christiano

Great info everyone, thanks!

Great idea, thanks!

Sounds good 👍

Wow, I didn’t know Stellarium could do that. Telescopius looks good too. Thanks both!

The mount was still fine after 5 hours indoors (took the dogs for a walk). Screwdriver next!

I’ve been looking at astronomy.tools, to get an idea of the field of view.

Great story! Welcome from another newbie.

My mount is an HEQ5 Pro and the scope is a Voyager 114 from SCS Astro, bought at the end of last century! I have a Orion Starshoot Autoguider on a 9x50 finderscope but it’s attached to my C925, not sure if I can mount it on the Voyager, I’ll have a look.

Thanks; I’ll use my 114mm Newtonian.

Thanks; I’ll do that. The mount (no scope etc.) has been switched on indoors for 90 minutes now, I’ve navigated to a number of targets and have not had any problem yet. I’ll give it another hour or so then switch it off and take the handset apart!

Hiya, I started my journey into imaging with a purchase of some second-hand stuff and before I spend any more I want to see what I can do with what I have. So can you recommend any targets that would produce nice results with some mono and H-alpha exposures? Thanks! Christian.

Brilliant idea! I’ll try that now. BTW I have checked the cable (I have an RJ45 cable tester) and it seems fine even if I move the wires around the sockets. Visual check okay too although where the block clamps over the cable it looks like the cable outer covering was slightly pinched, have hopefully put it back a bit better. Still tests okay after.

Thanks; I’ll do that now.

Hi all, I recently bought my HEQ5 Pro second-hand and it seemed to work fine. It has the SynScan handset which I upgraded to the latest V3 firmware, I think that’s the highest firmware it will support. When in use, after a while pressing buttons just does nothing although after a several minutes it comes back to life, sometimes slewing for a while and once I had to switch it off as the OTA was going to hit the tripod! I did lots of internet research and as I had been using a battery pack I changed to power the mount from the mains, but it still happened. So I have two things to try but thought I’d see what you guys think: 1) I could clean inside the handset with isopropyl alcohol 2) I could try and keep the handset warm Anything else? Thanks in advance! Christian.

Snap! I too recently bought a 2nd-hand HEQ5 Pro, it hadn’t been used for a couple of years. I found the same problem as you and googled it a lot, decided not to take the side plates off. One thing I did was, with just the mount on the tripod, undo both bolts quite a lot, drop the counterweight bar then carefully strong-arm it to move it up/down a few times. I think that helped. Whether it did or not, it seems a bit better now I’ve used it 5-6 nights.

I bought some used AP kit. I have a lovely Alienware 17in with 32gb RAM, NVidia video card etc and SSD with 1tb second drive. It doesn’t seem to like the older USB2 cameras so I got out my old Sony Win 7 with SSD and works nicely. Perhaps better to have a lighter more disposable laptop for working outside?

Back on my feet! (I rotated my image to the correct orientation)

Hiya, welcome (from another newbie)! Lots of high cloud here in Kent, lost Saturn early on and I can tell it’s not worth setting up for Jupiter tonight. Christian.

Thanks all!

Hello all, I’m across the river Medway from Snodland, so mid-Kent. Plan to go to the mid-Kent astronomical society’s family night later this week. Unfortunately our partial solar eclipse this morning was obscured by cloud but at least I can recycle this piece of cardboard with a small hole in it now! My wife & I have had a 114mm Newtonian for about 25 years and she just bought me a used Celestron 9.25in SCT for my birthday. Have used it for 3 nights, each of which have been stopped due to dew (the first try) or clouds. I have a dew shield; just thought I might get away without it that first night. I definitely want to capture some images as well as just looking through it; it will be interesting to see what I can get; will the imaging bug get me? Christian. p.s. Sorry my photo is rotated