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PS Or should I save money and get a Mewlon 180? Somewhere in the future. Magnus A.

Intressting thread. I am very intressted to purchase a GSO CC8 f12. Partly because it`s an open tube which maybe reduces cooldowntime and the problem with dew. I also like the eypiece is always easy to reach comparing to my 8" f/6 Newtonian. I can get one CC8 second hand which has only been set up 3 times but hardly used since the seller purchased it in 2021. The price is also attractive -1/2 the money vs the cost new. Furthermore the seller has let me loan it before actually buying it. Very kind. I have had it out for 2 nights. They where a bit hazy but I could see brighter stars. It was a bit out of collimation. I have never collimated a CC but it looks as I got right by using a 4mm hexwrench (?) on the secondary. Only tiny movements. I did not touch the primary. I noted some SA in startest but not more than one can expect on a massproduced telescope. No astigmatism, TDE or pinched optics. The seeing was rather mediocre so I was not able to determing the snap focus exactly. I used one 2" extension ring + a 2"diagonal (WO). Mag I used were 100X, 185X, 267X, 300X ,343X and 400X for testing. Delta Cyg was sweet and well sep at 185X and 267X. Lot`s of black space between A-B. The OTA is rather heavy vs my C8, close to 9-10kg is my guess (20lbs) Still my VixenGP+Celestron 2" steeltripodlegs held very solid for visual observing. And yes I am 100% visual. Damping time was ~3 sec after a light hit on the tube at 400X. On my C8 it`s ~1sec. What do I want to use this scope for? Well mainly multiple stars, planets,open clusters, globular clusters and planetary nebulas. I would be happy to here opinions regarding my thinking on this 8"CC scope from you out there..... Yes I know I have too many scopes. But I am very curious on this CC and the price is good? I would not have considered I new one for full price! Maybe....... Clear Skies! Magnus A.

In a land far, far away, Cumbria to be exact, there is a pristine clear sky. I'm not there to witness it, but the Paulsky Camera is! While flicking through the images, I spotted a nice meteor. So here is that frame. It'll be lost as a sub-second flash in the overnight time-lapse. Cloud and moonlight have been blighting the Allsky Camera recently but it's improving again, maybe a window of opportunity before the all-night-twilight sets in. The Great Glowing Cheesball is just starting to affect the camera now. So, it's downhill for the rest of the night... In other news, emboldened by @Skipper Billy's Allsky camera linked to above, I've ordered a lens that will fit the whole image circle on the ASI 178 sensor. So a full 180deg view. That and I've ordered a much bigger dome. Again, Skipper Billy suggested that on his website as it allows ventilation holes to be drilled around the camera, allowing the very warm air from the RasPi to circulate in the dome, hopefully keeping it condensation free. There is a newly released firmware (EEPROM) for the Raspi, which allows even greater overclocking. I can't dream of taking the enclosed Pi to the max but I still had the original firmware on my Pi 4B which limited the CPU to 1.5 MHz, I've now set it to 2.0 Mhz. It might, and probably will cook in the summer. So I'll likely stop recording daytime images and just let it idle in the heat of the day. I'm looking to swap the Pi4 for my Pi5 to limit some of the issues with image handling. I tried at the weekend but it balked at boot-up, complaining of voltage drop. Thinking about it, the PoE splitter is only rated at 2A, so I've got a higher rated one on order. The PoE injector is a big 8 channel PoE switch rated at 85w total load. It is also running 2 x PoE surveillance cameras, but I'm confident that total load will be compliant. That'll be an ongoing project into the summer, due to my limited opportunities to get up there once the parts arrive.

So, my imaging rig to date has been using refractors, Evostar 100ED DS Pro, Evostar 80ED DSO Pro & WO Zenith 73 III, which has been alright but the number of clear nights seems to be getting fewer and the West Coast of Scotland isn't renounced for it's temperate rain forests because it's very dry! So that I can try to get the most out of the clear nights we do get, I would like to upgrade to a faster scope and I'm thinking about the RASA 8, which should suit my ASI294MC Pro but I'm not too sure about the weight on the HEQ5. My HEQ5 is about 3 years old, has the Rowan belt conversion fitted and is mounted on a solid concrete pier (see my Obsy build thread for details). With the RASA 8, ASI294MC Pro, dew shield & guide scope & camera (I would rather have guiding than not) then it's getting very close to the maximum imaging payload for the HEQ5. I know it could really do with the EQ6-R or similar, but I can't justify changing the mount & scope, and there's no point just changing the mount and sticking with the scopes I already have. So, has anyone got or used a RASA 8 on the HEQ5 and how did it handle? Any issues balancing the rig and did you use a guide scope or not? Thanks for any advise.

The Deep Sky Stack feature built into the SS is a great little utility, its enjoyable just to play around with, this is one from last nite that I stacked with it today. I am not sure if I can do a before / after, I will give it a look but I have a couple of things to do first.

And there are a lot of them.

Frustrating. The scope is out cooling because there's clear sky on the radar just to the north. However it's moving so slowly I think I'm going to give up. I can see Capella, and I can see the moon just peeking over the hill. Apart from that it's just cloud 😡

I'm intending to do the same thing, and I suspect the way round it is to install the ASCOM Drivers from the Atik website. Best wishes, John

The May page and the list of the events in the month: https://astrophotography.app/Calendar.php#May

Svbony’s sales blurb makes a point about the eyepiece being well suited for “premium refractors” so that makes me think the curvature is matched for those grab and go apos and not a big newt. I can’t say I’ve seen curvature in my 66 or 90 mm refractors. I love this eyepiece, it gives everything from one degree FOV to max magnification in the fracs, so I don’t need any other eyepieces!

Any movement on this? I too would like to connect a HQ cam to oacapture. Thank you Sam

Last weekend I fitted the original wheelbarrow handles to my redesigned 12" F6 dob. Now both telescopes are ready to be wheeled out from my garage with easy.

Well that's nothing fresh! 🐎

The starless image will have noise regardless so there's no issue cleaning up a stretched image as they'll be noise everywhere anyway.

thank you nial 👍

i was hoping to clone over some areas in the starless output from starnet++ before stretching that same file. if i clone after i stretch, i will be cloning more noise. at least that's how i see it in my head i just want to try it out. im not sure how i'd find which bit to use to clone over other bits, before stretching in gimp, without that changable view option siril has (linear, auto stretch histogram etc). Its possible i can copy the initial layer to a new layer, stretch one as a guide for me on the unstretched layer? then delete the guide/stretched layer?

I think that your DIY weather station sounds awesome! It's great that you're sharing your project on YouTube. I checked out the Kestrel 5700 Ballistics Weather Meter that everyone is talking about, and it looks like a solid choice.

How did this work out Rob?

Short unexpectedly clear evening gave me a chance to test my 'cut-out-of-thin-card' Tri-Bahtinov mask last evening. Set up using my normal method of conventional Bahtinov and APT's Bahtinov aid, got us down to a very small error, shown in the first image. I then substituted the Tri-bahtinov and got image 2. (not quite right but not too bad) Racked the focusser out about 0.15 mm (approx 10th turn of fine focus knob on the Moonlight focuser) and got image 3. The spikes have shown some movement. Then reacked the focuser a similar distance back past the original position to get image 4. Again the spikes show some change. Lastly I tried returning to the in-focus point - image 5. From these images it appears that collimation isn't too far off, although I would appreciate any comments/observations on this. Two things struck me while doing these tests, one was how much camera tilt we had and how this would affect the result. (APT gave a figure 8% tilt on an image shortly after the mask was removed.) The other was how easy adjusting the collimation screws to correct any perceived mis-collimation would be in the dark. Perhaps a Tri-Bahtinov grabber (think I've readof this somwhere on CN) would help. For the moment I think I'll stick to Concenter and Cheshire in daylight - which doesn't seem to have put collimation too far out?

I think i read that Siril tilt needs a uniform starfield to work. It averages FWHM in center and 4 corners or something, so can be thrown out by irregular star background. The best check by the way is to use your eyes, rather than fussing over numbers. Egg shaped? Star trails? Looks OK full screen? Good to go. Don't pixel peep, especially with junk gear to start with.

I'd suggest some brighter open clusters (the same type of target as the Pleiades). The easiest to find will be the "Beehive" cluster M 44 in the constellation Cancer, in the SW and to spot without optical aids (sailors in ancient Greek took this as a sign for favourable weather conditions). Not far away (8.2° to the SE) is the densely packed cluster M 67. More to the W, the open cluster (oc) M 35 in the western part of Gemini is a brilliant target. When you found it, you may try to spot the smaller and fainter oc NGC 2158 SW. Always beautiful is NGC 7789, "Caroline's Rose" in Cassiopeia, easy to find close to the star Beta Cas (Caph). Hth. Stephan

Specifically - actually purchased an item. Many thanks, Ewan.

Good evening Elp, Many thanks for the detailed reply. I would like to know if anyone has specific purchasing experience with High Point Scientific. Many thanks, in advance. Kind regards, Ewan.

And also Amazon says usually available in 3 to 7 months, feels like ordering a car.

Apart from ASI224MC and ASI678MC with their total sensors surface smaller than a half of the APS-C ( 😁 ) I have also a 2600MM Pro which is permanently attached to a filter wheel and used with bigger scopes. I think I have no choice and have to (reluctantly) disassemble it if I want to perform a proper test.