 This video is sponsored by Squarespace. Since my last review of harmonic mounts almost a year ago now, we've seen many more models of these kinds of mounts enter the scene. Harmonic mounts use a kind of technology called strain wave gearing that allows for the mount itself to be very compact and lightweight but hold a lot of weight as payload even without counterweights. Now in some cases you'll still want to use a counterweight on a counterweight shaft so that your whole rig doesn't topple over. That would be a disaster but we'll get into all of that. In this video I'm going to be reviewing two of these new harmonic mounts that I was personally most interested in. The ZWO AM3 right here and the Pegasus Nix 101 and then I'll be comparing them to a mount I've already reviewed the ZWO AM5. And you might be wondering why compare three different mounts with different payload limits. Well I think it's interesting to see how much we can push different mounts and I think people might be looking at this AM3 as a downgrade option from the AM5 and looking at the Nix 101 as an upgrade option from the AM5. So I think this is an interesting trio to compare in that respect. I also included the AM5 in my last comparison review so it's a nice through line between the two reviews if you want to watch both and sort of make a mega comparison. And since I own the AM5 I'll keep including it in any future harmonic mount shootouts so you can see it as a reference model to compare everything else to. Since this is a review a couple quick disclosures up front here at my request ZWO sent me the AM3 Pegasus Astro sent me this Nix 101. No money exchanged hands and they don't have any say in what I share in this video. I do want to thank ZWO and Pegasus Astro though for sending out these review units as these kinds of equipment loans are the only way I can do these comparisons on my channel because I can't afford to buy all these different expensive things personally. So let's jump into the comparison now starting with design and features. All three of these can be used in either equatorial or alt as mode. I have them right now in equatorial mode and for deep sky astrophotography like I do you would really only use equatorial mode and with equatorial mode you have to polar align them but the benefit is that you can take long exposures without field rotation because you're you're rotating around the pole just like the stars do. The benefit of the alt as mode is it puts the telescope in a better position if you're a visual observer and you're looking through an eyepiece. So if you're looking for mounts that can do both modes alt as and equatorial all three of these fit the bill. They're also similar in that they don't include polar alignment scopes so they rely on the user to know how to polar align with a more modern means probably like a software solution in combination with a guide scope you can in a guide camera you can do good polar alignment routines using various software Sharp Cat Pro Nina ASIR. In my case I use a QHY pole master which is a the smallest polar alignment camera that comes with dedicated software and as you can see here it can be adapted to an attached underslung adapter made by ADM that puts it right on the dovetail plate and that works very well. When you will polar align using a camera instead of your eye the camera has to know the axis of rotation for the mount so with all these kinds of software routines it's going to ask you to move the mount and write a sentient. I did like the way that the Pegasus Unity software there was a module down here for moving the mount in exact degrees in RA maybe it was designed just for this purpose so that made it very easy to do what the pole master software was asking me to do move it in RA by 30 degrees the ZWO driver works fine for this purpose too it's just the more old school clicking and holding on the virtual keypad here to get it to move. As I think I said in the last review these mounts are definitely techy if you're someone who would want to have a mount that doesn't need any kind of computer or mobile app to run then these mounts aren't for you because they have no way to do traditional polar alignment right now they don't have traditional hand controllers might be coming soon with the Pegasus and they assume that you're going to be using sort of software to control them they're really great for imagers. In terms of the ease of polar alignment with the included equatorial wedge on each mount I found the Nix 101's altitude adjustment knob the best design of these three it was very smooth and easy no matter how much weight I put on the mount the best azimuth adjustment probably goes to the am5 but the Nix 101 was decent too I just found that the knobs were a little bit harder to grasp it's not even really the size but how closely these little nibs are together that made it harder. Of course on bigger mount like the EQ6R has these bigger knobs and bolts and that makes them much easier to grip and turn I know I'm not comparing the EQ6R but just as an example I do like that the am3 had the most difficult adjustment control of the three tested here it didn't look much different from the am5 but I found any small movement here resulted in a very coarse adjustment meaning that you had to spend a lot more time going going back and forth because when adjusting it it was very easy to overshoot and then you'd have to come back and overshoot again and it just takes a lot longer. In terms of connections on the am3 and am5 they're mostly on the front here the only real difference is that on the am3 it comes with a bluetooth wireless connection in addition to the wi-fi that both the am5 and am3 have but it lacks a 12 volt power out that the am5 has here on the side they both use a normal 12 volt 2.1 millimeter center pin connector for power input and usb b to connect to a computer for a wired connection and they have st4 guiding if you wanted to use that for some reason I'm not sure why modern mounts are all still putting st4 on as pulse guiding is much better but I'm sure there's some cases where st4 is demanded the nyx 101 has an st4 2 in the manual that indicate that this could also be used for an optional hand controller that's still in development the nyx 101 also uses usb b for a wired data connection and other than that it uses different kinds of ports than the zwo mounts as you can see on the back here all the ports are on the back for 12 volt power in and out pegasus has chosen the threaded gx 12 connector the same one that sky watcher uses for power in on the eq 6r personally I really like this connector it's very robust and there's no chance that it's going to fall out since it's threaded unlike a typical 12 volt barrel connector the nyx 101 comes with an ac adapter that already has the gx 12 connector on it but let me go and do a little bit of an aside here about the ac adapter the provided one with the mount is a max 5 amp unit so that's only meant to power the mount I somehow missed that part of the manual even though it was very clearly spelled out and what I was trying to do was I was trying to use this 5 amp power supply unit to power everything the mount my camera cooler my do heater band etc and then I was having connection issues with the mount where it would just not connect to my laptop very frustrating and the reason being is my camera cooler and my do band and all these other things were hogging the power and the mount wasn't getting enough power to form the data connection so completely my fault I emailed the pegasus folks and they figured out what was going on very quickly and what I should have been using for the configuration that I was doing where like every all the power was routed through the mount was it optional 10 amp power supply that pegasus makes for this so again the 5 amp one that comes with the mount is for powering the mount only if you're going to route power through the mount to everything else then you'll need the 10 amp power supply unit okay in terms of other connections the nyx 101 also has wi-fi on board it can either create its own wi-fi network you can connect to to control it or it can be configured to use your home network which is really nice because then your computer would still be able to connect to the internet while you're controlling the nyx 101 next let's look at the saddles all three mounts have dual saddles meaning that they can take either vixen the skinnier or los mandy the wider style dovetail plates these are the two standards for telescopes worldwide the nyx 101 usually comes with a normal saddle but it's also available now in a package with the saddle power box which is how i have it configured here and with the saddle power box you can route the power up from the power out on the mount and then you'll have all your other connections you know power due heaters usb up on here with the telescope and i love this this makes cable management a lot easier as i talked about in my last video for me this is this saddle power box edition is something that makes the nyx 101 really stand out of course the saddle power box can be bought separately and adapted to the am 5 or the eq 6 r but it's only going to match the mount like this in the black and blue color scheme with the nyx 101 if that kind of thing is important to you i know some people are interested in how much sound these mounts make uh both win slewing and just win tracking so let's do some tests here you might want to turn up your volume but i'll warn you when to turn it back down okay the next thing is weight and payload and this is where harmonic drive mounts are so very interesting the zwo am3 mount head is definitely the smallest lightest of the bunch it's 8.6 pounds and it has a payload limit of 17.6 pounds without counterweights or 28.6 pounds with a counterweight the ratio of max payload to mount headweight is 3.3 to 1 the zwo am5 mount head weighs 12.1 pounds the max payload without counterweights is 28.6 pounds and the max payload with a counterweight is 44 pounds so the ratio of max payload to mount weight for the am5 is 3.6 to 1 and the pegasus nyx 101 mount head weighs 14.3 pounds the max payload without counterweights is 44 pounds and with a counterweight it's 66 pounds the ratio of max payload to mount weight is a very good 4.6 to 1 uh so next let's look at base price for each and what's included at that base price the base price in us dollars at time of recording for just the mount heads was 1500 for the am3 2000 for the am5 and 29 60 for the nyx 101 and in terms of optional accessories you're going to add about four to five hundred dollars and either any of the cases to get them into the configurations like this where it's a carbon fiber tripod with a pier extension if you're just adding the carbon fiber tripod that's going to be just three to 350 at the base price you get the mount head a usb cable a nice carrying case for each mount and uh although the cases for the am5 and the nyx 101 they have more of a premium feel with this cloth exterior and a metal zipper while the am3 case is a little bit cheaper looking it's just foam with some latches at the top and the nyx 101 comes with that five amp power supply which i talked about earlier the zwo mounts do not come with any power supplies or cables so it's something you're going to have to pick up yourself to get these working any of the mounts can be adapted to sky watcher tripods with the right optional pieces which is very nice if you were going to put a big payload on this i tested them exclusively on the carbon fiber tripods because i was interested in how they would do in that kind of configuration but i don't actually recommend that if you're putting a really big telescope on them i first tried the three mounts with this setup this is my no counterweight setup it's just under the limit for the am3 without a counterweight it weighs 15.5 pounds or seven kilograms the focal length on this scope the ascar 103 apo is with a 1x fladdener is 700 millimeters and the camera is the asi 2600 mc duo and that makes the image scale 1.1 irk seconds per pixel i wanted to use the same pull alignment with all three mounts so i use the qh y pole master attached to the end of the dovetail like this with the adm saddle and there was no need for a guide scope since the duo took care of that with its integrated guide camera we're going to look at both graphs of my guiding performance and images okay now we're going to look at the guide graphs this is andy galasso's phd2 log viewer it's cross-platform just like phd2 and you basically just find your guide log and load it up here and it does a really cool job of analyzing your guiding performance now before i jump into my analysis and the numbers um let me say a few things up front here one is that i did use multi star guiding i did calibrate for each new setup of course i did not use pepec a lot of people know about that it's it's a way that it can sort of analyze your guiding performance and improve as it goes it's like an algorithm you can turn on within phd2 part of the reason i didn't use it is because with my previous mount test i didn't know about that and so i was using the normal algorithms and so i wanted to make this sort of fair with the previous comparisons but then i also think that the defaults are probably what most people are going to be using so it's it's basically just the defaults but i do turn on multi star guiding and of course calibrate with an appropriate area of the sky all right enough caveats here so this is my first uh imaging session of the night this is the zwo am5 uh it was early in the night uh probably just right after it got to astronomical darkness and again this is with the ascar 103 apo 700 millimeter focal length okay so this is about 40 minutes of data and you can see the scale here is four four arc seconds plus minus so eight arc seconds uh from the bottom to the top here and you can see that most of the time it was staying within a one arc second um deviation there was really just this one sub where it was having um some spikes that uh almost reach you know two arc seconds uh but it recovered quickly from them i don't know what was going on here there was a bunch of spikes in a row in declination in any case the total rms here was 0.47 arc seconds so uh very good in terms of those you know total numbers i do think that people think a little bit too strongly of this uh you know total rms number i understand that it's like a single number that we can sort of judge things by uh but it doesn't tell the whole story as we'll see as we go here uh and get into the images as well and all of that so um but anyways for people that are interested it was 0.47 total rms and that's what the guide graph looked like pretty good here is the nyx 101 with that same telescope the uh ascar 103 apo and again uh keeping mostly within you know one arc second deviation there's a couple subs in here where there's sort of no spikes or three in a row here where there's no spikes above one arc second in either direction but then there's a few excursions here the total rms for the nyx 101 was 0.57 arc seconds and this is again with no counterweights here's the zwo am3 and you can see compared to the first two it's a little spike here like uh there's more just sort of spikes in general across the whole thing it actually started out pretty smoothly and then and then for the last like i don't know eight subs here it got spike here um but it recovered quickly from all of those spikes and for the most part i mean i think for a $1500 amount i think that's pretty pretty incredible that it's mostly staying within that uh that one arc second range back and forth and overall it looks pretty smooth it does the spikes you know if it can recover quickly from them it shouldn't cause any kind of irregularity in the stars total rms here 0.64 arc seconds total rms all right so now let's uh head over to pics insight and take a look at the images so i will just open these up uh just to show you when you're zoomed out like this and you just look at them they of course look identical which is sort of what you would expect right like uh uh with guiding performance that close and uh something that's not super demanding for these mounts you know 700 millimeter focal length uh we're getting very similar uh results here i will show these uh full screen as well for people that uh like to see that i've had requests for that so here's the nyx 101 here's the am5 and here's the am3 okay now let's look at some close ups and see if we can see any differences and when if with my eagle eye i think that i can actually see that the am5 is uh the sharpest by just a hair over the nyx 101 and that the am3 is noticeably uh a little bit fuzzier than both this sort of surprises me that you know when you're just talking about uh very small differences in in guiding performance that you can actually see uh the sharpness differences in these little stars but i guess you know the am3 did have quite a bit more spikes in that guide graph so i can sort of see how that would result in these slightly blurrier stars but you really have to be sort of pixel peeping i think to see something like this but if if critical you know sharpness is is super important to you then uh the nyx 101 and am5 did did slightly better than the am3 here now i if i had all the time in the world i would have loved to have done like a an even shorter focal length instrument to see if we could see any differences there but you can sort of extrapolate and and think okay if the differences are this small at 700 millimeters at 300 millimeters we might see no difference whatsoever on my second test with all these mounts i used a bigger telescope and a counterweight this payload weighs 29 pounds or 13.1 kilograms so right over the edge of what the am3 is purported to handle with with a counterweight even though the nyx 101 can technically handle up to 44 pounds without a counterweight i don't think it's a good idea on the carbon fiber tripod so i did use one here and this is the ascar 130 phq with 1000 millimeter focal length and again the asi 2600 mc duo this puts the image scale at a demanding 0.78 arc seconds per pixel i again polar lined with pole master attached to the dovetail i did this all on the same night so i started at 6 p.m and went to almost 2 a.m there were some downsides to that of course here is the am3 with the now the ascar 130 phq and a counterweight and i want to make clear here i don't necessarily recommend pushing the am3 to this limit like this this is i was actually half a pound over its maximum payload capacity with with the 130 phq and a camera and no no guide scope nothing else so it was really sort of pushing the limit of the am3 and the iris nebula which i was shooting was just to the left of polaris right like it was it was it was almost you know in home position basically so the the bulk of the weight was sort of balanced right over the mount if if i'd been shooting something else like that where the telescope when is it was in a more like wonky position off to the side i would have been a little bit worried with just that little tripod and little mount you know because that's a heavy scope 30 pounds so be careful if you do something like this it's not something i would necessarily recommend but for testing i just wanted to show what the am3 could do and in terms of number here it's it recorded 0.81 arc second rms there are a few little spikes here over four arc seconds and then also a few over three but but actually you know it looks pretty good now when we look at the images it's going to be sort of a different story and i don't i don't quite know how to explain how good this guide graph is compared to the image but that's giving a little bit of a spoiler okay so here's the am5 and looks pretty similar in some respects to the am3 i think you know just the the spikes are in different places but it's sort of the same story and then the total number is also the same 0.8 rms 0.8 arc seconds rms sorry so that looks pretty good too i have tested the 130 phq on the am5 before and been happy with the results so this is sort of in line with what i expected out of the am5 and then here's the nix 101 and i will say that by 1 30 a.m or 120 a.m when i was doing this unfortunately the iris was quite a bit lower in the sky than it had been you know an hour earlier uh so you can see sort of towards the end of the am5 here it's getting a little bit worse and i think that part of the reason the the total number here on the nix 101 is a little bit higher at 0.98 arc second total rms is because the object was lower in the sky so you're shooting through more atmosphere and the atmosphere is more turbulent you know lower towards the horizon than it would be when the object is higher in the sky but in any case just like the other two most of it seems to be within around one and a half arc second up and down and then there are some spikes in the three to four arc second range but now let's look at the images because they sort of tell a different story which i think is interesting so again according to this the am3 and the am5 have the you know the best performance here and the nix 101 was a little bit worse here are now the images and again when you just sort of look at them like this zoomed out you're not going to see much i will make them full screen here for people that like to see that so here's the nix 101 here's the am5 and here's the am3 now here is what i thought was one of the most interesting uh results just like before i feel like the am3 has the worst image of the three but it's it's different than that that first case so if we remember the first case it was just because the stars are a little bit blurrier with the am3 than they are with the other two now it's the stars aren't as round right like they they have this little divot off to the right that's sort of giving them a little bit of a triangular shape and i've had this before with this scope and i wasn't sure if it was mount problems or a scope problem so it's just interesting to me that on the same night three different mounts same telescope same camera i'm getting much rounder stars with these two and this one is giving me these sort of triangular stars again so i don't know exactly what the answer is here but it's just sort of interesting that the am3 has this little divot off to off to the right here that you can see most clearly on the bigger stars but if i zoom in here you can see it's sort of on all of them but it's really clear on this on this big star right here and when i looked at the individual subs they were all sort of messed up like this so it wasn't just some is the combination of the stack it was like they were all sort of weird like this well over here the data looked pretty good and then the other thing i find interesting is that even though it said that the am5 was 0.8 arc seconds this one was 0.98 to my eye the stars are just a little bit rounder in the nyx 101 versus the am5 but these two are so close that i don't know it's hard to really pick a winner there and again when you just zoom out a little bit this isn't even zoomed out all the way a lot of these differences aren't as apparent some of you are probably going to take away that oh well i can get the 130 phq and put it on the am3 that again that's not really what i'm recommending here i just wanted to test it to its limit but if if you're going to use a big telescope regularly you're probably going to be looking at something like the nyx 101 because it's going to be more reliable and stable over the long term and then the other thing you know i use the carbon fiber tripod on all of these because that's what was supplied and it's a lot a lot of people will probably go for that but with a big telescope you'd probably also want to upgrade your tripod use some kind of steel or aluminum tripod something with thicker legs and more weight to it is going to help too in the end i think the the images and looking at the actual stars really tells the story of these mounts i really just i don't like to put my finger on the scale i just like to sort of show you the data and my testing results as honestly as i as i can and and as fully as i can and then hopefully it'll help you make a decision about which mount is correct for you and i know this was a video about testing mounts but i did collect a lot of images in testing these mounts so if you'll indulge me here just for a minute i put together all my testing data to make a couple images from that one night so this is the wider shot this is using about a little under three hours of data at 700 millimeters and i was just trying to bring out the brown dust around the iris and also that i like the colorful star field of course it's a little bit noisy so excuse the background being not silky black but i think it's still pretty interesting and then this one actually i found even more fun to process i kept it intentionally dark and sort of the stars minimal because i really wanted to draw the eye to the core of the iris because there's some really cool structure in there that i feel like a lot of people because they are bringing out the dust around the iris the core of the iris gets sort of blown out and you don't really see all this fine detail but look at how interesting these little wisps and structures are i'm typically a wide field guy i mean you know under a thousand millimeters but this is actually making me have a little bit of aperture fever and wanting to to go up over over a thousand which is sort of my limit right now because there's some cool detail in here that i didn't see quite like this in wider shots this video is sponsored by squarespace if you're like me the mounts i just reviewed are really fun to play with but at the end of the day i use them as tools to make astrophotos that i can be proud of and want to show off and i use squarespace for my personal portfolio at nicocarver.com because squarespace makes it super easy with their website builder and professional templates it's really nice because you can customize your site however you wish quite easily with their drag and drop engine and of course squarespace sites also look great on mobile devices through responsive design i've also found squarespace takes the hassle out of managing a website no more fiddling with css for hours just to get something to look right there's a huge amount of included features with squarespace like if you need an online store that's built right in so if you're looking for any kind of website whether it's a portfolio of your photographs or a site for your small business i think you're going to love squarespace you can get a free trial today at squarespace.com and when you're ready to launch use squarespace.com slash nebula photos for 10 off your first purchase of a website or domain this has been nico carver at nebula photos clear skies everyone