Starflyer

If I blink I miss ASTAP solve, should solve (😜) your issues Martin.

You can calculate your own minmo value to check what PHD2 is suggesting, though I find what it suggests is best. https://www.myastroscience.com/minmoveinphd

As others have said there's no need for star alignment any more, I can't remember the last time I had a finder fitted to either of my scopes, platesolving will handle everything for you.

Lovely job! Did you / will you cut holes in the pier to let water out? They tend to fill with water over time as they cool, draw in moist air and it then it condenses out.

Late to the party here but thinking of building a jig to test my cameras. Does it matter if a sensor isn't central to the housing, how does this affect the pattern when rotating? I have a ZWO camera that is a country mile out of being central. I was tinkering with it for secondary collimation using the circles in sharpcap, on rotating the camera the circles shifted against the secondary by a good few mm.

I take it you have the cooled version of the camera? You do this once per gain / offset setting and reuse the master dark for six months to a year. I'm a recent convert from Atik CCDs to CMOS, I'm still getting used to my new camera (QHY 268M) but the results so far are blowing me away. Where I was doing 15 - 30 minute narrowband subs on the Atik I can get better results with 3 - 5 minute subs, albeit over the same total imaging time. Point being I lose fewer subs due to odd events like planes, wind gusts etc.

You've got weight in the cables / cable tidy that will shift around as your mount tracks. I'd keep the cable tidy from the mount to just power and ethernet, and try and run it from a central point like the dovetail clamp. All other cabling is better run along the scope, between your mini PC and cameras etc, keep the cables hanging loose to a minimum.

Did you have tilt in the sensor then, or are you using this to correct for tilt elsewhere in the system? I ask because QHY make a big thing of them setting the sensor orthogonal during manufacturing, my QHY 268M appears very well set up.

I've autofocussed for years now and see differences between filters on both my Tak and OO CT10. One of the first upgrades for me after moving to mono was autofocus, it's necessary, unless you want to waste precious imaging time manually focussing. As vlaiv says, temperature change causes focus drift, even a couple of degrees is enough to make stars bigger and start losing detail.

Overkill? I'd certainly like one when I build my obsy. https://www.teleskop-express.de/shop/product_info.php/language/en/info/p10265_Lunatico-Dragonfly-Observatory-Controller.html

I'd put money on it being USB related rather than driver related, the built in USB hubs on ZWO cameras are known to be flaky. Good advice above, make sure power saving is switched off on your USB ports, use a better cable and a good quality powered USB hub are a good start. You don't have to waste precious clear sky time troubleshooting these problems, you can have your cameras looping away in the daytime and look for problems that way. USB disconnect problems can be extremely frustrating to track down, you do know it stands for 'Unreliable Serial Bus'? 😉

Maybe one runs NINA as admin and one with more restricted permissions? I hear people say all the time not to run anything as admin but I had so many hassles in the past that I set everything astro related to run as admin by default and zero problems.

The LCD screen generates a lot of heat, the temperature sensor used in EXIF isn't on the imaging chip, but close to it. It's entirely likely that the heat from the screen running heated the sensor enough to change the darks. I ran a 450D in a cooler box for a few years and always used temp matched darks, the banding typically seen in canon DSLRs completely disappears at an EXIF temp of 10C.

I've owned / tuned a couple of EQ6 mounts and poor quality main bearings, the three on each axis, can allow quite a bit of lateral movement when the clutches are nipped up. Better bearings and only just engaging the clutches helps, over tightening clutches can definitely adversely affect guiding. In my experience, the main cause of stiction in these mounts are the thrust bearings, again use good quality bearings, only a small smear of a light grease and don't over tighten them.

Next step is to have your capture software running all the time, looking for a safe condition; darkness, clear sky, no rain etc. It then opens your roof, slews, focuses, plate solves and starts imaging for you 😜

My experience of the skywatcher dual speed focusers isn't great, maybe good enough for visual but they have a lot of slop / sag in the drawtube. Moonlite Crayfords are again okay for visual, but repeatability when autofocusing just isn't good enough, they slip. Baader Steeltrack are cracking focusers, I'd rather drill new mounting holes than have to make do with a mediocre focuser that fits the existing holes.

The section on the right is typical of backlash. Set some backlash compensation, say 300 steps and test again.

Thanks for the very in-depth reply. I was planning to use the existing holes, I prefer the spikes at 45° to horizontal anyway. You seem to have it very nearly dialled in, I'd be happy with that. I've seen CNC machined spiders and thought about one of these but can't find one to fit the CT10. Zero adjustment, so it should be exactly centered, but if you need to adjust you're out of luck. Thanks again, Ian

Did you ever get the spikes tighter / to single spikes? I'm considering getting one of these for my CT10.

Hang for no apparent reason except you looked at the screen the wrong way. Sorry, couldn't resist 😉

They were very good in their day, and I used to recommend them as a step up from a DSLR. You can pick up a used 294MC Pro for a bit more (~ £750) and it'll perform far better; less noise and better sensitivity. They also come up quite regularly secondhand as people upgrade to bigger sensors, that's where my money would go if I were upgrading from a DSLR.

All of the above, plus the hand controller kinda sucks, it's like entering commands on a Spectrum ZX81.

Your shiny new PC will depreciate far more than the £120 a year that PS costs, but if you have to upgrade anyway that's a moot point. I too am apposed to subscription software but I pay for PS because I see it as great value for money. Before the subscription model PS cost ~ £600 to buy, sure you owned the software back then but that was a huge outlay and no version updates unless you paid for them, what we have access to now is a bargain IMO.

The ASCOM drivers work fine for me in Win10 and SGP, have done for years.

I moved to an FTDI based adapter, zero problems since.