Astroscot2

1 hour ago, mikeDnight said:

I can understand your disappointment,  but if you look at it as the life's passion of an amateur astronomer, you may come to view it in a different light. When I bought my three volumes during lockdown, it took me a while to appreciate it. I think it will grow on you given the chance.

🙂 the actual content is another book entirely! Nothing to do with the moon.

Settled down with Vol 1 last night. What a surprise and disappointment.  Cover and content don't agree!

Are you sure the ASIair consumes 5 Amps?

Ive been online looking for a replacement spider,  The CT8 has an inner tube dia of 255mm which is a bit larger than the VX8 tube, TS dont seem to have a spider that would be a good fit for this diameter tube.  I saw this option but its a but pricey ?  RB-Carbon Fiber Double Spider | RB-Focus (rbfocus.net)

Mark

Im in the progress of making modifications to my CT8, I knew I would need to when I bought it.  The original spider was twisted and the replacement not much better, will try it first before I look at replacing.  Im swapping out the focuser and adding longer top and bottom dovetails to reduce the flex with the thin Carbon tube.  Could I ask you method for squaring your focuser to the tube?

Thanks

Mark 

Thats a lovely sharp image , your images really show what a well collimated and mechanically sound Newtonian can do.

Impressive!

Mark

Can we see the identical subs? I only see 1 image.  Thanks

Kodak Ektachrome 200 was the choice of film for astrophotographers back in the 80s or Tech Pan 2415 for those who could Hyper their film.  I have lots of slides from late 80 taken with a Zenit B and a star tracker made from the clock mechanism from a gas lamp.  We dont know how easy we have it now. 

Mark 

Can't believe this just happened.....  before I slew my scope onto Mars I usually remove the cable from the camera usb port to keep the strain off the connector.  Tried to reinsert the cable and found resistance, on inspection I noted that part of the usb camera housing is stuck in the cable?. Not sure how this has happened, had very cold temps -10c this week in the Observatory, wonder if that's made the connector brittle?  Contacted Bern, hopefully he can help quickly.

What a nightmare.

Mark

Hello all.

Ive been using the QHY462C over the last few weeks doing some planetary imaging of Mars. Ive very please with the results the camera is producing however im struggling with the colour balance and unable to fix this issue in post processing.

In Sharpcap the RGB settings are 1:1  64, 64, 64.  This provides a slightly green bias image as expected for this camera,  The QHY website advises setting Green to 128, Blue to 255 and red to 161 and lowering the offset as low as possible?  On doing this I get very blue image bordering purple colour bias.

Anyone with this camera recommend their settings,  we get so few clear nights I dont want to waste too much time playing around with the settings.

Many thanks

Mark

Well done Luke, I didnt think imaging the moons would be possible without some sort of way to mask the brightness of Mars, I need to try capturing these moons also .

Mark

More excellent images Kon, desperate for the skies to clear now the jetstream is out of the way.  Can you share the link to image analyser, new freeware?

Mark

Wonderful images Neil. What sort of frame rate are you using during the long captures with the 462?

8 hours ago, Kon said:

Thanks. Yes fully manual with drift method using a 640x480 ROI; I don't pause in between recentring, I let PIPP sort the blanks or bad images before putting it Autostakert for further sorting and stacking. Platform is the next upgrade.

You are getting great results with this method

Kon. Regarding your capture method, with the dob, are you letting Mars drift through the FOV during capture or do you have the dob on a tracking platform?  Very nice image BTW

Mark

If I had £1 for every time a social event coincided with clear skies.

Upgraded to Win10. All seems to be working.

Thanks Mark

Ive tried as suggested and still no luck.  QHY sent me the driver for windows 10 and advised it should work, ive uninstalled all previous drivers.

Looking on device manager I see the following, not really sure what this means.

Mark

Thanks ,  With have a look at the update check option when I get home,

Ive installed on my PC and works perfectly fine.  I wonder if the OS windows 8.1 on my laptop is the issue? 

Ran the Windows trouble shooter also, divers were reinstalled. Laptop still says no.

Ok so ive tried uninstalling Sharpcap, drivers the lot, reinstalled latest sharpcapvand the all in one driver complete. Still same issue, camera does not seem to be recognised, ive gone through the process of checking drivers are updated and still no joy, really at my wits end with this. I will try on my main PC also.

There must be something obvious,  unless my windoes version 8.1 is not compatible but I cant see any reference to that on the QHY or Sharpcap websites?

Mark

I will give that a go. Thanks Peter.

Anyone able to assist?

Thanks

Mark

I seem to be having problems installing my new QHY 462C.  Ive installed the "all in one" driver pack from the QHY website which included Sharpcap.

On connecting the camera I get the audible bong on successful connection then instant audible warning of disconnection.  When I open Sharpcap I can see QHY camera / guider but when selecting it offers only ascom connection and no direct connection. Ascom connection does not work anyway.

In device manager, there looks to be an issue with the laptop seeing the hardware, see below, 

Ive uninstalled and re-installed a number of times and still same issue.   Im not sure how I can test the hardware is actualy working.    Usually I can resovle these problems but quite stuck this time, ive shown a few screenshots.

Appreciate any pointers..