Mr_Cat

6th night in a row, telescope out on terrace. Tonight's drills were to sort the issues with the new EQ6r mount. Last night it just stopped tracking... No handset tonight. Straight into the pc and the synscan app. Immediately hit problems on two star alignment.. it was so far off that when I centered it wouldn't accept it.. Reset time after time. After two hours I gave up and plugged the handset in... Life got better from then. Aligned using a zoom lens and started to have some fun. The mount was aligned perfectly and tracking nicely. Had ten mins on M 43 with a 2* Barlow and a 6.5 mm Morpheus eyepiece. It literally filled 2/3 of the fov. First time I've ever managed to put that much magnification onto the nebula as before I had to spend so much time manually tracking.. Then onto Jupiter, a bit washed out with the light pollution but still nice to finally have tracking. A quick wander round the moon looking at today's landing area.. Some nice little extras while viewing.. two satellites passing while I was aligning but.... A meteor flashed past while I was on dialling in on Alioth... Lovely trail.. Never thought I'd be lucky enough to see that.. A very very good evening and hopefully the mount will continue to behave itself..

Yes, it's a lovely smooth rum, isn't it ? I describe it as a "gateway rum" and give it to people that think/say they don't like rum - it generally turns out they don't like cheap rum

Pretty much the only way to improve hot chocolate is the addition of rum - and Pussers gunpowder is a fine choice

Nice large box today from FLO.. Baader 2" clicklock Askaar 2" diagonal Yet another baht mask.. And a finder / guide scope.. I got this with the plan it would be a guide scope on the next OTA I get - but I've now decided I'll probably go OGA instead - so this will be a finderscope - Just putting it on the 200 to play with it.

Can I have a "what I saw this afternoon" ?? I was just fitting a finder scope to the 200 so popped the 150 on the mount while everything cools down..

I'm not that far ahead of you (and seems a similar progression) I have to setup every time I use my telescope and initially I went with a 12v adaptor but I swapped over to a motorbike battery for my powering my mount etc - light and easy to move / keep charged. Most accessories I've seen (focusers / dew shields / fans etc etc) run of 12v I had one lying round though...

Fourth night in a row.. Shortened as I had to go the folks shopping, got home as the clouds started to roll in.. Tonight's aim was just to get the mount out, polar aligned and three star aligned. And the clouds cleared for just long enough. Aligned and slewed to the moon, very very bright so slewed to M43. Lovely smudge in the sky... And then it wasn't. The cloud was back.. Quickly told the mount to go back to the moon and as it did I grabbed the laptop and the camera. Got the focus, exposure and gain sorted just as the first cloud rolled over. No matter, it was a good practice for setting up quickly and the mount slewed perfectly onto objects so I'm.claimimg that as a win.. Seeing that I'm the only person that appears to enjoy a glass of something while observing I decided to abstain. The upmann cigar I had instead was very nice!!

and to answer my original question - No, it does not make any difference which way round the OTA is

So - it was fairly fruitless - followed my work plan but none of the data in eqmod matched up with the position data on the handset. even to start of with Realigned mount and no better.. Restarted laptop, no better Then I spotted that there was a more recent firmware version for the handset out.. Powered off mount, USB lead into Handset, power on, updated firmware etc etc. Now the data in eq mod matches the handset and stellarium is on target.. Sorted !!

Wow! I will take a look at that for sure..

Given how daft my question was to start of with I wouldn't worry about any resultant question! I will check the eqmod ascom screen later - stellarium uses GPS data so that's a yes. So my work path for later is... 1. Reset the OTA mount to the same "direction" as last night 2. Power it on. Enter date / time and select start from Park. 3. Examine / snapshot current data in EQmod 4. Examine / snapshot current data in Stellarium - if this is not the same check the settings in the plugin as per Richards suggestion 5. Slew mount to Sirius - repeat steps 3/4 6. Slew mount to Alioth - repeat steps 3/4 7. Slew mount to Caph - repeat steps 3/4 (these are the 3 stars it used in the 3-star alignment yesterday) If there are any differences in the data reported then park mount, power off, rotate OTA mount / restart and re-star align (just accepting it was dead on the stars) and repeat the steps 3/7

Apologies guys - that isn't my screen shot - that was just to illustrate the EQmod app and the coords it might show - I think stelarium will just take these coords from the driver and use them to display where it thinks the OTA is pointing. Apologies - it made sense in my head - but obvs not in what I posted ! To be honest I can't remember what the point of adding the image was.. Since then I have found out that since I parked the scope before powering it off it will remember the home position so I can do what I thought with out having to re-align it so I can compare the detail I'll get in the app with what is in Stellarium.

I've run out of home made cider - I have a 13% ginger ale though... I only serve it in 1/3 pints..

Last night made three nights in a row. Sunday was clear (see previous photo) Monday was new mount day - and despite cloud cover the moon did pop through every now and again so it gave me something to look at. Spent most of the evening sorting out USB driver issues etc etc Last night was seeing what the goto mount could do, sorting out the niggles and practicing the aligning process (so reset and restarted three times..) but ended up rewarding myself with a bit of viewing. Hopped onto the moon and wandered round a bit with the remote, over to M43 via the object database and then a quick look at Pleiades before shutting down and packing away while enjoying 2 fingers of rye !

Good suggestions and things to look at. I figure I can "try this inside" - so take the scope of the mount, power the mount up, use the handset to slew to say orion and see what the EqMod data says - then unplug the handset, use eqmod to point it to somewhere else and then see what stellarium says. I'm generally not going to be using Stellarium but when people come round for a look then I probably will give them the app and let them pick things themselves to look at.. And computer things not working right annoy me !!

It's definitely polar aligned. I had a lot of fun with that. I hadn't maximally moved the OTA after powering up the mount. It was all either automatically slewed or by using the arrows. When I looked in stellarium It looked quite a distance out. I couldn't conclusively say it was 180 degrees out as that would have answered my question right there and then. In the ascom.app I compared the Ra and Dec figures to an object I was pointing at and one figure was right but the other one wasn't.. Sorry, I was rushing, I'd been outside all evening leaving my Mrs alone...

This is probably a stupid question.. So, new to me EQ6r mount - last night was cloudy so no chance to use the goto etc. Tonight was clear so polar aligned. Mounted the OTA with the dovetail knobs on the opposite side to the power socket / hand controller port etc so when I tighten up the knobs I've not near the cables... It made sense to me... had fun goto-ing objects then parked the mount. Had a cuppa and a chat to the Mrs then went back out.. Did a three star alignment, more goto then hooked up the PC. Into Stellarium and loaded up the plugin. Hit view object and the telescope ended up no where near the object. Unplugged etc, parked, power off / on re-aligned and back into Stellarium - I zoomed out and spotted that stellarium puts up a reticule where it thinks the telescope is pointing - and it wasn't anywhere near where it was actually pointed. I've looked at the manual and it is not specific. I've looked at images on line with OTA mounted and while some are set up the same way as I have others are different.. I could just change the OTA, park the mount, re-align and see if it makes a difference in stellarium but some times It's simpler just to ask thanks in advance !!

It was meant to be cloudy tonight - every forecast for the last week said sunday would be ok monday a maybe and the rest of the week there would be solid cover.. I walked out of my home office 2 hours ago and it was throwing it down, finished work at 1615, left the office to be greeted by blue skies, re-checked the forecast and it is now clear till midnight ... Scope out and cooling down but took a quick point at the moon..

Last night while sorting the ascom drivers out for the EQ6 and waiting for the clouds to move I had a nice straight Jim Beam Black with a Gurkha Reserve 18 Year Koi Cigar. I'm not adverse to a glass of something while I'm observing.

Behold my lowly post count !!! I came here to see what I could do with a POS telescope and every reply was super helpful and really friendly. It would have been so easy for someone to be condescending or patronising but nope - super helpful. You are a friendly helpful bunch !

Where I live the masons are a good bunch - I've played at quite a few mason functions and quite often end up in the break or before we start chatting to some of the members and largely they seem quite normal.. We held at funeral for a good mate at the masonic hall last year and they re-arranged a lodge meeting as our mate had been a rock guitarist and we wanted to put live music on. On the flip side... When I was selling my POS Jessops scope on facebook one of the Astronomy club member took it upon them selves to message me telling me I that they weren't interested in the scope but I should come along to the astronomy society for advice.. Not a beer, not a chat, not to see the observatory etc - specifically to give me advice So, the freemasons I can drink beer with, the astronomy society want to give me advice.. errr tough choice...

Not the postman but one of my mates collected a EQ6R in the UK for me Set up on the terrace and hoping for some gaps in the clouds tonight (although I have already pointed it quite successfully at the moon..) Makes my 8" orion looks small. Guess I'm going to need a new telescope...

A pretty decent night last night, some cumulous clouds passing through early on but cleared nicely, just fancied some moon time, swapped the 150 onto the mount to get the whole moon in, then back to the 200 for some general meandering round on the surface. A bit of higher level cloud passing over but didn't impact the viewing too badly. Had a play with the camera on both the 150 and the 200 - interesting light with the high level cloud. Didn't correct it as it gave it a nice sepia / vintage feel A very pleasant evening

When I find a second hand mount I'm going to get it sent directly to a mate and he is going to lend it to me for a while as "he's got a new mount" - then a few months later I'll casually mention he's selling it cheap so I might as well keep it

Thanks Bosun ! I've already had to rotate the tube - the trunions came in quite handy as I could loosen the clamps a lot with out worrying about the OTA sliding out - I'd had a look at the rotating rings thread before ordering the tube rings. It came in handy though - sometimes the Mrs struggles to view something I've been looking at (I'm 8" taller than her) but as I'd rotated the tube it was much better placed for her. Definitely a silver lining on that one. I'm looking for a EQR6 Pro with a new tripod - I've got a chunk of cash and on the lookout for a s/h one. Just waiting on some replies from sellers on Uk Astronomy buy & sell