So I gave the MiniCam8 another try recently, but the results aren't worth posting here since I'm still a little green in the mono astrophotography category. I decided to move on to Jupiter in mono for now and wait for a better deep-sky target to experiment with later this year.

I did manage to run some tests on Andromeda with an almost full moon in the sky, and the results were promising but I need to read up a bit on technique before I'm confident enough with this setup.

For instance, since the camera is cooled, I figured I could get away without using any darks. It turns out that for proper calibration (at least in PixInsight) I need darks along with my flats; otherwise, you have to jump through some hoops to get it to stack properly.

One thing that intrigued me was using the built-in filter wheel on the MiniCam8. It was nice having that mechanical control. It was smooth and quick, so I decided to purchase a mechanical filter wheel for my planetary setup.

Using a manual wheel for planetary imaging left a lot to be desired. Since I'm using a 2x Barlow, any touching of the image train would inadvertently shift my image around, forcing me to recenter, refocus, and sometimes even lose the planet altogether in my FOV. With a capture window of only a few minutes, that doesn't leave a lot of time for futzing around between filter changes, so I had abandoned mono planetary photography in favor of color.

I went the QHY route for the wheel since it was the most affordable, and based on my experience with the MiniCam8, I figured I'd be in good hands.

Something to bear in mind: there are some complaints about the QHYCFW3 regarding some mounted filters' threads protruding past the mount area, which can cause the wheel mechanism to jam. During my research, I discovered that there are two versions of these wheels. Both identical, but one is slightly thinner than the other. They share the same model number, but the SKUs differ slightly: the thinner one ends in "US" and the thicker one ends in "SR". I went with the SR version and had no issues with my filters.

So I loaded it up with my 1.25" filters which consist of L-RGB, UV, CH4, and IR

Once I achieved focus (luckily my LRGB filters are parfocal), controlling the filter wheel through FireCapture was flawless and fast. No more touching the image train! I set up a sequence and just sat back in the house while FireCapture did the rest.

The results were much clearer than with my color camera. Combining the RGB channels was simple enough in Photoshop, but it's definitely more work processing mono images than it is processing color images. I ended up writing a small Python script to automate the process for me which speeds up the tedious combining process a bit and actually gives me a nicer RGB image than the manual process in Photoshop.

Here are the initial results. Since this was an experiment, my focus isn't the best, and I haven't yet worked out the proper spacing between the camera and the Barlow. The processing was quick and dirty but definitely promising but I should go back and revisit these images when I have more time for a real thorough process.

Jupiter - February 07, 2026