Astroscot2

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

Hello all. Im going to start a new thread in the equipment section for this mount, I would be greatly interested in other users experiences. Mark

I was surprised by this to, I purchased in advance what I thought was the correct EQ mod cable, plugged into the hand controller port which did not work, much head scratching later I linked the mount to the ASI mount setting as Skywatcher AZ/GTI mount Baud 9600 with the boxed USB cable and it connected straight away.

I recall listening to a podcast by Terry about 10 years ago talking about CMOS chips being the future for astrophotographers. Upto last year I always bought Starlight cameras, their customer service was and probably still is outstanding. I hope they dont fade away My first CCD was a Starlight camera, seeing Ian Kings ages back in the with early CCDs was a great influence one to move over from film

I believe the forecasting of Auroae over the recent years has been quite poor., gone are the days when an alert would actually mean visible aurora from my latitude. Last night receive a red alert, jumped in the car, camera on horizon, no Aurora? Happens all the time now, far to much hype around inbound CMEs.

I was a few miles north of Verdun. What a sight. I recall a bus full of passengers drove past with its lights on? All I could think of was why is he not stopping.

In in the process of setting up the spacecat 51, Asi air plus EAF etc with this mount, purchased the EQ mod cable and just waiting on a new tablet to get going. Agree a new thread would be good.

Love this area, we were camping around Seaward a few weeks ago. I believe the skies would have been great if it had been clear.

Hello Stephen. good to see you back, are you still imaging with the Esprit? Mark

I'm planning on powering a zwo 2600, EAF , 120mm guide camera and 2 dew heater tapes via a leisure battery.

Hello, Looking for some advice on powering my ASI air via 12v DC. Specs say 12V DC 5 Ah max 6Ah. I'm planning on powering via leisure battery and cig socket? Could anyone share or recommend a suitable cable? Thanks

It's all coming together.

Beautiful compositions there, I like the selfie shot, nice to see one without a headtorch being pointed at the sky! Mark

This was my thinking also, reason i pushed the button on the SW.

So the take-away for me here, is to not to purchase a second-hand astro camera if the model is more than a couple of years old - even if it is only lightly used. My last astrocamera by Starlight express was over 7 years old, I did not notice any issues with the chip prior to selling, raw images were just as good as the day I bought it I'm not sure your statement is correct for all astro cameras.

Looking forward to seeing first light Rossco. Also currently waiting on an EAF... Asi air.. etc, etc

Hello, where can this book be purchased from please?

I noted over the weekend that the grips on my Esprit focuser were staring to perish and crack. Had a quick look on line and could not find any replacement or alternatives. Does anyone have know a source of these before I go the DIY route? thanks Mark

It's just jumped up in price again! Looking out of my range now. 😞

Hello all. Could anyone recommend a good supplier of leisure battery boxes? Im ideally looking for something that could hold say a large battery 110Ah. also ideally looking for something with a volt meter, USB and 12V accessory sockets. thanks Mark

Astrobiscuit - Just on a whole other level of story telling and production values. I know someone mentioned they didn't like that he asks for money to support his channel but you simply can't put weeks of work into a video and have no money coming in, especially when you live in London (I know he attempted to make YT a full time job at one point I have to disagree, There are plenty of other youtubers producing great material without the begging. He literally looks into the camera and asks people to send him a tenner to buy kit. It's hard times for everyone.

I like Russell's astrophotography, Alyn Wallace too, gone right off astro biscuit as he takes every opertunity to ask for money. Totally shameless.

I believe there is hope that there will be a green light regarding the environmental discussions in the next few weeks and with luck a starship to orbit launch within a few months. Im amazed with the pace Space X are developing the starship program. Very entertaining.

Seem to be relying on old existing tech, boosters from the shuttle era. I'm a bit disappointed by the design, all those years and it looks like all they did was removed the shuttle and replaced it with the apollo command module.