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Hi all, last night everything was going perfectly, I'd setup before sunset, then did the usual PA ( with my new IOptron IPolar, which I've already posted about. Incredible ) 3 star alignment, got PHD2 running with sub 1 arc sec. tracking. Slewed to M101, plugged into my DSLR my shutter release cable. Dials in my number of subs/duration for each sub etc, presses start...and nothing happened!!?? To save you the tedious bits of everything I tried in vain to resolve the issue, I eventually found a way to get the SRC to start commanding my camera. Only issue, I had to sit there all night manually pressing the SRC after every single sub!! ALL NIGHT!! A total of 2 hours 19 minutes/60 sec subs, so 139 nine times in total I had to wait for each exposure to end, then press button manually again, for two hours and forty minutes ( adding in the time it took me to hear camera stop, grab the SRC again and press button ) My goodness I was furious! LOL. Despite that nightmare, I still loved getting outside for first time in months! I just pray all the tedious brain numbing effort was worth it when I process my data in couple days! LOL As a side note, I think if you're not prepared to accept that this hobby can be a nightmare some nights, that you will have nights that are simply cruel to you, then you're in the wrong hobby! That is something I've learned during my circa 16 months doing astro! Happy hunting and clear skies!

Exactly my experience with a PoleMaster. I found the QHY camera is also recognised by SharpCap so you can use that as confirmation if you feel so inclined - but I would advise against it - and don't be tempted to triple check with an ASIair either! 🤣

For a definitive answer you need a consulting engineer who specialises in groundworks and foundation😁. In reality the size depends on the size/weight of the pier. If you make it 60cm deep, that is plenty for most purposes. As for diameter, that is a bit different. If you want a 'perfect no instability' pier, you don't want to be stamping your feet on it. Hence the idea of a narrow column. However, you are going to be standing on the ground near the pier. If you put down a bit of decking, floating over the pier, you isolate the pier from vibrations. My observatory has a one piece foundation and concrete pillar. Later the shed base was poured - leaving a gap to the pillar. When building my setup, there was much less information readily available. The lump below ground was almost 1 metre cube. With hindsight, more than required. I figured that once you start to dig, it is little effort to dig more. Concrete is not that expensive. A base that is too big juust gives you more excersize digging and costs a bit more sand & cement. Having already hired/borrowed the mixer. If the base is not good enough, you have to dig it out and start again. If the ground moves seasonally, or more slowly, it is not a big issue. Just visit your polar alignment occasionally. If ground moves slowly, your base was not deep enough. I'm sure others will be along with their experiences.

Good find, thanks for highlighting that 👌 another once in a lifetime event. A couple of before and after pictures on my target list now.

@Flame Nebula I think this Q should be reversed, but in my experience I've seen more DSO's in my 8" Newt. Reflector than my 5 inch Refractor ( well, 120mm Refractor, so not quite 127mm, but the difference is negligible ) You also have to bear in mind than the two different optical systems have strengths and weaknesses on both sides, it all depends what you're looking at, for example SSO or DSO. Hope this sort of helps you understand my friend. Regards, Wes.

Try this one then ... !

Correct. I have a 5in frac BTW 👍

I dont have an observatory but I do have a small pillar box type enclosure for the permanent pier. I have a power distribution box and a bracket for an asiair permanently mounted on the pier. I then have the power supply mounted in an enclosure about 2 meters from the pier and linked to the power distribution box. I then simply fit the asiair and plug cables into the power box and asiair. The cables are all the typical 2 meter type and to date all has worked well with no clashes between ota and stuff mounted on the pier. I frequenty swap telescopes so not having kit mounted on the ota works for me. If you choose to mount your kit on the pier, fit your ota to the mount and swing it around to make sure that when you mount your stuff, you have no clashes and the cable length is all good. All the best.

After last night's photographic collimation, I stuck in the Cheshire again at lunch time to see if it agreed with the camera. The Cheshire is saying the scope is way out of collimation... I think the issue is the focusser is not square and it is joined to the primary mirror, so the Cheshire will always give a wrong answer. However, I think the Cheshire is useful for collimating the secondary at least.

Three at 120º around base and four in the focuser itself, 1 in each corner labelled -rather hopefully- fixing screw in the reference you cite. If you're serious about it and you don't like the idea of metal to metal, you may wish to fit paper gaskets instead of the latter. HTH

Idiots 🤬

Very nice! I caught it looking similar to your 20.40 sketch.

I used to take moon shots on my driven equatorial mount but last night I used a manual alt-az mount. I took 10 batches of 15 exposures at one second intervals. This took about 8 minutes in total as I had to manually realign the telescope between batches. I tried to process all 150 images in Pipp and Autostakkert but the field rotation gave me a rather odd result with duplicated craters. See top and bottom of lower, second image. So I processed just 20 consecutive images and stacked the best 10. I tweaked the result in Affinity Photo to give me the upper image which I am pretty happy with. But, is there a way of using all 150 images with some sort of "derotation" process? Thanks, Jim 203mm Classic Cassegrain - Nikon Z6 - 1/500s - ISO800

Someone being daft near Yeovil, not far from me. Reiterates that care is needed when using these devices anywhere with planes nearby though this person was obviously particularly stupid/malicious. Somerset man jailed after shining laser at passenger plane https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-somerset-68838349

Snatched a few through the gloom ...

Thanks Steve!

Put simply it does not control motors but provides a connection to planetarium apps (including Rowan's) for manual mounts. DSC = digital setting cirles, enabling use of encoders without 3rd party hardware.

It's a WiFi-ready combination of 6200MC with ASIAir Plus v2 inside. 😁

I found my 585 produced sharper images if I had an IR filter in the optical train. taken with an ED72. 180 x 30 second exps

Or wifi VR goggles 😁

Perhaps the question should be the other way around ?

+1 for the 585. I'm using the uncooled camera with my Askar 120-APO. Waiting to see if a mono version is in the pipeline... M51 is a great target for the 585 plus lots of other galaxy's and smaller neb's.

Hi all. I just wanted to tell any folk who don't know, if you want stress free easy and incredibly accurate Polar Alignment, then I cannot recommend highly enough the IOptron IPolar. I tried it for first time last night and I was amazed at how silly easy it was to use and the results were literally perfect! The software you download to Laptop to use the IPolar is silly simple to understand, it's everything you need, and literally nothing else, no frills, no fancy super complicated settings etc etc. My tracking has never been as good, not even close! Plus I didn't have to be on my knees breaking my neck looking through my mounts polar scope, struggling to get it as perfect as possible! SERIOUSEY worth the money! ( Remember to check compatibility with your mount/gear. Also, It requires a Laptop or other computer device to run it's software )

Put me down as an opposit - photographer - visual is out for me. Tried it, got the tee shirt (didn't fit!)

I recently got a ZWO 585MC cooled camera, to pair mainly with my Tak TSA 102 f/8 refractor. This gives a better field of view, smaller pixels, and higher quantum efficiency compared to my other camera (a ZWO 071MC Pro). One benefit of the smaller sensor is that I don't need to use a flattener. I managed around two and a half hours last night on M51 and got the result below (from stacking 149 60 second images in DSS and then some further processing using GraXpert, Affinity etc.). An IR/UV filter was used. Although the moon was up, the end result was fairly reasonable, to me. Autoguiding, autofocussing etc. was all managed by an ASIAIR Pro and I used my RST-135 mount.