Astroscot2

Look forward to trying this camera on the planets and moon. Great service from Bern at Modern Astronomy

Big thanks to Bern at MA for sending me the delux version of the camera i purchased due to a slight delay with my order. Great service from MA!

Found them, my did I have terrible writing as a youngster:-). First sighting 10th Nov 85. I followed it through to May 86 with a naked eye observation at one point.

Sorry to hear about your Issues with the mount, I've not experienced that issue though I did have a faulty polar illuminator and FLO sorted that our very quickly. I think this is a great mount and very happy with my unit. Are you going for another?

Still looking!

Just wait till they fire up all 33 😉 hopefully soon.....

I would also like to see an option to preserve night vision, don't think I'd be popular at my next star party🤔

It seems like an obvious option thats been overlooked, hopefully new updates are in the pipeline.

I agree Ian, a little bit frustrating. Would also like to be able to frame up a shot and save to plan for later

I kept note books with all my observations back then, They will be in my attic somewhere, I had log books for solar projection which I took every clear day, was lucky to own a Carl Zeiss 63mm refractor which was pin sharp. You have put me in the mood to revisit themthis weekend. I will confirm my first observation of Halley. Mark

Those were difficult times for Pierce before the james bond role came along.

Hello Adam, yes can see through ir clearly in day time' the illuminator at the lowest setting swamps the view at night and stars become invisible. I'm having a chat with FLO who are very helpful. Mark

Id be happy with that guiding, no huge jumps. Ive emailed FLO regarding my polar scope, I dont really need it as im polar aligning via the ASI Air however its bugging me that I cant eyeball the pole with the illumination switched on at the lowest setting.

A meridian flip is on my list to test, I just need a decent clear night to dial in the processes on the ASI Air. When taking a few test images the other night , the Veil nebula was close to crossing the meridian, the scope was on the West side of the mount and close to the hard stop, There was no mention of a meridian flip being imminent by the ASI Air even though I had selected it? I need to look at this. Looks to be clear-ish tonight Regarding your guiding after meridian flip, are you re-calibrating the guiding, I see an option for this on the ASI Air. Mark

Way back when comet Hale Bopp was becoming a bright object in the morning sky. I had a run of about 3 early morning imaging sessions. I remember hearing the alarm at 4am , sitting up and getting ready, grabbed my camera kit and walked through the door into bright daylight! Must have nodded off sitting up and lost track of time

Hello Adam, yes all of the above. I can see star's clearly with the illuminator switched off. At lowest setting on the light swamps the view and flickers slightly. Will check tonight. Thanks

I'm just under 4kgs at the moment, I could swap out the guidescope and use my OAG, would possibly allowed to balance with the supplied CW? How did you get on last night?

I originally had a ZWO guidescope, 30mm I think, found the optics really poor, bloated guide stars, a UV filter didn't help. The optics in the WO are excellent? It's only a 50 f4 guidescope not heavy at all

Look forward to hearing your report on first light.

Adam , what are you intending to control the mount with, pc, ASI?

Adam, I've not inserted batteries in mine yet but can confirm the polar scope cover falls off easily, Ive taken to removing mine when the mounts outside, afraid of standing on it. Will find a solution for that... Adam have you been able to view through the polar scope yet? I'm unable to see any stars at the lowest illumination setting? Mark

Back out again tonight for more testing. Skies were manky so just a few quick shots, Saw a comment regarding dithering so set dithering to 5 pixels after each image, pleased to say guiding resumed quite quickly, no longer than 10 seconds . Quite pleased with the performance of this mount combined with the ASI. Guiding behaved with only a few excursions in DEC. Test images below. 5 - 10mins subs. I do seem to have an issue with the polar illuminator, seems to flicker and too bright even on the lowest brightness setting?

Hello Jiggy. Yes only 4kgs, looks deceptive from that angle.

I purchased the SW SA Gti with the tripod combo a number of weeks back. The Intention is to pull together a portable rig to visit dark skies and work in conjunction with my ZWO camera and ASI air plus which I've also never used until last night. My first impressions on mounting the mount head on the tripod were not great, with the small refractor mounted it did not seem very stable, anyway I pushed on and cabled everything up. Total wt of the OTA and camera etc is around 4 kgs, 1kg under the recommended 5 kg wt limit. With the supplied counterweight all the way to the end of the CW shift I would not balance the rig. Thankfully I had a few small SW counterweights around to balance. So after a bit of a phaff with jumping between the home, mount and ASI air wifi I got everything connected. So Last night was a quick trial, I had a 40 min clear spell. Polar alignment was easy with the ASI, mount adjustments in RA & DEC are nice and smooth. Once I figured how to set my home point I slewed to various targets all of which were dead centre. BTW this mount is quite noisy slewing in the dead of night. Onto guiding, this was the biggest surprise, RMS sat between 0.6 - 0.85 the whole time. I noted a few issues one of which was the polar illuminator, when I Initially set up the mount I wanted to eyeball and centre the pole star prior to ASi polar alignment . With the polar illuminator turned to the lowest setting it was still too bright to see sny stars. I had to turn it off to see any stars. Will look at this next clear night. So picture of rig below. Still so cable manage but I think this is going to be a great portable set up.

Hello all. Being a new product on the market there is very little info on the web with regards to user experiences other than the glowing YT videos pre launch. I for one would be interested to hear other owners thoughts and experiences using the SW SA GTI. So would like to open this thread to share questions, images and comment's. Thanks. Mark