Starflyer

I moved to Lindy Cromo cables and a Startech industrial hub a couple of years ago and it's been fine since then.

They could be so much bigger / better, perhaps they don't want to be and are happy with their lot. My brother suggested I speak to them about working for them or consulting for them to help get them there but I never did. I'm not an optician but my background is in manufacturing process and quality control and more recently in e-commerce, which is another area where they could improve.

I've owned three, all bought secondhand, two VX10s, 1/6 wave and then 1/10 wave, and more recently a CT10 1/10 wave. All have produced great images and I see close doubles split in my images which appear as a blob in most other scopes. I've never looked through any of them so can't comment on the visual performance. The build quality of the CT10 is very good and being a carbon tube means I only need to refocus every 5°C, compared to every 1.5°C with the aluminium tube VX10s. They're a bargain secondhand when they come up, but you rarely see them, I paid around 1/3 of new price for all three of mine.

Back onto the original post, I'd bet your problems are down to USB issues, either a hub or cable problem. I've had similar problems with SGP dropping connection to my mount and filterwheel and then giving the symptoms you describe. SGP seems very sensitive to USB problems. I'm a long term user of SGP, I've had plenty of problems but now everything works smoothly. I'm on V3 and don't intend to move to V4 and the subscription model. For now it does what I need reliably, but it's in my mind to switch to NINA or Voyager in the future.

As Sony have only provided a relative QE graph for the sensor used in this camera QHY have performed measurements against a known camera and published an absolute QE chart. If accurate it looks like a superb camera.

I have two scopes, both with Lakeside focusers, I don't use both scopes at the same time though. SGP has no problem distinguishing which focuser is connected, each scope has its own equipment profile with different COM ports.

When I swapped from a DSLR to mono the first thing I learnt was that parfocal filters aren't and I absolutely needed to refocus on every filter change. This soon became a real chore and I added autofocus, it's one of the best additions you can make. I started off with SGP refocusing on every filter change, and as this takes time I'd run all my blue subs, then green then red. I found this was resulting in too many partially completed images, so I worked out the focus position offsets, initial focus is done with L and I can now run B - G - R - L subs and know the focus will be spot on for each filter. Another advantage of autofocusing is staying in focus as the ambient temperature drops. I autofocus every 1.5C temp change knowing I'll always have spot on focus. Your example workflow assumes you'll have a four hour window of clear sky, the recent weather proves this isn't always the case. You can of course shoot over multiple nights and I almost always do this, but with autofocus you can have subs to create a usable image after a relatively short period of time.

Are the M54 spacers threaded and can they be used as the final output connection? The connection to my Tak needs to be M54, I was thinking; camera / filterwheel / OAG / M54 spacers to take me to 55mm / Tak M54 threaded adapter. I thought the CFW3L was only available in 7 x 2", have they released a 7 x 36mm version?

I've been hovering over the buy button on the QHY but I think I'll hold off until the summer. For me it'll mean a new filterwheel, filters and OAG, so the early bird discount isn't as important as getting it right first time. I may well end up buying ZWO, by holding off for a while I get the benefit of seeing what problems each brand's camera has after launch, if any. I haven't owned a serious camera from either brand, but my gut feel is saying go with QHY. If Atik launched a camera with the same sensor then that's where my money would go. This hobby is difficult enough at the best of times and reliability means everything to me.

I did say, start returning to normal Steve 😇 It can't get any worse, for the first time ever I'm struggling to get a 40' container out before CNY, I think it'll end up being loaded into two 20's. I'm already planning purchases for Q4 to make sure I can get stock in. It's always tough in the run up to CNY, I hear they're manufacturing containers faster than ever now and I'm sure we'll be in a better position in a couple of months time.

It's a combination of both James. Ports around the world are working with fewer staff so unloading / loading takes longer. Ships have to make a schedule and if unloading / loading is slower then the first thing to be hit is empty equipment returns. The world is importing less to China, Covid has hit manufacturing everywhere, and it costs money to ship empty containers back. A proportion of a ships cargo will usually be empties, currently it would have to be most of the cargo. All of this, combined with CNY looming, means there's a major shortage of containers as there's a rush to get shipments out before factories stop their production lines for a few weeks. I hear the freight situation in China is expected to start returning to normal by April.

This may help, some settings to change to get TV working over LAN https://community.teamviewer.com/English/kb/articles/4618-can-teamviewer-be-used-within-a-local-network-lan-only#:~:text=Receiving a connection via LAN&text=Go into the TeamViewer Extras,either Accept or Accept exclusively.

Tell me about it Steve, I move a lot from China to the EU and US and where I was paying $2k for a container a couple of months ago I'm now being charged $10k - $15k or face long delays. It's being described as the container Mafia problem, there is a problem with equipment availability and I can't see it improving in the short-term. I started using rail freight just over a year ago as a faster option than ocean with less cost than air, but even if you can find a container now it's become impossible to get rail space unless you're Apple etc.

Is the Astrograph site genuine? I just went searching for it and it's one of the worst e-commerce sites I've seen for years. It's not even secure, I wouldn't trust my card details to it. No Privacy Policy, no cookie control, these are hard requirements for operating an ecom business these days.

Thanks for that. Any opinions on quality, ZWO Vs QHY? I had a QHY guide camera years ago, the camera was fine but the quality of the drivers left a lot to be desired. I guess for them to still be around they must have upped their game significantly.

Any rumors circulating about when ZWO will release their version? I won't be an early adopter and I'm happy to wait a while and make the right purchase. It's going to mean a new FW, filters and OAG so I'd rather get it right first time, there's also the fact that barely anything is available from stock these days.

If all you'll use PS for is astroimaging then go the CS2 route, although I don't agree with the posts saying Adobe are giving it away free. Things may have changed since they originally made it available for download and provided the licence key on their site. They did this as they had to retire the old CS2 licence server, if you used the key it was on the proviso that you already owned that version. AFAIK they never gave it away and it's technically illegal for you to use it without having purchased it in the past. I may be wrong of course, but this is how it was originally and a lot of sites at the time, wrongly, publicised it as being free. I'm apposed to subscription software, however I do pay for PS now. It's not expensive, compared to the many hundreds of pounds they used to charge for it, and I always have access to the latest version. If you do any other photography and won't miss the price of a couple of beers a month then go for the subscription.

Are your problems with the Moonlite? Have you tested it for slippage with a digital caliper? Measure at one point, move out one or two thousand steps, move it back to the original point and remeasure? It needs to return to the same point and do so repeatably. They're beautiful looking focusers but not great for imaging, I've had two and gave up on both for autofocus.

Have you got any screenshots of your V curves, you can tell a lot by the shapes of a few focus curves. I'd look at 3 - 4 HFR, any more gives you a V curve with a sharp point at the bottom, this makes it hard for SGP to determine best focus, you want a slightly rounded bottom.

Please tell me where you can get huge Taks for ten grand, absolute bargain, they usually cost thirty 🤣🤣

One thing that makes a big difference in PI is to use a ram disk as your scratch / swap space. I have a Ryzen 7, 32GB of fast RAM and a fast M2 drive. Loading a 16GB ram disk at startup and using that in PI / PS makes it blisteringly fast. Search through the PI benchmark site for your old Vs proposed system and it'll give you an idea on performance gains you can expect.

I'd only collect something like this, alarm bells would ring, but if it was a bargain and I wanted it I'd go and take a look. Shining a head torch down a newt tube will quite effectively reveal any marks, micro scratches and indeed dust, pollen etc. I wouldn't expect a mirror to be spotless, but any sign of fine scratch marks from previous cleaning and I'd run a mile or ask for £150 off the price to cover the cost of a recoat.

It's an Atik 460EX, EFW2, SX OAG, threaded connector onto the Tak reducer. I don't know the part numbers, I had a discussion with Ian King a few years ago and he advised on the right parts to get the spacing right. I suggest you contact FLO and ask for advice, tell them want you have already and they'll be best placed to advise what you need.

I'm not sure about the rotator to camera connection, but I'd advise against the Tak CAA rotator. I was plagued with tilt, I tried all sorts to remove it and even considered changing the focuser to fix it. I read a lot and a few threads were blaming the Tak CAA and recommending this rotator as a replacement. It's the same physical length with the same threads, so essentially a drop in relacement. It's not cheap, but neither is the Tak CAA, if you need to buy one then go for this from the off. It's completely removed the tilt for me and turned a decent scope into an outstanding one. The website is awful, you can't buy online but have to request contact from the seller. Don't let this put you off, the new rotator is extremely well engineered, buttery smooth and locks firmly with a light touch. It also has a built in degree scale, you set your camera to zero degrees by plate solving, set up the scale to zero and then when you want to rotate it you'll have an accurate scale to rotate it to. Edit: my scope is the FSQ85 ED, please check for compatibility.

I've put it off too, been trying to convince myself for a year that it's worth spending that sort of money on filters. I'll pass too, stick with Baader and spend my money on something else instead.