mikey2000

After a long absence, I have returned with a question.. how long will my mount last if I leave it in a wooden garden shed, unused due to excessive and endless cloud? maybe I should start the cumbersome process of shifting it to the garage...

The location looks good. I’d aim for a holiday during the winter GMT period, maybe even Jan/Dec for longer nights. definitely aim for a new moon period, avoiding anything over a 50% moon. Although, depending on if you are a night owl or early riser, the moon may be below the horizon at your preferred viewing time. use an Astro app such as Stellarium to plan your visit by playing with the date/time to see what is visible at the time of your visit and be aware of the location of any buildings/trees that might block your view 🙂 and have a Plan B in case it’s just cloudy - it looks like good hiking country if all else fails...

All welcome! Sorry I can’t help with your GPS question though.

The dark stuff looks nicely dark but I see what you mean about the left side. I don't know much (anything!) about this patch of sky but maybe the left bit is full brightness? (We can't always assume our nebula is in the middle wiht nice dark space all around the edges)

Looks like a fine pile of data to me! I suppose at that focal lenght, the guiding isn't at all needed - the stars look good at Screen Size. I think the pic would benefit from a healthy saturation boost though.

Wonderful pictures, an inspiration to all of us, showing what can be achieved with enough patience (and some appropriate kit!) Mars is firmly stuck behind my neighbours roofs at the moment but I'm 100% sure I'm not set up for planetary photos (I'll post a shameful saturn photo soon, for your amusement!) In the meantime, these pics reminded me of the War of the Worlds "No one would have believed, in the last years of the nineteenth century, that human affairs were being watched from the timeless worlds of space. No one could have dreamed that we were being scrutinised as someone with a microscope studies creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. Few men even considered the possibility of life on other planets. And yet, across the gulf of space, minds immeasurably superior to ours regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly, and surely, they drew their plans against us..." That would be a fitting end to 2020...!!

!!! that's a long wait!!! Although, where I live, it has been cloudy since mid august. I wonder, if your mount arrives, perhaps the clouds will shift to Norway, in true astronomy fashion. But seriously, the wait will be worth it - I also stepped from an EQ3-2 to a 6R. Use the waiting time for weight training 🙂

Regarding RA backlash, I wouldn’t bother. Just make sure your mount counterweights are set to make the whole rig slight “east heavy” then the RA motor is always lifting against weight. A change of direction in RA guiding is then less an actual change but more of a slowing down while the earth rotation catches up. Hence the desire to set guide correction speed to 0.5x - RA is then only ever running in one direction, just at different speeds. So therefore no need to worry about backlash 🙂

Mine made a nasty noise last night, sort of similar to the above. It turned out it was the eyepiece tray vibrating. did you try to see if the noise comes and goes at different slew rates?

That’s what I did on my successful attempt. Beware, the adjustments on each grub screw are very powerful for even a tiny (eg) 1/8th of a turn. at the end of the job, it backlash should be minimised at the tightest spot and mostly gone everywhere else. I suppose, even for this quite expensive mount, the internals aren’t quite accurately engineered - maybe this is what you get when you spend even more £££... i also had my scope/camera attached when making the adjustment. I don’t know if that is necessary or not...

I also did the Dec backlash adjustment. It took two attempts to nail it. The first attempt was tricky as I didn’t really understand what was going on and I didn’t make the adjustment at the tightest part of the full rotation so it ended up binding when rotating through that part. (Horrible, scary noise from the motor!) the second attempt went much better! before the adjustment, you could feel the Dec backlash by hand-moving the mount. Afterwards, it’s imperceptible. i still had a few awkward Dec issues guiding the other night but the scope was pointing directly vertically upwards and I understand that this is the trickiest part to aim at as far as Dec is concerned.

I tried imaging with and EQ3 Pro (Aluminium legs) and 150PDS. I used a QHY miniguidescope to keep the weight down and PHD guiding. It was a struggle but I had lots of fun and got some OK results. It was ultimately a dead-end though. The EQ3 mount just isn't quite up to the job. Apart from the weight limitations, mine had a long periodic error (could be guided out) and a short (20s approx) periodic error, which was almost impossible to get around. Have you visited this thread to get an idea of what's possible?: The other issue is that when learning astrophotography and guiding, it's hard enough already ("known unknowns") without battling against random errors introduced by the kit ("unknown unknown") I ended up making a loss on the EQ3 and ended up with a lifetime-lasting EQ6r. It is definitely worth saving up for a better mount if you are serious about AP.... That said, a DSLR with a 200mm to 400mm lens would probably work out reasonably well on an EQ3

I haven’t tried with RA adjustment / it doesn’t seem to need it. the DEC adjustment worked out in the end but took me a long time to “get” the procedure. Once I understood what I was doing, it was Ok and the result was much improved. i think to get really top notch results, a hyper tune might be in order

Three different pics....

It seems to work now for some reason. Maybe my browser was on a go-slow or something. Anyway, I followed the link to the full size pic and I'm super-impressed. Good work indeed!