to, like actually prototype that first device? Like how much trial and error did you go through.

00;26;45;09 - 00;26;45;24
James
Or.

00;26;45;24 - 00;26;57;21
James
What you like when it comes to the filter? There was zero trial and error. Okay. Yeah. It was, 100% had to be right the first time because, it's too expensive to make one.

00;26;57;28 - 00;26;58;21
James
Yeah.

00;26;58;24 - 00;27;03;04
James
The cost of making one is the same as making 50 or 200, depending on.

00;27;03;04 - 00;27;04;06
James
The size of the.

00;27;04;07 - 00;27;23;12
Roo
Because, I would assume that. Forgive me, I'm a layman, but the science behind it kind of dictates that it would be point. It's like like making a, what do they call them? Like plates for t shirts. You wouldn't just make A1T shirt with that plate. You got to make a thousand of them for it to make any sense, because you put all the work into the filter.

00;27;23;12 - 00;27;23;23
Roo
Yeah.

00;27;23;24 - 00;27;25;13
James
Okay, cool. So what's that.

00;27;25;13 - 00;27;29;01
Roo
Like? What's the process like then for for figuring out how to make it.

00;27;29;07 - 00;27;55;14
James
Well there's there's so many aspects to it. So like let's say, you know, I was telling you I got all this data from measure like pollution spectrums and, manufacturer spectrums and over plotted it and I decided where I would like the bands to be, how I would like the bands to be and what what these filters are or thin layer stacks of dielectric metallic materials.

00;27;55;14 - 00;27;59;24
James
And each layer is sometimes like a quarter wave quarter of a wavelength.

00;27;59;26 - 00;28;01;13
James
A quarter of a wavelength.

00;28;01;13 - 00;28;13;18
Roo
I would. So I was reading about this last night because I wanted to do a little bit of research about how filters work, so I didn't sound like a complete idiot. But explain what that means. What is a quarter wave thickness? A quarter light.

00;28;13;18 - 00;28;14;21
James
Wave?

00;28;14;24 - 00;28;21;05
James
Yeah, yeah. So if you're a normal 500, 550 nanometers, think a quarter of that. So.

00;28;21;07 - 00;28;22;03
James
Wow.

00;28;22;06 - 00;28;31;12
James
Yeah. So yeah, sometimes the layers are 30 to 50 or 100 nanometers, sometimes less, depending on the waves.

00;28;31;14 - 00;28;32;00
James
Yeah.

00;28;32;00 - 00;28;52;23
James
The wavelengths of interest. So let's say you agree your specification with the for the coating. What you can do, you can use a software like called McClair. Essential McLeod. Okay. Or there's a number of, softwares that can do it. And by rights, you can do it with pen and paper. But like in the modern age, people are using software of course.

00;28;52;25 - 00;29;17;22
James
So you make these border layer stacks using your typically to at least two dielectric materials. Sometimes it can be more complex. So typical combinations or materials would be magnesium fluoride or titanium dioxide or silicon dioxide. So they could be the materials that are in your quarter layer stack. Okay. And you just build that up, depending on the specification of the band.

00;29;17;25 - 00;29;36;28
James
So you can optimize it with software. So where you want the band to clip on and where you want the band to cut off, where you, which band you want to be blocking, which bands you want to be transmitting. Sometimes you might combine, shortwave pass with a long wave pass filter. And, you know, that's how you would build up a band pass filter.

00;29;37;03 - 00;29;38;13
James
Yeah.

00;29;38;16 - 00;30;03;03
James
But I can do that. And I have done that. But one thing I learned from working in the other company was like, there's no real point in designing your own quarter layer stack, because when you go to your manufacturers, their coding engineer is going to want to design their own stack, depending on the manufacturing process that they have under it requirements of the machines that they have.

00;30;03;03 - 00;30;14;17
James
And that makes sense. They have with their process. So it's it's that's how it's done. Yet by rights that's actually done with the coding manufacturer.

00;30;14;19 - 00;30;44;00
Roo
So these coatings and the quarter wavelengths, as you say, do they sequentially subtract the light, but you don't want as it passes through the filter. Is that how this works or is it is it blocking at all out from the get go? And only letting through like that? Five like the signal, for example, like I've always wondered like because you.

00;30;44;06 - 00;30;44;14
James
Look at.

00;30;44;14 - 00;31;05;07
Roo
This filter and you just see like, ooh, shiny, clear, maybe a specific color. Right. But but is it a process where it, it slowly narrows it down to, to what you want? Or is it kind of all of the lights going through at once? And in other words, would the top of the part of glass be the same as the bottom part of the glass?

00;31;05;09 - 00;31;28;01
James
It happens as a function of the thickness of the layers. So the the closer you want it to be to your design specification, it's probably going to have to have more layers. So the more Baxter specification can be that, the less layers it can have, okay. The more layers it has, the more transmission you get, the more out-of-band blocking you get.

00;31;28;03 - 00;31;38;28
James
But then also the cost rises dramatically because, yeah, non-uniformity as a function of all the layers. Yeah. It's going to impact. So that's one of the.

00;31;38;29 - 00;31;40;06
Roo
One thing then.

00;31;40;08 - 00;32;03;07
James
Just about react. Yeah. And with this, with the Spectral Pro in particular, this is like one of the ways that A has high transmission and has high outer band blocking is a high number of layers compared to, order filters. And it takes a long time. Yeah. So this particular filter, the engineers worked overnight in the factory to manufacture it, which they don't normally do.

00;32;03;07 - 00;32;06;02
James
They don't not usually work with that number of layers.

00;32;06;02 - 00;32;11;14
Roo
Yeah. So you're saying workers usually don't like staying at their jobs all night long?

00;32;11;16 - 00;32;14;05
James
No.

00;32;14;07 - 00;32;19;25
Roo
But but you got them too though. And they actually did build it out the way that you had envisioned.

00;32;19;27 - 00;32;38;19
James
Yeah. Yeah. So the the so to be clear, like I'm talking from the flight and optical engineering, but I've worked with a company called Delta Thin Film in Denmark to get it made. And like, I'm like, I'm essentially a one man startup at the Air Force, so I have to.

00;32;38;19 - 00;32;41;13
James
Yeah. I mean, like, you have to work with people, especially.

00;32;41;13 - 00;32;42;10
Roo
In this day and age.

00;32;42;10 - 00;32;45;20
James
Yeah. I couldn't even imagine how you'd begin.

00;32;45;22 - 00;32;51;27
James
The machine to make it is absolutely incredible and cost multiple millions to make. So this.

00;32;51;27 - 00;32;53;00
James
Is bad.

00;32;53;02 - 00;33;08;11
James
Yeah. So that specific type of process is called a magnetron splitter. And so that's a type of PVD, you know, physical vapor deposition. So that's actually the process of how those thin layers actually get onto your substrate. Yes.

00;33;08;13 - 00;33;23;20
Roo
And I was wondering that was you. Yeah. Reading my mind, through vapors. So they're literally vapor vaporizing the materials and then slowly kind of stacking them on top of each other and they solidify.

00;33;23;20 - 00;33;25;12
James
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00;33;25;14 - 00;33;44;26
James
So there's a bunch of different ways of doing it. So like the, the most standard way is like, you know, you have your materials like for example, titanium dioxide in a tungsten crucible. Okay. They're all, all the, the processes usually have a vacuum chamber where you vacuum out the atmosphere. But you always pump in a gas electric aka.

00;33;44;29 - 00;34;17;28
James
But then you heat your crucible for example which are titanium dioxide. And it's essentially vaporizes and lands on your substrate and forms a layer. But what you have to do is make sure that the layer is uniform and the right thickness. And that's what's hard, especially as the layers get thicker at this specific filter is made on the magnetron splitter, so it's slightly different where there's, magnetic fields involved in the, in the target so that there's magnets and then you have your target.

00;34;17;28 - 00;34;40;14
James
And actually similar to what we talked about with the Van Allen belt, you have, there's going to be electrons, passing over at the magnetic fields inside this target. And as the hydrogen comes in, there's physical interaction, and atoms going to hit the target and then parts of that target, atoms of that target, for example, if it's silicon dioxide in this case will land on your substrate.

00;34;40;16 - 00;34;41;24
James
And so that is.

00;34;41;24 - 00;34;45;29
James
So then it's a really cool process. It's very cool.

00;34;45;29 - 00;35;04;27
Roo
So at the end of the day do I have this right. So different materials cut down or I'm saying cut down but layered in different thicknesses absorb various lengths of light. Is that a yes correct way of saying yeah.

00;35;04;29 - 00;35;14;04
James
Yeah I would more so say that. Like if they did quarter layer stack is selecting what gets transmitted and watch reflected back.

00;35;14;07 - 00;35;15;19
Roo
Gotcha.

00;35;15;22 - 00;35;16;13
James
So some of.

00;35;16;13 - 00;35;22;01
James
Course will be absorbed. But typically we want to minimize

00;35;22;03 - 00;35;24;05
James
The absorption and that's where you get the.

00;35;24;05 - 00;35;26;14
Roo
Higher transmission rate. And that's why.

00;35;26;16 - 00;35;28;11
James
The, the higher talked about is so.

00;35;28;11 - 00;35;31;07
Roo
Important because you want that higher transmission rate.

00;35;31;09 - 00;35;33;10
James
And yes. Gotcha. Okay.

00;35;33;12 - 00;35;42;04
James
Well and most importantly, it's like you want the highest amount of transmission where you want it and the highest amount of blocking where you want it.

00;35;42;06 - 00;35;43;02
James
Well.

00;35;43;04 - 00;36;03;24
Roo
Let's talk about what the results are. So what did you think when you first held it in your hand? Was it like everything that you would hope for? Because I would imagine this, you know, quite a goal in life to accomplish, to actually create your own light pollution filter. And not only that, but like know the physics behind it and how it actually works.

00;36;03;24 - 00;36;05;16
Roo
That's pretty freaking incredible.

00;36;05;19 - 00;36;08;10
James
So I was terrified. I was afraid to touch it.

00;36;08;13 - 00;36;12;27
James
I beg you. I mean, I was I yeah.

00;36;12;29 - 00;36;29;23
James
Obviously I had to I had them for quite, quite a while. It took me a while to actually open the box. I was like, really? Yeah. Because, you know, like, this is like one of the hard parts as well as the cleanliness. Like, you have to be so clean when they're made and then clean when you're packaging doesn't take.

00;36;29;23 - 00;36;32;16
Roo
Care of them. It's. Yeah, absolutely crucial.

00;36;32;16 - 00;36;33;08
James
I'm always so I.

00;36;33;08 - 00;36;39;00
James
Have to be very careful and I, I have to be very careful with each one I open.

00;36;39;02 - 00;36;53;24
Roo
So I can't even remember how we started talking originally. I don't know if you messaged me or I messaged you, but we got to chatting and you had completed the filter and you were like, do you want to try it out?

00;36;54;00 - 00;36;54;14
James
And yeah.

00;36;54;14 - 00;37;06;01
James
I had because I started listening to your show right about the time I started this business. So as soon as it was ready, I was like, well, he has to have he has to.

00;37;06;03 - 00;37;07;11
James
Oh, to have one.

00;37;07;13 - 00;37;26;03
Roo
I love, I love it and you know me living where I do, I constantly battle light pollution and it's like the bane of my existence here. And like, like I said earlier and everybody who listens to the show knows I like I absolutely hate light pollution. And I try to educate everyone that I run into about why it's such a problem.

00;37;26;03 - 00;37;56;23
Roo
But the reality is, is like, if we want to do this hobby from our suburban homes and 90% of the cases for, you know, people living in America, and I'm sure in Ireland as well, like we're going to have to deal with light pollution a lot of the time. And, and, up until me and you talked, the best that I had used was an L Pro filter, you know, and like, you know, credit to I, I've drawn like I haven't seen anything else.

00;37;56;23 - 00;38;31;00
Roo
So whenever I got the results, I was like, wow, that's really good compared to not having a light pollution filter. But it wasn't until I actually use the Leviathan that I saw, like how much better it could be. And like, I haven't gotten to record a lot with it yet because I started actually using it towards the tail end of Nebula season last, last year, and for reasons I won't even get into this winter has been awful for the most part in North Carolina.

00;38;31;00 - 00;38;48;23
Roo
And now we're finally starting to get some clear skies again. But it's Galaxy season now, so like, I'm over here just licking my chops, waiting for May and June to roll around so I can start actually hitting some more nebula targets. But I did do a really, cool version of the Heart Nebula.

00;38;48;25 - 00;38;51;10
James
And what was great about a lot of it.

00;38;51;10 - 00;39;13;17
Roo
Came out so good, man. And it wasn't it wasn't a ton of integration time. You know, I think I think I did like it was 6 to 8 hours or something. It was a it was a pretty brief, you know, a one nighter, I will say, for, for a target. And I had done that exact same photo with the El Faro because I've shot in the Heart Nebula so many times.

00;39;13;17 - 00;39;41;08
Roo
So it was so easy for me to look at the final product and be like, Holy crap. And I even had, somebody comment like, why even bother with mono? And, you know, RGB show filters if you can get this level of quality from a one shot color camera. And for me, that kind of says it all because like, I'm a big fan of one shot color, I still don't own a mono camera.

00;39;41;08 - 00;40;01;10
Roo
And I'm I'm not planning on purchasing one anytime soon, just because I really do enjoy one shot color. And like I know the benefits of mono, I get it. But like, I just, I don't know, I can't picture myself going through all these different filters to get one final data set. And I don't know, maybe that'll change in the future at some point.

00;40;01;10 - 00;40;14;20
Roo
But as things stand right now, I prefer just using my one shot color camera. So like once I was able to to do that and then see the frankly ridiculous results.

00;40;14;20 - 00;40;16;04
James
That I got.

00;40;16;06 - 00;40;37;05
Roo
On the heart and like, the stars like that was one thing I immediately noticed was the stars on the L Pro. They get so blown out with halos and artifacts and they just I mean, the nebulosity looks good, but the stars, they don't look great. They leave a lot to be desired. And it's just it's not as crisp is, is the best way I can put it.

00;40;37;07 - 00;40;43;21
Roo
But man, hats off to you. You've definitely made a quality filter.

00;40;43;23 - 00;40;47;29
James
That's a classic that I'm glad you said all that.

00;40;48;01 - 00;40;49;00
James
Yeah, but but yeah.

00;40;49;01 - 00;41;13;15
James
Like, you actually got an image with it before I did. And, the other tester I have who's doing a lot of testing is John Walsh, who lives quite near me. You both gave me results like that very early on. And the thing that both of you surprised me with was how well it performs on emission targets, because I had designed it to be, you know, like a general all purpose filter.

00;41;13;15 - 00;41;43;19
James
And then what you were telling me and what John Walsh was telling me is that even on the target, you usually use a dual narrowband for this, for getting better. And I was like, wow, that's really cool. And so that that was really cool. So like just to go back why why I think that might be is one of the reasons I make the filter is because, when I've made them before you or when you ask for a specification at the manufacturer, how much transmission do you ask them for?

00;41;43;22 - 00;41;48;23
James
I mean, you all. Yeah.

00;41;48;25 - 00;41;50;04
James
100%. Right?

00;41;50;07 - 00;41;56;18
Roo
Yeah. I mean, you're going to want as high as you can possibly get, of course, but you just generally don't see anything near that with the results.

00;41;56;18 - 00;41;57;01
James
Yeah.

00;41;57;03 - 00;42;17;27
James
So, but, but so here's the thing with these filters, when you specified and when to manufacture, it is always even in the design, you might be limited to something like 98% or 95%. That can go up with the more layers. But then there's the yield. How close can you get to that after the manufacturing? So this is something like in my last.

00;42;17;28 - 00;42;25;29
James
But we cared a lot about in laser communications. Because that mattered to the link budget. How much like that is getting transmitted.

00;42;25;29 - 00;42;29;11
James
Like an extra percentage point is a huge. Yeah.

00;42;29;11 - 00;42;29;25
Roo
In the grand.

00;42;29;25 - 00;42;52;04
James
Scheme if that, if, if you can get that, through a filter, if you can get an extra percent through a filter that might be cheaper than you know, upgrading a photonic circuit in your sensors. So you're always talking about your link budget in like cost per db or, data. So it's the I sorry real I got a bit lost, but the point I'm trying to make.

00;42;52;06 - 00;42;56;27
James
Anyway you're you're buying at maybe.

00;42;56;29 - 00;42;57;22
James
Decibel.

00;42;57;24 - 00;42;59;17
James
Decibels. Okay. Oh, yeah, I know that symbols.

00;42;59;17 - 00;43;02;29
Roo
That I used to do, decibel drive racing. You're in North Carolina.

00;43;03;02 - 00;43;03;24
James
Really?

00;43;03;26 - 00;43;13;29
Roo
So back in the 90s. In the 90s in the States, there was this big, community around, subwoofers and cars.

00;43;14;02 - 00;43;14;06
James
I don't.

00;43;14;06 - 00;43;19;20
Roo
Know if you guys had any of that going on in Dublin, but we would basically, try to see.

00;43;19;20 - 00;43;21;20
James
Was that it was called the Max power scene.

00;43;21;20 - 00;43;23;23
James
Where people could kind and.

00;43;23;23 - 00;43;34;23
Roo
I it's literally why I'm almost deaf in my left ear and don't got too much in my right. I listen to way too much loud music when I was younger, so I definitely know DBS. I know them all too well.

00;43;34;26 - 00;43;36;24
James
But but yeah.

00;43;36;24 - 00;43;42;00
Roo
Man, the test results, they've just they've been phenomenal, man. And

00;43;42;03 - 00;43;42;07
James
You know.

00;43;42;07 - 00;43;57;25
James
I remember the point I was trying to make, it's like, so that one of the reasons I wanted to make the filter was that, the ones I seen advertised, they would just. Right. Peak transmission, maybe 90% or 95%, but they never specified.

00;43;57;27 - 00;44;00;13
James
Is that the real world.

00;44;00;16 - 00;44;04;21
James
The max that the design will allow, or is it what they measure?

00;44;04;23 - 00;44;06;27
James
Okay, so that was.

00;44;06;29 - 00;44;11;11
Roo
What they measured in the lab versus what you can actually expect in the real world?

00;44;11;13 - 00;44;33;14
James
Yes, exactly. Okay. So I and for a lot of filters that wasn't clear to me. So I didn't want to bother them. I wouldn't mind if they said 95% that if they said, okay, the optimal you could get is 95, most are getting 90. I'd be like, cool. But like that was never clear and I want to know what I'm getting.

00;44;33;16 - 00;44;35;06
Roo
Of course.

00;44;35;09 - 00;44;48;00
James
So that's one of the things that I'm doing with the Spectral Pro is like everything you see in the datasheet and everything you see published is isn't this isn't the ideal numbers. These are measured values that apply to every single sample that everybody's going to get.

00;44;48;03 - 00;44;49;03
James
Wow.

00;44;49;06 - 00;44;50;23
Roo
And so huge difference.

00;44;50;23 - 00;44;51;26
James
Because so when.

00;44;51;26 - 00;45;00;20
James
I say noise transmission right. Yeah. Like when I say 98% at this band, that's what we measure in the spectrometers.

00;45;00;22 - 00;45;01;06
Roo
Means.

00;45;01;06 - 00;45;01;28
James
98%.

00;45;01;28 - 00;45;09;07
James
I say 95% the F2. I've tested the filter F2 in the spectrometer, and we get 95%.

00;45;09;09 - 00;45;10;04
James
Wow.

00;45;10;09 - 00;45;13;19
Roo
That's impressive because I know that's not easy to do.

00;45;13;21 - 00;45;14;29
James
So I must speak to.

00;45;14;29 - 00;45;20;15
Roo
The quality of the, the optics themselves. Then in a lot of ways, right. Just the manufacturing.

00;45;20;15 - 00;45;41;13
James
Processes and the engineers that made it, because one of the ways that they're able to get such a high number of layers in their machine is what most of these, physical vapor deposition machines don't have is an in-situ spectrometer. So usually there's an electronic device which you can measure the mass that gets on to a certain sensor, and that's how you know the thickness going onto it.

00;45;41;16 - 00;45;53;17
James
But what their machine does at Delta, they have an in situ spectrometer. So they're actually able to, take a spectral measurement during the deposition process.

00;45;53;19 - 00;45;53;29
James
Okay.

00;45;53;29 - 00;46;08;16
James
That's one of the ways that they're able to get a high number of uniform layers and ultimately get to the end process. And what that also allows them to do is tune the process as a function of each layer, so that not.

00;46;08;16 - 00;46;10;00
James
Only can they they get.

00;46;10;00 - 00;46;16;07
Roo
It right, but then they can also tune it on top to get it exactly where you want it to be, essentially.

00;46;16;10 - 00;46;32;14
James
Yeah. So basically, after they were made, we measured, nearly all of them, in the, in the batch and there's less than like point 1% band shift between them all. They're.

00;46;32;14 - 00;46;33;06
James
All.

00;46;33;09 - 00;46;49;29
James
Nice. They're all within, like 98 point. I can't remember the exact number of decibels, but they're all 98.999 something percent. Like it's. That is cool. That is they all match. The uniformity is exceptional.

00;46;50;01 - 00;47;05;12
Roo
Eight you're absolutely right to because, I was looking here online just like glancing at some of the numbers. And you're right, they don't actually give you those results at all on really any of these filters. Because I guess most people well.

00;47;05;12 - 00;47;06;17
James
Now, you know, I think most.

00;47;06;17 - 00;47;18;00
Roo
People do know to ask something like this, especially in, the hobby, the Warren and with how, how much you have to pay for a good set of filters. You definitely want to know what you're getting.

00;47;18;06 - 00;47;24;25
James
Yeah. Like, especially when people go to mono filters, you can spend, multiple thousands.

00;47;24;27 - 00;47;46;27
Roo
Yeah, easily. I was I was actually looking at filters yesterday because I'm trying to I got a, five filter bay for my color camera, actually, because I'm going to, you know, put a few things in there, like a dark filter. I'm going to, test your filter. I'm going to use a dual narrowband filter, you know, and I'm just looking at different filters and it's great.

00;47;47;00 - 00;48;24;13
Roo
Like, not only have filters always been expensive, but they've gotten more expensive, like, since I started buying filters a few years ago. And, you know, not for nothing. But if you're like me and you're a one shot color photographer and you're considering getting into mono, don't forget to to factor in those cost for filters because you know, and LR, JB show set from a quality company that, is going to set you back, you know, usually at least a couple thousand dollars minimum.

00;48;24;16 - 00;48;45;25
Roo
And that's why even though it is by, one shot color camera, specs, kind of what you would say is an expensive filter. If you start comparing it to things like RGB show and then looking at the actual results, which is what matters to me at the end of the day, it's actually, a pretty damn good.

00;48;45;25 - 00;48;49;13
James
Deal when you consider that. Yeah, I think.

00;48;49;13 - 00;49;15;03
James
So as well. And especially when you talk to people who have very bad experiences with, other filters, like something well, I've spoken to people about is, especially with dual narrow bands for some reason, I've spoken to a lot of, retailers recently, and they all complain about the number of returns they have to do with dual narrowband, because when customers try them that a lot of customers don't get great results.

00;49;15;05 - 00;49;16;00
James
I, I've.

00;49;16;00 - 00;49;41;00
Roo
Seen that too. It's almost like binning, CPUs with dual narrowband filters. You might get a great one. You might not. And I would imagine that they are not expecting the tightest tolerances when these filters are manufactured. I mean, who knows what you're getting, to be honest. From now, I'm not saying that for all filters, but for some, I think that is fair to say about, because I've seen the exact same thing.

00;49;41;00 - 00;49;53;23
Roo
You go on cloudy nights and start looking through forums about people having different results with different filters where I say I might love one filter, or somebody else might absolutely hate it because they're getting giant halos on everything that you know.

00;49;54;00 - 00;50;11;22
James
There you go. One person might have a great one on, one person might have a terrible exact. And if you look at some of the measurements that some people have, if you look at where the hydrogen alpha line is compared to their band plastic, and this is completely, and you could be getting like less than 50% transmission in some cases.

00;50;11;25 - 00;50;15;25
James
And then it gets worse as you go to off axis. Right.

00;50;15;27 - 00;50;16;19
James
Yeah. So then if.

00;50;16;19 - 00;50;24;23
James
You've got a fast telescope, then some rays are going to be getting some parts of your field. They're going to be getting essentially 0%.

00;50;24;25 - 00;50;49;13
Roo
Now man that's awful. But yeah, I mean you're you're absolutely right. That is definitely a real possibility. So all right. Welcome back to the Astro cast. We are sitting down with James from the Life and Optical today, talking all things filter. And we just, finished talking up about kind of the, the process behind building one of these filters and what all goes into it.

00;50;49;15 - 00;51;04;01
Roo
What are their sort of unexpected results did you get from the filter? Like, did anyone like your other, buddy who's doing testing for you? Did you did you get anything that you didn't really expect to hear from him when he started giving you feedback?

00;51;04;03 - 00;51;34;24
James
Like like like what I was saying about hydrogen alpha and dual narrowband, like, emission targets. We I think everybody who's used it has been quite surprised that it can, work well like it or you do to use a dual narrowband. But one of the other things that John Walsh really likes about it is that, some of the images he's got and then you can see them in the gallery, he likes to, he likes it when the like hydrogen alpha field.

00;51;34;25 - 00;51;58;06
James
He likes the complex targets that have hydrogen alpha with the reflection nebula. So you can just image with one filter and bring out a reflection nebula and for example, hydrogen alpha and you know, the things like that. So you can see, he does that, there's one in the Cygnus area and then he does it. Yeah. You see this one?

00;51;58;06 - 00;52;00;21
James
BDB one tree, two.

00;52;00;23 - 00;52;02;24
James
Yeah. That's so he he got that with a.

00;52;02;24 - 00;52;05;22
James
Diesel or he got that with a dSLR as well.

00;52;05;24 - 00;52;07;27
James
With a dSLR. You got that?

00;52;07;29 - 00;52;21;10
James
Yeah. John Walsh is incredibly talented. Like you get absolutely fantastic images with, often modest gear. And he'd not even tell, like at some of the images when he's upgraded to the 2600 later.

00;52;21;12 - 00;52;22;07
James
That's awesome.

00;52;22;13 - 00;52;23;13
James
Yeah, he's the.

00;52;23;15 - 00;52;25;16
Roo
Talented astrophotographer when that's the case.

00;52;25;17 - 00;52;27;25
James
Man. Look at the. Yeah. Wow.

00;52;27;26 - 00;52;32;29
Roo
Look at the heart popping on Andromeda here. Wow. That is cool.

00;52;33;02 - 00;52;39;21
James
Yeah, yeah. So that's the other thing is, people generally like seeing the hydrogen alpha come through when they do galaxies with it.

00;52;39;25 - 00;52;40;21
James
Definitely.

00;52;40;22 - 00;52;50;11
James
Especially, you know, M81, M82, the Cigar Galaxy, when you have that, the jets coming out of M82, I know here's

00;52;50;13 - 00;53;08;08
Roo
There's my picture, I love it. Yeah. And look at the O3 coming through to light. And I guess this kind of speaks to what you're saying, because when I did this, when I processed this image, I actually did split it out and, and pix insight and try to isolate all of the channels and it, it did a pretty good job of that, I think.

00;53;08;08 - 00;53;09;11
Roo
I mean, all things considered.

00;53;09;11 - 00;53;10;16
James
And by the.

00;53;10;16 - 00;53;14;14
James
Way, that I have that script for.

00;53;14;16 - 00;53;18;10
James
ActionScript, you were going to give me a script to pull out a specific. Yeah.

00;53;18;10 - 00;53;22;17
James
And I have a updated one, so it should it should work a bit better now.

00;53;22;19 - 00;53;32;22
Roo
Okay, great. I'll definitely run it through that. Actually got everything set up in your analysis. It'll only take me two seconds to do it. So, man, what a beautiful, beautiful version of the dumbbell.

00;53;32;25 - 00;53;42;22
James
I know. And if you compare that like a master beam to like to images for similar integration times and light pollution, it's a fantastic result we got there.

00;53;42;24 - 00;53;43;07
James
And it's so.

00;53;43;07 - 00;53;57;23
Roo
Clear too, because, usually like, frankly, I I'll just say it when I do the dumbbell a lot of times and I don't, I don't think I've shot it with this filter yet, but it's usually fuzzy around the outside and this is so clearly visualized. I love it. Is that the.

00;53;57;25 - 00;53;59;04
James
Oh cocoon? Okay.

00;53;59;06 - 00;54;04;08
James
Yeah. So the cocoon, that's another good one as well because there's, reflection elements in it.

00;54;04;08 - 00;54;07;09
Roo
As well, man. And all the dark nebulosity in the area.

00;54;07;12 - 00;54;08;10
James
Yeah, that is.

00;54;08;11 - 00;54;11;17
James
So do the with the, the bands help with the dark nebulosity.

00;54;11;17 - 00;54;13;20
Roo
There is that effect.

00;54;13;22 - 00;54;16;16
James
Yeah. Because this is something that I'm,

00;54;16;18 - 00;54;33;10
Roo
Really hoping to get into now that I'm going to have access to some darker skies. That was what the first thing I did when we, when we went to Wisconsin for first light, last year, I picked my first dark nebula target to shoot, which was the Dark Shark Nebula.

00;54;33;15 - 00;54;34;13
James
Oh, that's exciting.

00;54;34;18 - 00;54;56;14
Roo
And, man, it was so, so beautiful. And, like, there's a whole world of targets out there to explore for people who. If you've only been shooting like a mission nebula for the most part, or the more popular targets that we all see, you know, on any of the social media sites or Astro Bean or what have you, the Dark Nebula is just such a really cool thing to explore.

00;54;56;16 - 00;54;57;26
Roo
And I see that it works quite.

00;54;57;26 - 00;54;58;28
James
Well.

00;54;59;01 - 00;55;01;12
Roo
With the, Leviathan. So that's that's good to.

00;55;01;12 - 00;55;03;01
James
See this one as well.

00;55;03;03 - 00;55;09;26
James
So the so there is a nuance to that. So a lot of the dust that people like to see often has that kind of brownish color, right?

00;55;09;26 - 00;55;12;10
James
Yes, yes it does.

00;55;12;13 - 00;55;37;08
James
That is the same wavelength as the peak of the LED spectrum. So that is actually a lot by the Leviathan spectral probe. But the if you know, the bands are 33, 32 and 30 nanometers, so they're left a little wide on purpose to help with, like, you know, those broad band features, but you're never going to it's with this filter, you're never going to get perfect dust with it.

00;55;37;10 - 00;55;41;28
James
It's not. It's one of the trade offs you have to make if you're in heavy light pollution and taking your filter.

00;55;42;06 - 00;56;03;19
Roo
Is that why you were asking me about my Pleiades image? With the dust on it? Because I actually, I did 45 hours on the player, the Pleiades with the Leviathan, and the dust came out, like, really, really, really good. I still want to shoot this target again, because it's so challenging when you do try to get, you know, the dust.

00;56;03;19 - 00;56;14;03
Roo
Frankly, around the Pleiades. But when you can nail it. Here, let me see if I can share this with you. I don't know if you can see that or not. Your. Hang on. Let me, click.

00;56;14;09 - 00;56;26;08
James
I think what we were talking about then was that some of the brighter stars had a halo on, and I wasn't. And we were trying to really come to the bottom because the spectral profile make your,

00;56;26;10 - 00;56;29;14
James
I think you're right about that. Yeah.

00;56;29;16 - 00;56;32;03
Roo
Here we go. This is the one that.

00;56;32;06 - 00;56;32;25
James


00;56;32;27 - 00;56;34;27
Roo
The, the Pleiades. This was 45.

00;56;34;28 - 00;56;35;20
James
So was that.

00;56;35;20 - 00;56;37;01
James
Model with the spectral Pro.

00;56;37;08 - 00;56;39;10
Roo
That was 100% with the Spectral Pro.

00;56;39;10 - 00;56;41;26
James
Really? And all that does came true.

00;56;41;29 - 00;56;43;22
Roo
Yeah, man.

00;56;43;24 - 00;56;48;13
James
And so you might need to look at that again. All right. Take back what I said there.

00;56;48;13 - 00;57;10;28
Roo
And I will be clear on this. Like this is it's an incredible image. But I was I did think it would come out a little bit different at 45 hours, because I've seen some images where and I don't know if I like it more. That's why I couldn't compute this picture, because some of the pictures I see, the Pleiades with really long exposure times, it's just like blanketed in dust.

00;57;10;28 - 00;57;28;21
Roo
And it's almost like, am I seeing the same thing here? It's it's interesting and I don't know what to make of it because everything looks so well defined. And here you see what I mean? So I don't know if maybe it, I really don't know. I don't know the physics behind that, but I will tell you, it's a gorgeous image.

00;57;28;23 - 00;57;32;08
Roo
It definitely came out quite well. This is one of my favorite ones of the Pleiades.

00;57;32;10 - 00;57;35;23
James
Honestly, I assumed you had added some broadband to that. To look at those though.

00;57;35;25 - 00;57;37;09
James
I mean.

00;57;37;11 - 00;57;38;08
Roo
This was, this.

00;57;38;08 - 00;57;39;06
James
Was that's ready to go.

00;57;39;07 - 00;57;40;08
Roo
With the Leviathan.

00;57;40;08 - 00;57;41;10
James
So. Yeah.

00;57;41;10 - 00;57;43;11
Roo
Yeah, it came out good. Oh, man.

00;57;43;11 - 00;57;44;08
James
So I.

00;57;44;12 - 00;57;46;24
James
Need to spend some more time looking at that and admiring.

00;57;46;24 - 00;57;47;21
James
The owl. I'll.

00;57;47;21 - 00;57;49;07
Roo
I'll send a copy of it over to you.

00;57;49;07 - 00;57;50;24
James
I have it, I have it, I just need to.

00;57;50;24 - 00;57;52;20
James
Okay. Okay. Cool. Yeah.

00;57;52;23 - 00;57;54;23
James
I just need to admire it some more is all.

00;57;54;23 - 00;58;05;14
Roo
Oh, man, I never, we're our own worst critics, aren't we? Put down a photo for three months, and then it'll pop up on my, you know, screensaver, and I'll be like, oh, man, look at that. It's gorgeous.

00;58;05;14 - 00;58;07;10
James
And you need time away.

00;58;07;10 - 00;58;09;18
James
You need time away when you're editing.

00;58;09;21 - 00;58;16;08
Roo
You definitely do, because you stare at it for six hours while you're in pix insight, getting every detail just right.

00;58;16;10 - 00;58;18;07
James
So what's, what's next, man?

00;58;18;07 - 00;58;26;14
Roo
Now that, you've got the filter in hand and you've got a few out in the wild, what are you hoping to do next with the company?

00;58;26;16 - 00;58;58;14
James
So really, what I want to do next is get retailers to, sell the filter on my book. Right. So I have one retailer who has it available on the site that, Horizon Astronomy he was based in Ireland for. He has moved his company to, Munich in Germany. Okay. And it's interesting, the reason he's moved his company is one of the problems was not when the problems were one of the anointings is that, shipping from Ireland is unusually expensive.

00;58;58;21 - 00;58;59;26
James
Like for similar.

00;58;59;29 - 00;59;18;10
James
Yeah. For similar products. If you're shipping, let's say a telescope from France to Germany, you might spend just as a reference example that I was talking about with some other people in the industry. You know, it could be 20 or €30, but shipping the same thing to and from Ireland, you're talking about at least 60 to €70.

00;59;18;17 - 00;59;21;16
James
Oh, wow. So significantly more. Yeah.

00;59;21;16 - 00;59;35;18
James
Yeah, it's significantly more. So this is one of the reasons I'm hoping that when retailers have it, they're actually they'll have more efficient supply chains. So I'm hoping that it actually becomes cheaper for the end user to buy from the retailers.

00;59;35;20 - 00;59;56;18
Roo
I also think that if you can get I think one of the things that's really key to this filter success is getting the documentation in front of people that really read over things thoroughly, because if you're like me, you do a lot of research before you pull the trigger on something, and it's good to be able to really pore over the details.

00;59;56;18 - 01;00;15;00
Roo
And I know that you've got the details in spades. So if you could get that up on like a high point scientific or a Gina Astro and have, you know, all the documentation showing the specific, you know, wavelengths that come through and, you know, test cases, use cases, etc., I think that would work very, very well for you.

01;00;15;03 - 01;00;36;01
James
Well, look, here's the thing. That's, that's what I assumed, too. And I think that works for a lot of the people. I think for people who are, like, very technically minded on online quite a lot, who are used to buying things online, buy spec sheets, that works really well. So that's why I have my data sheet over there with just like all the measurements.

01;00;36;08 - 01;00;50;13
James
Yeah. Field testing examples. That's why I put it up there, assuming everyone's like that. But one thing I learned from being at the Astro Fest in the UK is actually, that's not actually what a lot of people want. A lot of people want a sales pitch.

01;00;50;15 - 01;00;51;24
James
Yeah, that's that's how.

01;00;51;24 - 01;01;02;14
James
I, I was at the table. I was like, I have this. I was trying to show people. I was like, I, I've a data sheet here. Here's all the measurements. You make your own mind up. They're like, no, you tell me why it's called on.

01;01;02;16 - 01;01;06;01
James
Oh, I said, that's that right there, man.

01;01;06;01 - 01;01;09;29
Roo
There's there is a lot of that in the world, you know, there.

01;01;10;01 - 01;01;14;10
James
But there's nothing wrong with that. It's just some people think it's just information in different ways.

01;01;14;10 - 01;01;15;00
James
Yeah.

01;01;15;02 - 01;01;16;28
Roo
Definitely.

01;01;17;00 - 01;01;21;03
James
So have you have you come up with a sales pitch here?

01;01;21;06 - 01;01;28;16
Roo
Like, have you got your 62nd elevator or are you hand in the sheet and say, make up your mind because you're going to have to bend at some point?

01;01;28;18 - 01;01;31;14
James
Oh, well, if they ask for it, I gave it, you know.

01;01;31;14 - 01;01;32;12
James
Yeah. Okay.

01;01;32;14 - 01;01;38;25
James
That's it. It's more or less what we've been talking about. Button 30s. And it just depends on the conversation.

01;01;38;28 - 01;01;39;19
James
Yeah.

01;01;39;21 - 01;01;45;07
James
Honestly. Like when that was happening, I just, I just thought people find out it's.

01;01;45;09 - 01;01;45;21
James
You know what?

01;01;45;25 - 01;01;50;18
James
What? They're where where they're imaging from what equipment they use. And I just try to talk to.

01;01;50;18 - 01;01;51;23
James
Them and see.

01;01;51;25 - 01;01;56;01
James
I try to see if that actually would be useful for them, because some people that is and some people it isn't.

01;01;56;04 - 01;01;57;13
James
Yeah. Yeah. I mean.

01;01;57;15 - 01;02;13;22
Roo
That's fair. I just I'm trying to see it from your, from your shoes. And I'm like, you understand all the work that goes into getting levels like that. And I bet you're really proud. It's like, not here you go. Look, see for yourself. Here's the here's the proof, you know, that.

01;02;13;24 - 01;02;16;23
James
Well, tell me why it's better. It's like it's right here.

01;02;16;23 - 01;02;22;10
Roo
And people don't want to hear that. They're not. Not in this day and age. They need to know in 30s why it's the best thing ever.

01;02;22;10 - 01;02;25;04
James
Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, but not.

01;02;25;04 - 01;02;26;20
James
Everyone's technically minded or.

01;02;26;25 - 01;02;27;04
James
Not.

01;02;27;06 - 01;02;29;08
Roo
Absolutely, absolutely. And but the other.

01;02;29;08 - 01;02;32;19
James
Thing, nobody wants to read a PDF from from to the person who made it right.

01;02;32;22 - 01;02;33;18
James
Yep. Yeah.

01;02;33;18 - 01;02;34;16
Roo
This is true as well.

01;02;34;18 - 01;02;36;24
James
And we are seeing like,

01;02;36;26 - 01;02;58;05
Roo
I'm not going to say a grand shift, but we're definitely seeing a shift toward a lot easier astrophotography. I mean, you know, I, I wonder what the percentage of astrophotographers is out there now that literally just set down a smart scope in their driveway and walk back inside and, you know, tap tonight's Best on the ACR app or what have you.

01;02;58;08 - 01;02;58;25
James
And well, it.

01;02;58;25 - 01;03;08;08
James
Was for the majority. It won't be long to list the majority. Well who have won at least I think it's it's like a great way for people to get into the hobby.

01;03;08;16 - 01;03;09;08
James
It is like.

01;03;09;15 - 01;03;14;08
James
How better to do it? Because like the hardest part of it is like setting this equipment up.

01;03;14;10 - 01;03;32;22
Roo
Do you worry, though, that something is lost and in the hobby? I don't know if I'm being a snob. Like, this is something I've struggled with for so long, and I've come around on smart telescopes a lot. I understand their value that they bring and I also understand that like a, like a, somebody gets their foot in the door and it gets them interested in the night sky.

01;03;32;22 - 01;03;48;10
Roo
I don't care how they do it. That's awesome. You know, and I've come around on that, but like, I don't know, maybe it's just my, my personal experience because I've only seen the world through my own eyes. But learning like how all this gear works.

01;03;48;18 - 01;03;48;27
James
It's.

01;03;48;28 - 01;04;11;19
Roo
Like spending countless nights, you know, setting up, breaking down, setting up, breaking down and like, learning the constellations and learning azimuth and altitude and the meridian. And just like all these things that, like, are permanently etched in my brain. Now, I worry that, like the person with the the C star S30, if I say, you know, oh, well, you know, just look at Cygnus and wait for it to cross the meridian.

01;04;11;19 - 01;04;14;25
Roo
They're just going to stare at me like, What are you talking about? You know.

01;04;14;27 - 01;04;16;17
James
And but then again.

01;04;16;23 - 01;04;24;27
Roo
Maybe it's just a starting place. And I just started from a different starting place than they did. And we all get to the same place at the end.

01;04;24;29 - 01;04;38;29
James
It's strange. Analog is, in mountain biking. When I first started mountain biking, everybody's bike was a pedal bike. Right? And now nearly every bike you see out in the hills on the mountains are e-bikes.

01;04;39;01 - 01;04;44;28
James
That's crazy. So it's like that on the actual mountains, too? Yeah.

01;04;45;01 - 01;04;49;02
James
Yeah, with pedal assist, with, batteries and motors.

01;04;49;04 - 01;04;52;13
Roo
Do you have one or do you still have a, pedal only bike?

01;04;52;16 - 01;04;53;28
James
I'm pedal only at the minute.

01;04;53;29 - 01;04;54;19
James
And that would be.

01;04;54;19 - 01;04;59;18
Roo
Me if I was. Yeah, I'd be I'd expect a lot when I was younger, believe it or not.

01;04;59;21 - 01;04;59;25
James
I.

01;04;59;25 - 01;05;04;27
Roo
Loved BMX biking, man in the 90s. Oh, God, I loved it. I could go on about what?

01;05;04;27 - 01;05;06;02
James
A time to be alive.

01;05;06;04 - 01;05;11;14
Roo
Yeah, it was special, man. It really was. But. But yeah, I guess so. E-bikes on.

01;05;11;14 - 01;05;13;28
James
The on the mountain slopes and more so.

01;05;13;28 - 01;05;35;19
James
But I suppose when it comes to astronomy, it it's it it levels the playing field, like in a way it does get more people into it. It gets people into it who wouldn't have gotten into it otherwise. Absolutely. Have to say it's always a good people, a good thing. And like with the e-bikes, it got people into mountain biking who were maybe intimidated by it before.

01;05;35;19 - 01;05;43;29
James
They always wanted to do it, but they were great because going from being a couch potato to mountain biking is actually quite hard. It's hard to.

01;05;44;01 - 01;05;44;25
James
Mount the bike of.

01;05;44;25 - 01;05;46;03
James
The mountain.

01;05;46;05 - 01;05;50;16
James
It's it's it's the physical. It's it's hard to go up a.

01;05;50;16 - 01;05;56;16
Roo
Street with a hill on a regular bike. I can't imagine pedaling up a mountain like.

01;05;56;18 - 01;05;57;13
James
It's like.

01;05;57;15 - 01;06;03;03
James
It gets people into it. I mean, some people then get into the hobby in different ways.

01;06;03;09 - 01;06;04;15
Roo
Yeah, this is true.

01;06;04;15 - 01;06;18;24
James
I think for people maybe like you and me, like, I, I love the equipment. I love picking and choose and mixing things up, changing lenses, changing telescopes, working on mounts I like, I like, I like that part of it. I like the hardware.

01;06;18;26 - 01;06;19;08
James
The.

01;06;19;08 - 01;06;21;10
Roo
Tinkering in the hardware, that stuff I like.

01;06;21;13 - 01;06;24;04
James
I like getting this. I like getting the stuff working.

01;06;24;06 - 01;06;25;04
James
You know, the.

01;06;25;04 - 01;06;28;12
James
Image that comes at the end is it's nice too, but.

01;06;28;14 - 01;06;36;16
James
Yeah, it is. Oh, beautiful. I'm working on a nice rig. Yeah. I've been working on that one a lot. That's the one. That's it's it's.

01;06;36;16 - 01;06;37;26
James
Nice when it looks good as well.

01;06;37;26 - 01;06;40;24
Roo
Yeah, when all the cords aren't on it.

01;06;40;26 - 01;06;41;16
James
Yeah.

01;06;41;19 - 01;06;49;22
Roo
Whoever invents the cordless, like, full rig telescope is going to make a whole lot of money, because, man, they look cool before you plug in USB cords and have them hanging all.

01;06;49;22 - 01;06;51;15
James
Over the place. Yeah.

01;06;51;17 - 01;06;53;03
James
Or you could just get a smart scope.

01;06;53;05 - 01;06;55;26
James
Yeah. There you go. Just one USBc or.

01;06;55;26 - 01;06;58;25
Roo
Oh, yeah, you don't even need that because it's got a battery built into it.

01;06;58;25 - 01;07;00;29
James
Go figure.

01;07;01;02 - 01;07;09;21
Roo
So James, tell me about you mentioned earlier that you were able to image with the filter at F2, correct?

01;07;09;23 - 01;07;10;19
James
Yeah.

01;07;10;21 - 01;07;37;14
Roo
So that's kind of a that's a pretty big deal if I understand correctly, because I remember when I was looking for my first like dual narrowband filter that I saw ones that were made for kind of your regular telescopes, like, you know, your F5 type, normal refractor. But then they also had special versions that were made for F2, lenses or scopes, races, you know, those sorts of things.

01;07;37;17 - 01;07;46;08
Roo
Why is it that some are manufactured differently like that? And what is it about your filter that does not necessarily require it?

01;07;46;10 - 01;08;13;24
James
That's actually quite a complex question because and it's a simple question at the same time. So why does F2 matter? It's because that the performance of the filter is dependent on the angle of instance. So okay, imagine just taking a, any lens, any telescope and your sensor, rays, light rays. Because when we talk in terms of optical engineering, we talk about light in terms of rays are coming from if you're pointed directly at a star.

01;08;13;27 - 01;08;14;06
James
Yeah.

01;08;14;12 - 01;08;18;10
James
Those rays are completely on axis with zero degrees angle of incidence.

01;08;18;15 - 01;08;18;28
James
Okay.

01;08;18;28 - 01;08;30;28
James
But if you have a star at the edge of your frame that's coming in with an angle of incidence. So the larger the angle is, the more the band shifts.

01;08;31;01 - 01;08;34;16
James
That makes sense. Blue shifts. Yes. Yeah.

01;08;34;19 - 01;08;56;28
James
So potentially let's say if you did not consider the angle of incidence in your filter design in specifications, you would have praise from different parts of your field of view, either potentially just getting completely blocked by the filter instead of transmitted, especially if you think in terms of like monochromatic, emission lines like hydrogen, alpha.

01;08;57;00 - 01;08;58;01
James
Okay.

01;08;58;04 - 01;09;22;28
James
So rays, the filter will affect rays differently depending on the angle of incidence. It's basically is basically so how some filters get around that. And how the light and does it, it is in two ways. One is that if you make your bands wider and shift them by a few nanometers to the right, then you have a budget.

01;09;23;00 - 01;09;38;09
James
But the other thing is you can actually build it. You can build it, you can desensitize the effect of angle of incidence in the layer stack. So that's one of the things we talked about with the designer. I put it into specifications. And that's one of the things we talked about. They suggest we can move it a few nanometers here.

01;09;38;09 - 01;09;39;26
James
I might say I'm picturing light.

01;09;39;26 - 01;10;00;01
Roo
Rays coming in right. Yeah. Coming in like this. And then I've got this cup that I can catch the light rays with. And if I widen my bandpass, then I can catch more of the light as it's coming in. But if I make it more narrow or faster, then it is harder to catch those same band passes.

01;10;00;03 - 01;10;02;26
James
Yes. Okay. That makes sense. What what is it that.

01;10;02;26 - 01;10;24;20
Roo
Determines the angle of incidence. Exactly. Like is that, is that a result of manufacturing or is that something that you go into manufacturing saying, I am trying to hit this angle of incidence. Like, I don't know if it's a like a byproduct of how the filter is made or if it's something that you actually designed for to say, I want to be able to hit at least this angle of incidence whenever.

01;10;24;22 - 01;10;26;22
James
So imaging.

01;10;26;24 - 01;10;48;05
James
So in principle, it's two ways. So, I knew that the angle of incidence I was working with I want was because a lot of the telescopes are F2. So I made that the specification we were aiming for. So. Okay. I, we talked about it a bit earlier, but one way you can do is just make the band wider, do it the other way is in the design of the stack.

01;10;48;07 - 01;10;52;17
James
You can design in it the sensitivity to the band shift.

01;10;52;19 - 01;10;53;14
James
Okay. Okay.

01;10;53;14 - 01;10;56;00
James
So there's two there's two ways to do it like that.

01;10;56;07 - 01;11;17;18
Roo
That is so fascinating because I see these pictures of wavelengths always for you know, what a filter allows through and what it doesn't. But it never actually occurred to me, you know how that works and why, frankly, a narrower band pass might be a bad thing in a lot of cases, especially if your tolerances aren't exactly spot on.

01;11;17;18 - 01;11;34;18
Roo
And I would imagine, you know, like, sure, they're they're expensive for us, you know, mere mortals. But you're not talking like scientific grade when you buy, you know, some of these filters off some of these websites. And I'm not going to name names or anything like that, but I know.

01;11;34;20 - 01;11;36;29
James
There's to be honest and.

01;11;37;01 - 01;11;39;24
James
A lot of hobbyists do have professional grade equipment.

01;11;39;27 - 01;11;42;02
James
I'm sure that's what I.

01;11;42;02 - 01;11;52;25
Roo
Guess what I'm getting at is if you want professional grade equipment, it is out there if you know where to look and it is affordable within, you know, a mere mortals, lifetime.

01;11;52;28 - 01;11;53;08
James
Yeah.

01;11;53;08 - 01;12;31;14
Roo
You just you just have to know what you're getting. Like, you say. And to your point earlier, like, you want to know what you're getting if you're, purchasing the filter and actually know that the data backs it up, because otherwise, like, how would you know? Like if you were an astrophotographer who was, let's say, a solo astrophotographer who didn't have a club nearby, and you learn the hobby during the pandemic and, you know, you've been taking images of the night sky for a long time, like you wouldn't know that you're missing out on 50% of your possible signal if, if you never knew that it was there in the first place.

01;12;31;14 - 01;12;32;04
Roo
Does that make sense?

01;12;32;04 - 01;12;33;18
James
Like, yeah. Yeah, you would.

01;12;33;18 - 01;12;36;04
Roo
Just assume that that's what the filter does.

01;12;36;06 - 01;12;46;19
James
Well, I suppose that then that also tells you how important it is to be part of a community and to be able to, like, show people your images and so, like, maybe your image should be better. Maybe there's something wrong with.

01;12;46;19 - 01;12;48;03
James
Your part of your.

01;12;48;03 - 01;12;48;26
James
Equipment.

01;12;48;28 - 01;12;54;14
Roo
Thank God we have adjustment in our group because you know what a fall like instantly he knows it, man.

01;12;54;14 - 01;12;56;18
James
It's a, it's funny, but.

01;12;56;20 - 01;13;15;29
James
The knowledge and experience from the vast amount of data he has is absolutely mind loss. You know, when you know, when you first started, when when that one was posted, I looked at the title and I almost didn't listen to it because I was like, there's no way I'm gonna listen to people talk about data.

01;13;16;05 - 01;13;20;14
James
Yeah, for as many hours as it was then.

01;13;20;16 - 01;13;22;18
James
Within a few seconds I was hot, like my.

01;13;22;18 - 01;13;23;04
James
Jaw was.

01;13;23;04 - 01;13;27;01
James
Dropping like that for the whole time I was listening.

01;13;27;03 - 01;13;30;14
James
Man. And that's what it's because that's that's exactly how I felt.

01;13;30;14 - 01;13;31;25
Roo
When I was recording it.

01;13;31;28 - 01;13;33;06
James
And I was.

01;13;33;08 - 01;13;34;09
James
I was listening or something.

01;13;34;09 - 01;13;47;25
Roo
Special about getting, like minded individuals together and talking about something that you love, man, you can just you can just hear the excitement in people's voices. And that's one of the reasons I love doing interviews for the show. And I've been trying to do more of them this year.

01;13;47;29 - 01;13;50;09
James
So coming on.

01;13;50;09 - 01;13;59;19
Roo
I heard you mentioned the European Astro Forum that that you attended. Are you ever planning on coming on? If by chance.

01;13;59;21 - 01;14;20;18
James
I really wanted to, or I just couldn't, make it work in the budget at the time? Yeah. Getting the right amount of time off to do it. So that's why I went to the UK Astro Fest, and it worked out a bit cheaper because, innovation and flights were very cheap for me. But to be honest, I really wanted to do.

01;14;20;25 - 01;14;36;19
James
That's the one I really wanted to go to. Yeah. Hopefully next year. Hopefully next year. That would be great. I suppose the other thing I want to talk to, talk about before we wrap up is, so I do have to adjust the pricing for the filters soon.

01;14;36;26 - 01;14;37;06
James
Okay.

01;14;37;12 - 01;14;53;26
James
But what I'll do, because I know a lot of the other people who come on the talk offer some kind of, like, discount or offer. What I'll do is I want to keep the free shipping. The filters for. Let's. I, let's say 2 or 3 weeks after the podcast.

01;14;53;26 - 01;14;54;17
James
Okay.

01;14;54;19 - 01;14;59;03
James
So I'll, I'll keep that, free shipping until.

01;14;59;03 - 01;14;59;26
James
That is all.

01;14;59;26 - 01;15;01;11
James
About the time after.

01;15;01;14 - 01;15;20;26
Roo
And that, that's very awesome. So thank you for doing that, James. So I guess it kind of goes without saying, but I will definitely put a link, to your store in the show notes for this week's episode. So if anyone is interested in actually picking up your own Leviathan Spectral Pro filter, please make sure that you check the links.

01;15;20;26 - 01;15;45;24
Roo
And, I mean, I can just tell you I've been using mine for I think I'm coming up on a year this summer and I've had nothing but phenomenal results out of it. So, thank you so much for letting me be a part of your testing process, James. That really means a lot, because you were actually the first person, to actually send me something to demo, like, for the whole show.

01;15;45;25 - 01;15;57;26
Roo
You know, like, I had never had anybody actually send me something or say like, hey, ru, try this out. Let me know what you think. You were the first person to do that, man. And that means a lot to me. It really does. So I really, really appreciate you doing that.

01;15;57;29 - 01;16;16;29
James
Well, now, the pleasure's all mine, because, like I was saying, like, I started listening to your show at the time, I was starting the business, and, I was listening to it the whole time, so I felt like, you know, you're we're starting your podcast the same time. I'll start my business. I don't know. I just really wanted it to be you who had it.

01;16;17;02 - 01;16;18;13
Roo
That's awesome. Man, I love that.

01;16;18;13 - 01;16;19;09
James
So I'm so happy.

01;16;19;09 - 01;16;20;26
James
I'm so happy it took it.

01;16;20;28 - 01;16;21;18
James
Yeah, well.

01;16;21;18 - 01;16;48;04
Roo
Believe me, I'm. I'm. I'm thrilled to continue testing it, man. And I'm. I'm really excited about, this summer season, because I'm going to be able to test it so much more. I'm actually, building out a new rig for my peer because I'm going to have the, you know, the scope out in Utah soon, but I want to be able to image from home still, too, because I'm a hands on guy and I couldn't imagine not ever touching a telescope.

01;16;48;04 - 01;17;20;09
Roo
That just sounds like hell to me. So more than likely I will continue testing that throughout this Milky Way season. And I actually haven't done it yet. But I've got plans now. I've been getting some more f lenses, and I really want to try getting getting it on like a 50 to 85 millimeter f lens connected to my astronomy camera with the filter drawer in between, and doing like some ultra wide Milky Way shots like all of Rome and the Horsehead Nebula.

01;17;20;09 - 01;17;30;15
Roo
And, you know, part of the core, like, I love those shots. And I think the Leviathan would do really well in those circumstances. I just have a feeling that it's going to do great.

01;17;30;17 - 01;17;42;01
James
Yeah. So someone was using the before, and they did, used it on, like, a 24 millimeter lens. And the result is amazing. Yeah. They got an absolutely beautiful shot, and he called it a test shot, but I was like, blown away.

01;17;42;03 - 01;17;45;05
James
Oh, man. Please send me that if you get it. Because I was like, I'm.

01;17;45;06 - 01;18;00;17
Roo
So pumped, man. I've been I almost woke up at 2:00 in the morning last week to go and see early Milky Way, but I just didn't have the energy. It had been a real long week at work and everything, but I, no doubt next New moon, I'm going to be going somewhere dark.

01;18;00;17 - 01;18;01;12
James


01;18;01;14 - 01;18;19;16
Roo
You know, and when I say dark here, that's, you know, bottle, five bottle for, you know, hour to two hours drive. And I love bringing that up because, you know, the Milky Way, it's so faint, like, I feel like if you're not in portal three or lower, like, it's almost like, why bother?

01;18;19;23 - 01;18;25;03
James
Yeah. Oh, well, to be clear with this guy, I think he was like 4 to 5 when he took. Yeah. Image. Yeah. But.

01;18;25;04 - 01;18;25;12
James
Man.

01;18;25;16 - 01;18;38;06
James
But what it use an anti filter in that case is like it, it cuts out some light but it allows you to get more signal or you see wavelengths of interest. So like you're saying I. Yeah.

01;18;38;13 - 01;18;40;01
James
What you actually I mean.

01;18;40;02 - 01;18;59;23
James
You know you will get some nebulosity with it. So that's one of the things like I mentioned John Walsh he did a lot of his testing in like for he he's not sure. He tells me it's auto 6 or 7, but, you know, his process that he prefers, like he actually does a combination of broadband and the spectral Pro for that.

01;18;59;23 - 01;19;02;03
James
Okay. So he combined maybe I'll give.

01;19;02;03 - 01;19;04;05
Roo
That a try next time I do because my.

01;19;04;05 - 01;19;06;06
James
God man, if you if you look.

01;19;06;06 - 01;19;07;09
Roo
At full results.

01;19;07;12 - 01;19;16;15
James
If you look at my website I put the images with just the Spectral Pro. But then if you look at his Astro Beam profile, he's, he's often combining.

01;19;16;15 - 01;19;17;27
Roo
I am going to check him out.

01;19;17;27 - 01;19;19;06
James
On Astro essentially.

01;19;19;07 - 01;19;19;23
James
Link I was.

01;19;19;23 - 01;19;41;01
Roo
Gonna say send me the link and I can, what I can do is I could drop it in the show notes as well. So that way any of the listeners can check it out. And obviously I'm linking to the Leviathan web page as well. And you can check out my, version of the Heart Nebula there, as well as lots of John's photos, including that amazing Andromeda image.

01;19;41;03 - 01;19;56;09
Roo
I don't know why, man, but this I just. I've got Nebula and Andromeda, and there's something incredible about, like, seeing a nebula in another galaxy. That just blows my mind when I see it. And this one really just. It screams high. And I love that.

01;19;56;12 - 01;19;57;03
James
Because you don't see.

01;19;57;03 - 01;19;59;07
Roo
That too often in Andromeda photos.

01;19;59;09 - 01;20;14;16
James
It will have a look at his astrobee, and I just sent you the link there, and then you can see the final one he got with Andromeda, where he combined it with just like pure broadband. And then after check out his, cocoon one versus what's on the Spectral Pro website.

01;20;14;16 - 01;20;16;07
James
So zoom.

01;20;16;10 - 01;20;25;00
James
So let's say the more advanced technique, especially if you're in one of these mortal, mortal. I meant that metal portals out.

01;20;25;02 - 01;20;25;21
James
So.

01;20;25;24 - 01;20;28;25
James
The more advanced technique is maybe to combine it with broadband.

01;20;28;28 - 01;20;29;10
James
Yeah.

01;20;29;11 - 01;20;48;07
Roo
I mean, I guess that makes sense. What do you know? Like, what sort of, time it goes. So this is the issue I always run into whenever I try to go just full broadband from home. And my portal also 6/7, probably closer to seven now. Is he doing shorter exposures or does he go? Because I would imagine you'd get blown out if you did.

01;20;48;10 - 01;20;57;04
Roo
Three minutes subs from a portal 6 or 7. So you kind of would have to go like 30s. And then does he like do like a blend of them together and post?

01;20;57;04 - 01;20;58;11
James


01;20;58;14 - 01;21;02;17
James
I guess that's a question for him to compare.

01;21;02;20 - 01;21;20;17
James
I'm looking on Astro Bean. It looks like he has done the same exposure on both, but, I think it's always worth the in testing your exposures. Definitely. Like if I, if I shoot without a filter, I'm usually blown out 30s. But with the filter I need to be up more like 200 and 40s.

01;21;20;17 - 01;21;33;12
Roo
I have been doing 30 minute service for as long as I've been doing astrophotography, and unless I'm doing like something weird like Milky Way or what have you, I just, I don't know why I always stick to three minutes. Maybe I should try five minutes. Some time.

01;21;33;14 - 01;22;05;10
James
I'd be way. I have a post on the website and I'm working on this tool. It's mainly optimized for dSLR, but I want to get it ready for, astro compliance. But, you know, with Nina and they tell you the statistics and they give you a plot, but it's sometimes hard to read. So I've got this Python script that, maybe you'll find it interesting that it shows you at least to me, a clear way to decide what your exposure should be.

01;22;05;13 - 01;22;17;25
Roo
Okay. So because I, you know, I know, obviously you can optimize to make sure you're getting the most signal for the given shot without blowing it out, like you say. And does it help you optimize in that way?

01;22;17;28 - 01;22;45;05
James
It's doing is if you just put the drop if you test exposures when you start your imaging session 30s 6120 okay, 240 then it takes like two seconds to run this script and the plot system, and it puts a line on the darker than the line up, what the saturation value is. And so what you want to see is that you have a good few hundred pixels of separation from the, you know, your dark level.

01;22;45;12 - 01;22;47;08
James
Yeah. So you have to.

01;22;47;11 - 01;22;49;02
Roo
Push the blacks a little bit, right?

01;22;49;05 - 01;23;01;15
James
Yeah. And then you want to make sure that you don't have too much separation. And you actually need to look up here to see it better. Because, you know, it does look like there's a lot clipped here, but it's actually only like, a few hundred for example.

01;23;01;21 - 01;23;02;19
James
Gotcha.

01;23;02;21 - 01;23;16;15
James
That are above this level. So in this specific example, I, I would happen to go with the orange or the blue. Yeah. But I know for a fact 60 and 30s are too low in this example.

01;23;16;17 - 01;23;17;10
James
Gotcha.

01;23;17;10 - 01;23;44;15
Roo
That that actually is super helpful because this would work with like a regular mirrorless camera as well. I suppose, because that that's always an issue that I run into whenever I'm shooting with my R5 or my R7 particularly, and even somewhat light polluted skies, it's really hard to estimate what time sub I should go with, just based on looking at the back of the screen when the white balance is custom and everything.

01;23;44;15 - 01;23;47;10
Roo
You know what I mean? It can be definitely. Yeah, you're an out.

01;23;47;13 - 01;23;53;20
James
Yeah. So that's what this other blog post is about. Basically it's it's about this rule at one third of the histogram.

01;23;53;20 - 01;23;54;14
James
Yeah.

01;23;54;17 - 01;23;58;08
James
That's it. It's a great rule of tone. But if you want to go into a bit more depth.

01;23;58;11 - 01;23;59;17
James
Yes, exactly.

01;23;59;17 - 01;24;04;05
James
If you want to be sure about what you're doing, you can use a script like this.

01;24;04;07 - 01;24;16;28
Roo
I appreciate you sharing that with me, man. I will, drop a link to this as well if anyone else is interested like I am, and making sure that you take the correct length exposures. This can definitely help you do that.

01;24;17;00 - 01;24;18;21
James
I'm not saying this is the only way.

01;24;18;22 - 01;24;20;19
James
You know, it's the only way, but it's a good way.

01;24;20;19 - 01;24;23;05
Roo
To do it. And I haven't found a way to do it yet, to be honest.

01;24;23;07 - 01;24;24;28
James
That's lots of tools.

01;24;24;28 - 01;24;37;12
James
Lots of the Astro tools have different forms of it. Yeah. But some of them do it over, like, you know, 0 to 2, five five pixels, which isn't actually representative of the sensors that we use.

01;24;37;18 - 01;24;38;14
James
Gotcha.

01;24;38;15 - 01;24;40;16
James
Or the bit that of two, five, five.

01;24;40;19 - 01;24;41;17
James
Yeah.

01;24;41;19 - 01;24;46;28
James
So it can it can be a little misleading. This is just a way that helps me a lot.

01;24;47;00 - 01;24;50;10
Roo
Appreciate you sharing that with me, man. That's something that I will definitely use.

01;24;50;13 - 01;24;59;24
James
Yeah. And actually, if you share some M to 600 files with me, I can, generalize it for those type numbers.

01;24;59;26 - 01;25;01;24
James
Yeah. Okay. All right. Cool.

01;25;01;26 - 01;25;05;11
Roo
Yeah, I can definitely do that. I've got, terabytes worth.

01;25;05;11 - 01;25;06;08
James
Of.

01;25;06;10 - 01;25;10;13
Roo
Images. No, I can't believe I built a NASA yet. That's the next thing I really need.

01;25;10;18 - 01;25;13;22
James
Just send me two files. I don't want a terabyte.

01;25;13;24 - 01;25;18;24
James
Terabyte stored. Duval, that is very cool.

01;25;18;26 - 01;25;21;17
James
My storage situation is not efficient.

01;25;21;19 - 01;25;26;02
Roo
Yeah, that's me right now. I have stuff everywhere in this garage, and I'm trying.

01;25;26;02 - 01;25;29;18
James
So hard to figure out where to put it all.

01;25;29;21 - 01;25;43;21
James
I mentioned we were talking about it briefly a while ago, but I have these. I just thought I'd bring it up because you mentioned your wide field. Especially if you're using the Samyang or anything in M27.

01;25;43;23 - 01;25;45;22
James
That's that.

01;25;45;24 - 01;25;50;13
James
That's the an adapter. It can pull up front of the Samyang.

01;25;50;16 - 01;25;59;04
James
Oh, dude, that is awesome. And you can thread the filter right into it. Yeah. Wow. So you.

01;25;59;04 - 01;26;04;21
James
Can either you can either mount the filter directly into it or the filter cell itself or thread into.

01;26;04;21 - 01;26;05;22
James
It. Oh man.

01;26;05;23 - 01;26;08;05
Roo
That is really cool.

01;26;08;07 - 01;26;08;25
James
When did you start.

01;26;08;25 - 01;26;13;18
Roo
Manufacturing those that had your name printed on it and everything?

01;26;13;21 - 01;26;15;09
James
And it works with the hood as well.

01;26;15;11 - 01;26;23;20
James
Oh that's awesome. That is really cool. And that's a, that's a 14. Or is that. It's a five.

01;26;23;22 - 01;26;24;27
James
It's a 135.

01;26;24;28 - 01;26;26;08
James
Nice. All right. Cool.

01;26;26;08 - 01;26;35;29
James
So it's it's tested with the 135 and it works really well. And this is something that was talked about in your discord. A lot of people stock down.

01;26;36;02 - 01;26;37;06
James
Yeah. There are some hands.

01;26;37;07 - 01;26;45;08
James
Anyway to help with the starships. And just in was explaining, you know, if you stop down with this filter so.

01;26;45;10 - 01;26;45;23
Roo
That is.

01;26;45;28 - 01;26;49;26
James
It helps with diffraction effects. So that will help.

01;26;49;29 - 01;26;51;07
James
That's something that I always.

01;26;51;07 - 01;26;52;19
Roo
Do with mine is I stop it.

01;26;52;19 - 01;26;53;03
James
Down to.

01;26;53;03 - 01;27;00;26
Roo
That because it just I mean, you can instantly see the stars get smaller when you stop those lenses down because they're just too vast, wide open.

01;27;00;28 - 01;27;02;23
James
For. Yeah, yeah. And I, I did.

01;27;02;23 - 01;27;18;00
James
A lot of testing with the filter with this, F2 and, it was very annoying having to collect all that data at F2, but knowing that, being able to see that I had these problems, dude. And so you really do have to stop it down.

01;27;18;02 - 01;27;43;25
Roo
You really do. And not not for nothing. But my 135 was completely unusable until I put, an m 42 adapter on the back, like, actually removed the camera flange and put on a proper M42 screw on thread, and then also I had to I literally had to install and and autofocus or like, I couldn't, I couldn't get proper focus with it.

01;27;43;25 - 01;27;44;06
Roo
I just.

01;27;44;06 - 01;27;48;13
James
Couldn't and it wouldn't hold you guys and everything had such a main.

01;27;48;15 - 01;27;51;18
James
A lot wrong. You can't get focus infinity focus.

01;27;51;18 - 01;27;52;02
James
All right. Yeah.

01;27;52;02 - 01;27;53;23
Roo
And I had to do the trick that,

01;27;53;25 - 01;27;54;08
James
Yeah.

01;27;54;08 - 01;28;09;17
Roo
On Nico's channel where you have to push the infinity, like, you know, further ahead so you can actually get the stars small enough. I, I did that on day one. And, you know, I thought to myself when I first got that lens, I was like, why do people love this lens so much? It's like, I don't get it.

01;28;09;19 - 01;28;27;00
Roo
But then like after I got everything properly set up and like really dialed in, I started getting some really great results out of it. And then I'm just like, okay, now I get it, I guess. So I'm going to I'm going to be using the 135 again this summer. I didn't use it last summer, but I'm planning on using it this summer, so I'm excited about that now.

01;28;27;08 - 01;28;29;16
Roo
Did you 3D print that? What is that though?

01;28;29;19 - 01;28;31;17
James
Now that, CNC said.

01;28;31;19 - 01;28;38;17
Roo
Oh man, that's beautiful. Oh, this look 3D printed. Is that something you're planning on actually making and selling in the shop?

01;28;38;19 - 01;28;45;21
James
Yeah. I haven't put them on the website yet, but they but they're, they're, I have, I have like, I have ten of them, I think.

01;28;45;23 - 01;28;46;23
James
Oh, man, that's beautiful.

01;28;46;25 - 01;29;01;05
James
So I sold one of them to somebody. I made it, for one specific customer because he was interested in it, and I just did a one off. But if you do the design, for one, you may as well. Yeah, it works out a bit more efficient.

01;29;01;07 - 01;29;06;00
Roo
That's cool. If you need to get more cut in the future, can you go back to the same people and and make more for you?

01;29;06;02 - 01;29;09;00
James
Yeah. I comment yeah.

01;29;09;02 - 01;29;15;19
James
Here's I'm sorry, I'm just showing the page here. This is where I did all the testing. I did test it with 3D prints first.

01;29;15;22 - 01;29;16;22
Roo
Of course.

01;29;16;24 - 01;29;19;24
James
But look at that. That's, Nikon D750.

01;29;19;26 - 01;29;20;26
James
Nice.

01;29;20;28 - 01;29;22;05
James
That's full frame.

01;29;22;08 - 01;29;22;18
Roo
Is.

01;29;22;18 - 01;29;41;22
James
Oh, it's it that's just a weird flange adapter I have to use that way. I I'm always testing, these adapters to try put in between the lens and the dSLR. It doesn't work very well for Nikon's because they don't have the back focal distance, but it works well for content.

01;29;41;25 - 01;29;45;25
Roo
Oh, we can you can get away with 33 with the F system I think.

01;29;45;27 - 01;29;58;17
James
The reason I'm interested in that I want to I would like to make the spectacle available to Samyang users with Nikon. Yeah. Or any canon camera just to do wide field, right?

01;29;58;17 - 01;29;59;09
James
Yeah.

01;29;59;12 - 01;30;10;27
James
And obviously this one that I'm showing there, what goes on front end. You need to import a filter. But I would like that people are able to get 1.25in version in there if they want the filter at the cheaper, right.

01;30;11;01 - 01;30;12;06
James
Yeah. I think the.

01;30;12;06 - 01;30;29;14
James
Downside. The downside is that you have a small vignette. Yeah, whatever. What the testing here shows with the vignette, even a full frame. Mr.. Having the filter in front. Yep. Versus in between. It's not a huge difference. And yeah.

01;30;29;15 - 01;30;33;19
Roo
That's not a huge difference. And nothing that you can't take care of without with. That's right.

01;30;33;21 - 01;30;36;14
James
Yeah. That's so that this is the one where I.

01;30;36;17 - 01;30;41;10
James
That's one where I included both. I put the two on two okay. Yeah. Just just for fun.

01;30;41;12 - 01;31;00;22
Roo
That's so cool man I love how about solving for a problem that haunts me like I like I mean, I've listened to all the shows, man. You know how much I love wide field stuff. Like, it's my. It's my bread and butter, and I feel like there's not enough, attention paid to that segment of the market. There's a whole lot of stuff for deep sky.

01;31;00;22 - 01;31;21;09
Roo
There's a whole lot of stuff for planetary, but you don't see too much for, for a what, like actual wild field astrophotography. Like if you want to use, you know, a 50 millimeter lens and just shoot the entire core, you know, or a 14 or, you know, 135, obviously to a larger extent, but like stuff like this, man, you can make that happen.

01;31;21;09 - 01;31;24;05
Roo
That is that is really, really cool. I'm, I'm happy to see.

01;31;24;07 - 01;31;36;22
James
So I'm, I'm certain it works well with the Samyang one, two five. But it has been tested with the Sigma 24 arc. And you get strange diffraction effects. So I can't recommend it for the Sigma 24.

01;31;36;24 - 01;31;37;28
James
Okay.

01;31;38;00 - 01;31;42;00
James
If you're if you're going to test it on a few lenses, I could send you one.

01;31;42;02 - 01;31;43;09
James
You wouldn't mind.

01;31;43;11 - 01;31;43;23
James
No, no.

01;31;43;25 - 01;31;49;14
Roo
That's only tested on a few lenses. So yeah. And you want to send me one? I would love that, man. Are you.

01;31;49;14 - 01;31;51;22
James
Kidding me? Yeah. Yeah. I'm totally.

01;31;51;24 - 01;31;53;05
Roo
Season. Yes.

01;31;53;08 - 01;32;01;03
James
But I but, the thing about this one is that it's M77 trans.

01;32;01;05 - 01;32;04;03
James
Okay? Right. What what is typically.

01;32;04;03 - 01;32;09;27
Roo
M77 that's a lot bigger than what we typically work with. But is that what the size of the front of the 135 can accept?

01;32;09;27 - 01;32;10;12
James
Yeah, that's.

01;32;10;12 - 01;32;13;19
James
The filtering that the 135 accepts.

01;32;13;21 - 01;32;14;01
James
I should.

01;32;14;01 - 01;32;19;24
James
Say it's actually the same trend as the Sigma 24, which is why I tested it on both of those.

01;32;19;26 - 01;32;20;14
James
Gotcha.

01;32;20;14 - 01;32;27;15
James
So lenses are M 88. Most typical, you know, kit lenses are like,

01;32;27;17 - 01;32;32;04
James
And 59 or something. 60, 75. Yeah, I know this one.

01;32;32;10 - 01;32;33;20
James
This one's 58.

01;32;33;22 - 01;32;54;02
Roo
The lenses tend to get bigger and bigger because they got more glass on them. And that's where I've seen the 70. And, you know what I mean? But most of my, like, canon, my nifty 50 and my 16 millimeter and all those, they're all like, you know, pretty small, 55 to 67 somewhere in that range, which always shocks.

01;32;54;02 - 01;32;56;25
James
You because it's so small. But that's such a good joke.

01;32;56;27 - 01;33;07;16
James
You can always try it. If you have the right stepdown rings, you can put, filter cell right in front of your that. It should work pretty well and stay.

01;33;07;19 - 01;33;09;18
James
It does have two of them enough.

01;33;09;21 - 01;33;12;11
James
Yeah. Because a lot of those lenses are near F2.

01;33;12;11 - 01;33;13;21
James
So it should work. Well.

01;33;13;24 - 01;33;26;07
Roo
Does having the filter so in front of the front optics in the distance between does that change how the light interacts. Does that make sense?

01;33;26;07 - 01;33;40;01
James
I think it's it's dependent on the optical design okay. So I know it works well with the Sigma or the what you call it the 135. But it doesn't work with the Sigma art.

01;33;40;03 - 01;33;41;07
James
So okay.

01;33;41;08 - 01;33;49;09
James
It's just to do with the optical design of the lens or the telescope. You know it's it's experimental.

01;33;49;11 - 01;33;52;01
Roo
That's why the 135. It makes so much sense because it's like the.

01;33;52;02 - 01;33;52;17
James
Grail.

01;33;52;17 - 01;33;55;08
Roo
And astrophotography. It just makes sense to do it. And then you.

01;33;55;08 - 01;33;56;09
James
Got the

01;33;56;11 - 01;34;15;03
Roo
Untold number of people who can just take their dSLR, clip it on number 135, slap it on a tracker and then boom, you've got a light pollution ready to go. AP at 135 capture Cygnus all all week I love it man. That's that's smart. Very clever. Wonder why no one else thought to do that.

01;34;15;05 - 01;34;15;28
James
I mean, I.

01;34;15;28 - 01;34;18;08
Roo
Haven't seen anyone else doing that with two inch filters is.

01;34;18;08 - 01;34;19;14
James
Awesome man, I love it.

01;34;19;17 - 01;34;21;11
James
Yeah, I there must be someone.

01;34;21;11 - 01;34;22;00
James
Like, oh.

01;34;22;00 - 01;34;22;11
Roo
Shoot.

01;34;22;14 - 01;34;23;23
James
Is it.

01;34;24;01 - 01;34;34;26
Roo
No. No idea is new under the sun. But I love to see that you're doing it with your filters because it's very, very cool. So yeah, man, send one away and I will, I will absolutely check it out.

01;34;34;29 - 01;34;38;08
James
And. Yeah. What do you have lenses that are M77?

01;34;38;10 - 01;34;38;17
James
Well.

01;34;38;23 - 01;34;44;04
Roo
You know, good point. Let me check and see first. I know I've got a 135. Obviously I've got a rokinon 135.

01;34;44;05 - 01;34;45;22
James
Well, I'll send it for that anyway.

01;34;45;22 - 01;34;46;10
James
Yeah.

01;34;46;12 - 01;34;49;13
Roo
But but let me look and see if I've got any others that are.

01;34;49;16 - 01;34;50;00
James
Oh, yeah.

01;34;50;01 - 01;34;53;00
Roo
So the 135 is M77 right.

01;34;53;05 - 01;34;54;01
James
Yes. Okay.

01;34;54;01 - 01;34;55;21
Roo
I'm just making sure I heard that right.

01;34;55;24 - 01;34;58;11
James
Many lenses are also M77 bad.

01;34;58;11 - 01;35;01;20
James
All I know is any amount I want to say.

01;35;01;23 - 01;35;06;07
Roo
I may have. I'm thinking of my, panel. Let me look and see.

01;35;06;09 - 01;35;09;03
James
77. Look at that.

01;35;09;06 - 01;35;14;29
Roo
My RFL 100 to 500. That's oh 77. That would be a nice one to test.

01;35;15;01 - 01;35;16;11
James
Yeah. Oh my God.

01;35;16;11 - 01;35;24;14
Roo
Could you imagine zoom that in? 500mm, put it on the R7 and then put that on the M3 with the light pollution filter. That would be.

01;35;24;14 - 01;35;28;07
James
Sick. I got that, is it? Yeah. And what do what.

01;35;28;07 - 01;35;33;26
James
Justin advises which is use the the ring as the aperture stuff instead. Yeah.

01;35;33;26 - 01;35;35;25
James
So absolutely you.

01;35;35;25 - 01;35;45;14
James
Said it wide open. I'll use this as the aperture stuff because, you know, these photographic lenses, they don't always have perfectly spherical butcher plates.

01;35;45;16 - 01;36;02;11
Roo
I'm going to have to give that. Oh, man. It's exciting. So yeah, it's the kind of stuff I love to do, man. I love tinkering with, with gear and using it in ways people don't think. That's why I like Mark so much, man. When me and him started talking, he's like traveling the world and he's just using canon gear, you know, like, he doesn't even have a telescope.

01;36;02;11 - 01;36;05;10
Roo
It's it's just all lenses. And he's making it work. But.

01;36;05;13 - 01;36;05;25
James
You know, that's.

01;36;05;25 - 01;36;16;12
James
The beauty of the wide field is that you have so much more capability to travel. And like a lot of the targets, you need wide field to do it. It's not all about having the longest focal length.

01;36;16;14 - 01;36;39;29
Roo
My the favorite photo I have taken to date was, when we took our little one trip to the coast and believe it or not, I was just using, the 24 to 70 canon lens. And it wasn't even on a tracker, man. I was just taking ten second exposures of the Milky Way, and I took that probably 100 of them, stacked them all together.

01;36;39;29 - 01;36;57;25
Roo
And the image just came out incredible. And I even got me tinkering with the camera in the foreground. One of the other cameras that was taking photos and, it just I love that photo, man. It's my favorite. Do you get to see the Milky Way anywhere in Ireland, or is it too light polluted?

01;36;57;27 - 01;37;18;01
James
Well, this is the funny thing. So this is like I was saying, like, I never grew up knowing much about the stars until I learned about them in college and, you know, this kind of thing. But after I at some point, I was visiting my family in Kona, Maya, which is on the West coast, and it's generally quite remote depending on where you look on the map.

01;37;18;01 - 01;37;20;23
James
It's considered like portal zero.

01;37;20;23 - 01;37;22;04
James
To oh, wow, tricky.

01;37;22;04 - 01;37;26;23
James
In some places. Yeah. The west of Ireland has it has like 2 or 3 dark sky reserves.

01;37;26;23 - 01;37;29;15
Roo
Nice.

01;37;29;18 - 01;37;49;22
James
So it got to the point where I had started doing a bit of like visual astronomy at that time, before I had the telescope set up for astrophotography, what to do with them so that I was doing a lot of visual with it at the time. And I got there and there was so many stars in the sky, I couldn't recognize anything around you.

01;37;49;22 - 01;37;51;26
James
And that feeling when you like.

01;37;51;26 - 01;37;54;00
Roo
Where did all the constellations go?

01;37;54;02 - 01;37;55;12
James
It was disorientating.

01;37;55;12 - 01;37;56;05
James
But.

01;37;56;07 - 01;37;58;17
James
I didn't know really what it could be.

01;37;58;20 - 01;37;59;12
James


01;37;59;14 - 01;38;00;12
James
It was mind blowing.

01;38;00;17 - 01;38;01;05
James
It.

01;38;01;08 - 01;38;22;09
Roo
Totally, man, I know that feeling. Whenever you get out and you look up and like there's just no reference points, because the sky that you see only has 20 stars in one given area, right? Like, and then you're like, oh my God. Like, it's like diamonds on velvet managed everywhere. Like when you get to those dark skies. It's so special, man.

01;38;22;11 - 01;38;23;28
Roo
It makes me wish we had more of it.

01;38;24;01 - 01;38;26;12
James
So yeah, it's mind blowing.

01;38;26;12 - 01;38;27;10
James
Yeah. All right.

01;38;27;10 - 01;38;48;12
James
One thing before we go. So Horizon Astronomy, they're the first retailer to actually put it up on their site. Now we're in Ireland now based in Munich. And they're the first retailer to put it on their site. So you know I'm actually had really good discussions with Andreas who runs it. He's German, Irish heritage.

01;38;48;12 - 01;39;08;26
James
So that's, is the relation there. So, he, he was excited to take it on too, because, he, you know, wanted to support an Irish business. And he had started his business recently. So, this is due to things like from starting this business and getting to chat to retailers, you get to listen to the stories about how people have started their business, and that becomes very interesting.

01;39;08;26 - 01;39;10;08
James
So, here it is.

01;39;10;08 - 01;39;30;10
Roo
I went online and found the website. It's actually really nice. I've never been to I mean, I guess I wouldn't have had a reason to because I'm not in Europe. But that said, for all of our listeners that are in Europe and we've got a lot, Horizon Astronomy actually looks to be a really nice shop and with a lot of different selection on it as well.

01;39;30;10 - 01;39;30;28
Roo
I have to say.

01;39;31;04 - 01;39;45;27
James
Yeah, he's a brilliant retailer and he's got tons of experience. And this shop is going through, tremendous growth. And it's kind of going from strength to strength, especially now that he's based in Munich, is that much stronger. You know, supply chains.

01;39;46;00 - 01;39;46;26
James
I can see that.

01;39;46;27 - 01;39;56;21
James
So it's really helping his business, and it does. Oh, yeah. Look at the calendar there. So that's, he also sells the Astro Photography Club Ireland, calendar.

01;39;56;24 - 01;39;58;21
James
I love that. So you.

01;39;58;21 - 01;40;01;20
Roo
Guys have an official club and these are photos from the.

01;40;01;20 - 01;40;29;04
James
Club? Well, that's actually quite an informal club. There is official groups, but this is actually it. I know who who runs it is. Marc de McCormack. He's a brilliant astrophotographer. He does, imaging from, like, portal eight in Dublin city Center. He runs this informal club as a Facebook group. And yeah, it's probably it's like a really good group for astro photographers all helping each other.

01;40;29;04 - 01;40;33;27
James
It's it's really nice. And it's not just deep space, but you can see that it's very.

01;40;33;27 - 01;40;48;04
Roo
Yeah. It's gorgeous in the, sun as well. Oh, man. I didn't know that all of this beautiful darknet. You see my my image cut off right here, I, I didn't center it just perfectly. I think they put the tail of the dark shark in the middle.

01;40;48;06 - 01;40;48;23
James
So I didn't get.

01;40;48;23 - 01;40;58;14
Roo
Any of this beautiful nebulosity over here. Man, what a great image. All of these are really. They are. That is awesome. So how long have you been on, with horizon now?

01;40;58;17 - 01;41;21;21
James
So I haven't we haven't marketed it fully. Yeah. Okay. Cool. So it's been on his site for about a month, but we've actually kind of not promoted it yet because one thing we noticed, one thing I noticed, one customer in particular, actually, we talked about this briefly. And that's why I was asking you if it fit in your filter reels and filter draws.

01;41;21;21 - 01;41;31;06
James
Oh, yeah. Yeah. One customer in particular, it didn't fit in his filter drawer, even though the sound was designed to to specifications.

01;41;31;09 - 01;41;32;17
James
Yeah.

01;41;32;19 - 01;41;51;25
James
But it's worked for everyone else, so I've revised the filter, so, to be a few millimeters shorter just to take that risk out. In the end, I think it was, user error in the end, actually, but I that's still kind of not acceptable that, you know, some people aren't having a smooth experience with it. Yeah.

01;41;51;27 - 01;42;02;01
James
It's it's not good enough. I proposed the filters out to be a little smaller. So I was just kind of wait, oh, nice that so I have, I have that on. So I have them packaged up and ready to go.

01;42;02;08 - 01;42;13;29
Roo
That's awesome. That's good to hear. I was worried. So whenever I first got mine because I was like, this looks like it's going to be a tight fit, but I, I don't know, I just looked at it really closely. And then, you know, I didn't even have to measure with calipers or anything. I was like, here it goes.

01;42;13;29 - 01;42;17;14
Roo
And it slid right in. So I'm glad to hear that. He did.

01;42;17;16 - 01;42;17;29
James
Well.

01;42;18;01 - 01;42;34;09
James
The original was designed to fit and it does fit, but it is tight. But the reason I made it as large as possible is that it has both male and female tracks. So if you imagine somebody could just try it right in between, that's what their lens and the thing I taught, I talked to me that just seemed the natural way to do it.

01;42;34;10 - 01;42;36;12
James
I love that because it's just one more.

01;42;36;17 - 01;42;38;05
Roo
One less thing you don't got to worry about.

01;42;38;06 - 01;42;39;08
James
Because.

01;42;39;11 - 01;42;50;20
Roo
Well, how often is it in this hobby where you have to go out and buy one, two, three adapters for something and then you get it and you don't even know how it works. And now that eliminates a lot of that. Having it on both. So that's wonderful.

01;42;50;27 - 01;42;56;06
James
Yeah. Well to be clear the latest version only has the male tried. It's more traditional in size.

01;42;56;06 - 01;43;01;13
James
Too, but you sound like a winner. So yeah. Yeah, it is. There you go. And the the.

01;43;01;13 - 01;43;18;22
James
Larger one is still available if you ask me specifically. So if you, somebody does have this. Yeah. So I'm going to be sending out the very low profile to the retailers. Because there's another retailers, it will hopefully do it very soon, but obviously I can't talk about that yet.

01;43;18;22 - 01;43;20;14
James
Yeah. Oh, I know how I am just.

01;43;20;14 - 01;43;32;27
Roo
Popping in from the future here. As I said at the beginning of the episode, that retailer is first light optics, and I've got a link for that in the show. Notes back to you.

01;43;32;29 - 01;43;52;13
James
So the retailers will be getting this one that's like, you know, it's completely de-risk. It's small enough, it's tested, it's going to fit in everything. If you are somebody who doesn't mind a tight fit or you have that specific case of needing the female thread, it's available. You just have to let your retailer know or let me know if you're buying buying it off the site.

01;43;52;16 - 01;43;55;00
Roo
There you go. Do you have an email address, by the way, that you want to mention?

01;43;55;00 - 01;43;57;15
James
Join so people can use to contact form.

01;43;57;17 - 01;43;59;23
James
Contact form on the website? Yeah. Yeah. All right.

01;43;59;23 - 01;44;16;21
Roo
So you'll you'll see the link, to the Leviathan Optical in the show notes. And if you just go there and click on the contact form, if you have any questions such as filter sizes and threads, etc., you can reach out to to James that way. Cool. Awesome, man. Well look, my wife's banging pots around in there, so I'm going.

01;44;16;21 - 01;44;18;06
James
To go catch up with her.

01;44;18;08 - 01;44;23;06
Roo
But hey, man, I really enjoyed catching up with you. And let's do this again very soon, okay?

01;44;23;08 - 01;44;26;00
James
All right. Thanks so much. It was great catching up and.

01;44;26;06 - 01;44;30;08
James
You too, man. So.

01;44;30;10 - 01;44;49;15
Roo
What a great guy James is. I just want to say a big thank you to him again for coming on the show to talk about the spectral Pro and how filters are made and kind of everything under the sun that we did discuss. So I always enjoy catching up, and it's super cool to say that I've got a friend from Dublin now.

01;44;49;15 - 01;45;12;02
Roo
So thanks again, James, for coming on the show. Pretty much everything we discussed, is going to be in the show notes, so if you're interested in getting one of the filters, please feel free to, use those links. And then obviously if you go to Leviathan Opticals website, you can see example images, including my heart, Nebula.

01;45;12;05 - 01;45;27;10
Roo
And, I'll try to post the Pleiades too. And you guys can see what I mean about it being a little bit of a unique image, but I do really love it. It's just a little bit different than some of the ones that I've seen. So, that was, a lot of fun. I definitely enjoyed it.

01;45;27;10 - 01;45;50;16
Roo
And we are going to have more content like this in the future, so stay tuned for that. I just want to update you guys as well. I'm working on the edit for the next episode, and I'm trying to do a little bit of a unique take on it, because so much of the content that I've seen since this ended is just people going from table to table, looking at the new gear.

01;45;50;16 - 01;46;06;10
Roo
And don't get me wrong, and it's very cool and I appreciate looking at new gear, but we're going to do it a little bit different as only the Astro cast can. So stay tuned for that. Should have that out within the next week or two. Thank you guys so much for tuning in to the Astro cast this week.

01;46;06;17 - 01;46;30;13
Roo
I am your host crew. I hope you're all doing wonderful. Galaxy season is slowly coming to a close. The Milky Way is starting to rise earlier in the morning. Venus is in the western sky just after dark. Make sure you check that out. The panstarrs comet is possibly naked eye visible at this point, so if you haven't checked that out, definitely check that out.

01;46;30;18 - 01;46;47;15
Roo
I'm going to see if I can see it. One night this week, but we shall see. But, it was wonderful catching up with you guys will be out with an all new episode next week. I am your host, drew. You've been listening to the Astro cast, and as always.

01;46;47;18 - 01;46;50;22
James
Clear skies.

01;46;50;25 - 01;47;08;13
AC Song
Wednesday evening, the feed goes light. Rue's voice cuts through the dark lagoon. 35 from backyards goes to mountain peaks. We're all tuned in. No time to sleep. Red dot find his coma. Correctors game.

01;47;08;14 - 01;47;09;04
James
He breaks it down.

01;47;09;04 - 01;47;41;23
AC Song
Like a simple never pain comets, rising planets in the frame. Every week we chase the sky by name. Pixels glowing hearts of lions. Thousands of miles. One state of mind. This is the Astro Cash. Where dark brings us to life. Before the UK lies wide awake under the same sky. Just hoping it never quiet grows on the night.

01;47;41;23 - 01;47;57;19
AC Song
The whole world's invited. This is the astro cats. Yeah, this is the Astro guys.

01;47;57;22 - 01;48;20;05
AC Song
Someone in Texas just snapped the heart. Set a guy in Chicago stacking flats till dawn. Belgium sharing deep sky gems while Switzerland the train, the roar of bombs. Beginners asking which way is north on time is up and wisdom back and forth will last. You'll get it. Just wait and see. Welcome to the family 24 seven. The channel's never sleep.

01;48;20;05 - 01;48;48;04
AC Song
I'm gonna be doing showcase. Blowing up the baby, the 3 a.m. coffee at noon, someone's livestream in the rising mode where different flags, same obsession. So what I'm reading dark skies. I saw this is the astro gas. Where the dark brings us to the light. From the ceiling to the Canadian. I is wide awake under the same sky.

01;48;48;11 - 01;49;27;17
AC Song
No borders in the phone on fire brews. Unlike the whole world United. This is the Astro guys. Yeah, this is the astro gas. So here's the road to the crew, to the glow of monitors. Party. Where the wild stars glow. Wherever you are, whatever you shoot, you're never alone under that cosmic roof. Turn it off now. Let the neighbors complain is when they get a little rest on the way.

01;49;27;20 - 01;49;38;02
AC Song
The skies last see will destroy the Astrocast. Never fades.