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  2. I seem to live by the adage "throw it in a drawer for awhile and come bac to it." Sometimes I prefer thd original, a sign that further gains are unlikley, and sometimes the improvement is obvious. TOA 130 and ASI 1600, HaLRGB, about 24.25 hours New Image Former version
  3. Thanks guys, a couple of wraps of Plumbers PTFE take around the thread of the helical under the green wheel, has done the trick..👍🏻
  4. Can you clarify whether you have the Autoalign camera system or the smartphone software version? Assuming it's the former, I would suggest that unplugging things while powered up is not a good idea, and what you need to do is to provide mountings for Starsense and DSLR simultaneously. You might have trouble getting the Starsense off without causing the vertical alignment to slip. (On my outfit, the Starsense camera is mounted below and to the right of the OTA, looking from the rear.) Anyway, the C8 SE is not a great mount for astrophotography.
  5. One thing I will say is no amount of tweaking any settings will make a difference if the firmware is the old version, either in the driver or in PHD, trust me I tried everything….
  6. After I have aligned my telescope with AutoAlign, can I remove the AutoAlign gear to put my Piggyback on my 8SE for my DSLR camera. Then, when finished the AP, do i have to replace the AutoAlign gear and repeat the alignment procedures if I have not moved the tripod (screwnailed the feet to the floor) or the telescope?
  7. The Pivotal weather site looks like it will be very useful for the eclipse and for planning trips to the dark site. I am hoping the forecast will improve for south Texas. I plan to be near Medina, TX at a friend's observatory. Thanks for posting the link.
  8. One of these. I already have somewhere to put it. https://www.planewave.eu/en/products/telescope-systems/rc700-ritchey-chretien-f/12 I'd need to sell the house for it to become within budget. The 1m version would be nicer but I doubt I could afford it.
  9. Thanks Jeremy, it seems to be very good indeed. A bit over my budget though, so I settled on the Lowepro instead - which seems very similar in size. I'll pick it up tomorrow!
  10. I am relatively new to the hobby and hope the below may be of some use to those sitting on the fence and trying to decide whether to get stuck in - or potentially stuck out if your daughters forget you are outside and lock up the house. After months of research I finally decided on buying the Celestron 5dx SCT telescope. I could say it was because I mainly wanted to see the planets or possibly because it was compact enough that I could keep it in the corner of the living room, but if the truth be known it was on a special offer and had 5 months interest free credit. Any way for good or bad my telescope arrived and it has been out every clear night that I wasn’t down the pub and having had it 5 months now I can give a little insight for those like me who were a bit stuck. First and foremost I have discovered that having any telescope at all is much much more fun than not having one. My small 5 inch SCT is giving so much joy to me and a surprisingly large number of unexpected guests. I live in the middle of a town with pretty bad viewing conditions and limited area of sky available from a small back garden, but even so it is such a great, and slightly smug, feeling to see friends, relatives and random neighbours being astounded at their first views of The Moon, Saturn and Jupiter. Some have even got hooked and bought cheap department store telescopes which are actually much better than expected once they changed the eyepieces. After a few weeks the spendits hit for me and I started to look at better eyepieces. The 26mm that came with the scope is pretty good but the 10mm was rubbish. Again after a huge amount of looking there appeared a deal on a Celestron zoom eyepiece. It was an accidental purchase but so pleased I did it as it has been used every night and I just love the simplicity of it. Stick it in, find your target and zoom in until you get a pretty decent view. Then show off a bit! I have obviously invested in eyepieces that are better and a good show stopper is the Luminos 7mm if only because it is the size of a small hand grenade but the good ol zoom is just great for a simpleton like me who loves to see the moon and planets - it is just a joy to use. You will be pleased to know my final observation is about taking some videos and photos to share with those fortunate enough to be able to avoid coming round. I bought a second hand DSLR camera and T ring adapter and spent many nights trying to work out the settings to get anything remotely resembling what I could see. Eventually I got bored - for me it took away all the joy of just seeing the planets. The camera is now a fairly nice ornament. Then one weekend my daughters turned up with a 3 axis iPhone holder and bingo! Within half an hour we had worked out how to reduce the phone camera exposure and were sending videos of a ‘Lunar fly by’ and a fairly good video of Jupiter and it’s moons. We even accidentally got a video of a strange shooting sometime that went straight through the middle of Jupiter. This has sparked numerous discussions about aliens and potentially a conspiracy to blow up Jupiter for cosmetic reasons. And that is it if I were to do it again I would definitely get a small SCT again but I am sure everyone would say that about their first telescope. I have just loved how easy it is to take outside in minutes and start being astounded! I wouldn’t bother with the StarSense or motorised mount as I haven’t used it at all. For me part of the joy has been actually finding things and once you get to know a few bits you can show off a bit when sitting outside the pub. i would certainly get a decent zoom eyepiece and the 3 axis phone holder then just sit back enjoy and be thankful that someone decided to invent the telescope! IMG_8440.mov
  11. I think the 10" classical Cassegrain would look great in an observatory.
  12. The latest BBC Weather Forecast is now indicating cloudy skies in Mexico on 8 April, and rain showers in Texas, ironically the best chance of clear skies now appears to be in the Great Lakes area, but all that could change. John
  13. Googling LX90 PC control provides a lot of information. It seems that you can use a serial cable between the handset and a PC, with the handset connected to the mount so it relays the commands. As most modern PCs won't have a true serial port you will need a USB to true RS232 serial adapter. On some of the links to other forums there was suggestion of a 505 cable, which might be a propriety cable with the adapter built in. As the cable is using standard serial it can be long enough to have the scope outside and control it from the comfort of your lounge. However the problem you will run into is with other equipment such as cameras, which will all be USB and anything over 3m ideally requires an active cable to boost the signals. Personally I would not advise using anything over 5m.. Most remotely operated setups tend to keep everything local to the mount, including a computer of some kind. Then you simply use wi-fi or a long cat5/6 cable between the two PCs and remote desktop into the PC at the scope.
  14. As we're dreaming, I'd love to have my FS152 gifted back please! When I foolishly let it go it was mounted on a Losmandy G11 and not the EQ6 in the pic, but even the tube assembly alone would be a dream come true. Sadly, dreams like this don't come true! 😔
  15. Very similar to what I use, cool to -5 , gain 100 and offset 250. After playing around with different exposure lengths I have settled on 120s for most targets occasionally 180s, although I don't use any filters. I think it's a good balance between getting sufficient signal and not losing frames to guiding issues or wind etc. You may notice quite a lot of hot/warm pixels in individual stretched frames, I understand this is normal for this sensor, but is not an issue at all provided you dither often enough, usually every third or fourth frame for me. I also take dark frames some don't.
  16. Or, you know, you could just use a towel.
  17. Today
  18. I use Vixen SLVs (9/6/4) with my Lunt 50. If you end up double stacking there is an off axis reflection you want to keep out of the field of view, so wide angle eyepieces can be a hinderance. In addition, there will be a sweet spot in the centre of the fov which shows more detail so you will always want to be observing on axis. I can also recommend the R-sky observing hoods that FLO have recently started selling. I bought a white one, the only concern is how a large white hood looks to anyone else, so the black might actually be preferable.
  19. Here is another image taken in March I have just completed. I imaged M106 over three nights and used 10 hours of the data collected. Images were 180s long. Hopefully this qualifies within the rules as I do see several distant NGC and PGC catalogued galaxies as shown in the annotation. I just realised I didn't specify equipment on Markarians Chain above and it was the same here. Explore Scientific 127ed and I used ZWO2600 MC Pro cooled to -10. I cropped the image, but the annotated image was the uncropped version. Image was captured with 94 - 98% illuminated moon from Bortle 4.5 with no filters Thanks Simon
  20. Hi I have the same scope ,the way I did it was to buy a 10 mtr cable for the hand control ran this into the house , at the time I was using a Canon DSLR linked to my laptop with live view I could see the object I was imagining.This is the easiest way 📷👍
  21. Or, rather going for a bigger scope, invest in an image intensifying system. They're also really handy for observing diffuse nebula in real-time. The only problem is you generally have to adapt non-astro systems to astro use, which can result in a lot of trial and error.
  22. If the images I have got up to x125 in this scope on the sun it's going to be brilliant on double stars. Herschel solar wedge, polarising filter various eyepieces, 12.5mm, 10mm, 8mm and both of my zooms.
  23. Terry often replies during the evening. We had a problem with an Ultrastar earlier this year. He sent a firmware update which I applied. Very easy.
  24. Thanks William - that's exceptionally helpful and I appreciate you taking the time and trouble to do this. I would never have found those settings by accident! I will have a look at it when I get home from work. All the best. David
  25. Cheers Paul. I do empathise with both sides of the conversation in truth, and many of the the points that are raised disparagingly toward the S50 are ones that I had with myself over the course of months prior to purchase. Since ownership, all such concerns have dissolved in the joy of being able to view and share these objects with friends and family. I'm very new to the hobby compared to many. I started pursuing it in anger in my early twenties, and am 36 now. I'm very aware of the fact I am standing on the shoulders of giants in how accessible the night sky is through this sort of equipment. Equally, I recall being dissuaded from a goto as my first mount at my first Astronomy Soc - first, I rather ought to 'learn the night sky with binoculars and star hopping'. Many pleasurable evenings were had off the back of this advice, and the skills I learnt are used every night I observe - be it with the S50 or visually with the ED80 and azgti. However, the S50 is as nuanced an instrument as the Dob I started with: the challenges and opportunities to learn and grow as an observer remain as potent, it is just the medium which has developed. One of the greatest pleasures of this hobby is that there is space for every approach and perspective on it - a whole universe of room for all of us! I thank those who have the means and commitment to have invested in dedicated rigs (particularly those who have subscribed to the ZWO ecosystem) for supporting the development of devices such as the S50. I greatly value their feedback, guidance and experience in collaboration with all of us enjoying looking up at the night sky, through what ever means we are able.
  26. I'm not sure - it's so long since I did any astro - I'll have to relearn everything! In any case, I'd be able to try the setup without autoguiding to see how the wifi performs. As mentioned above, am looking into the Stellarmate X system. Not sure what limitations that has but looks similar to the ASIair. I'm trying to find out power requirements for it but they don't seem to mention it anywhere. I'll have a look on here to see if anyone has written about it. Cheers Louise
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