gajjer

I think I have it all set now, but I have to say it wasn't straight forward. My Starlight Xpress Costar didn't want to work with PHD2. Seems to now. Loading EOS utility wanted me to update rather than install fresh. I used my old laptop with DVD drive to copy the EOS disk onto a memory stick and installed from that! Then there is the joy of getting all the settings copied across from my old laptop. I hear the voice of JFK edited to "we do these things not because they are easy" . . . yeh ok I suppose so. Of course I need to do a dry run to make sure. Just need a patch of clear sky. Now where can I download one of them from? cheers gaj

Thanks knobby, that seems to have done the trick. I hate this. It scares the pants off me. Every time I have done this there has been an issue. Every time I come to do this, it has 'improved' and something new is not exactly as in the instructions. Just going to try it out and find the next gotcha. cheers gaj

Oh dear. The day has come I have been dreading. I have a new laptop and I'm loading all the stuff I need onto it for imaging. When I run the ASCOM platform installation, it come up with a message that it needs to install .NET 3.5 which it proceeds to do. It then reports 'The operation was completed successfully.' Followed by 'DISM exit code 3010' 'Press any key to continue' And when I do a window is launched that tells me that the installation process ran but returned error code 3010. It then says 'Please address the issue reported by DISM and then re-run the Platform installer' I'm getting too old for this. Please help. cheers gaj

I use a sealed lead acid battery and a smart battery charger. Works for me. It will tolerate short power breaks. I wouldn't worry too much about running power cables parallel to signal cables. cheers gaj

That looks really nice. Well done. I just have one concern that you don't bang your head on the beam as you approach from the left and go down the step. Being under-developed in the height department I wouldn't have that problem! I'm admiring that BBQ area though! cheers gaj

Hi Olly. I had always assumed that it was Hook who was the devious and difficult one of the two. However, according to the book Hook's ideas are documented many years before Newton was credited with them. I would certainly recommend it as a read. I have just bought Micrographia as well, which I am hoping with throw further light on things. It looks to be Hook's equivalent of Newton's Principia. The document trail would seem to indicate that Hook was a far more prolific scientist than history would give him credit for. cheers gaj

Hi all. I'm just listening to an audio book about Robert Hook. I would recommend it to anyone interested in science. It makes some very interesting claims about whether it was Newton or Hook that made certain discoveries. Only part way through so have to get back to it. Enjoy. gaj

I bet that is pretty easy to put together too. You might say it was a doddle eh i deee. I thank you. I thank you gaj

I managed to blow mine up a couple of months ago. I was using an old power pack with banana plugs and doing it in the dark I managed to reverse power it. I was gutted but took it apart and noticed that a big capacitor was blown. ( It may have been two capacitors, I can't remember. ) The ends of the cap were blown out, so it was pretty obvious. Well, I swapped the capacitors for something similar ( bigger volts and bigger value ) and to my surprise it worked perfectly. One word of caution. It was quite difficult removing the capacitors. Be careful you don't damage the through plated holes of the PCB. I managed to cut the body from the leads making it easier to remove just the leads. Hope you get it going again. cheers gaj

Just a thought, but might it be on one of your flats? What happens when you stretch without either darks or flats? cheers gaj

I look at Clear Outside first, but I have found it to be quite wrong a few times just recently. If it agrees with BBC weather then I am inclined to believe it. But I also look at Sat24 taking the overall Europe view and then the UK & Ireland for a close up. The more you look at the satellite images, the more you realise how difficult it must be to predict. I can't remember what day it was but there was a cloud formation coming down the UK and as it hit land it seemed to dissipate and we had a reasonably clear night. But on another occasion the clouds seemed to appear as the air moved over the UK. Sad to say I didn't take much notice in geography being more interested in a young lady a couple of desks from me, otherwise I would know what the heck was going on. The way I look at it is, if I set up and it turns bad, it was all useful practice on setting up. We get precious few good nights so it's better to set up than not to. As you say, it's difficult to predict the weather and we shouldn't blame the weather men when it goes wrong. cheers gaj

Ok Baz. I think you need to get some basic concepts sorted first. Read "Making every photon count" it will give you a good idea of the principles. The basic problem is that you don't have enough exposure time. Remember you are capturing photons. There is no such thing as half a photon. To illustrate, imagine the brightest part of the picture captured 10 photons, then you stretch the image so that was the brightest pixel in the image. You can only have 10 levels of brightness. It will look rubbish. So you have to capture as much light as possible. ( Increasing the ISO wont help, it may increase the number in the file but you will still have 10 steps ). If you do a really long exposure you risk all sorts of problems with aircraft, satellites etc. So, you need to do many exposures and add them together using a stacking program like Deep Sky Stacker. You will find people who do hours of exposure time and they get lovely smooth images with lots of detail. It's probably not a good idea to do a session when the moon is up, but I know that enthusiasm will get the better of you. By all means do it but don't expect great results. Sometime I do it because I want to try things out and practice is always a good thing. The issues of noise that you are getting are down to the next level of detail. You need to get some basics understood first. Watch some tutorials, look at peoples results and importantly; how they got them. ie number and duration of exposures ( subs ). You have a reasonable result given what you started with but you need a lot more exposures and a lot more understanding. Hope this helps. There is a lot to learn. cheers gaj

Yes. I see what you mean! gaj

I'm a bit late in telling you this, but I have stalled my NEQ6 several times. It sounded horrendous; like the gears were being ripped up, but actually there was no damage. The stepper motors a quite small but there is a high gear ratio. In my case the motors simply stalled. If yours was causing a noise after 'the event' ( of which we will no longer speak ), it may be that there was some movement in the adjustment of the drive causing binding. A previous response referred to the Astrobaby strip down tutorial and I can thoroughly recommend that. I hope it's just a mechanical tune up for you. Still, events like this do open our eyes to the possible failure modes and what we should be doing to avoid them. I wish I could say it will be all plain sailing from here on but I am afraid there are so many things that could possibly go wrong that inevitably over time you will probably experience them all. cheers gaj

And a very well controlled Alnitak too. Very nice. cheers gaj

Hi Bob. Sorry but I can't make out what the traces are. Are they current? Are you using a current probe? What are the scales on the first two? I wouldn't have expected a sinusoidal waveform at all. I did some current probe measurements on my NEQ6 and I don't recall anything sinusoidal. But then it was a while back and I was mostly interested in current consumption at different speeds. I would agree with Malcolm about checking the connections. Bad connections are the main cause of problems. Seems very odd that it works in some directions and speeds but not others. Also check continuity and isolation of cables. If there is anything DIY made: then give that extra special attention. cheers gaj

Hi Bob. Here are my thoughts. The drive motors are stepper motors so I would have thought that if they move, it wouldn't matter what speed you are demanding. I don't know anything about ST4, I drive mine through a Lynx Astro cable. When I have had motor stalling problems it has usually been when fast slewing and it sounds horrible, like gears are being damaged. It's not as bad as it sounds, it's just the stepper not stepping. The motor wont over current when stalled. Not like a conventional brushed motor. If you have the handset try it with that. There is a very good tutorial by Astrobaby that tells you how to strip the mount down and tune it up. The bit I would have a look at is the adjustment of backlash. The backlash is adjusted by moving the worm closer to, or further from the main gear wheel. It is possible that it is fine in one position but binds at others as the gear rotates. A product of the eccentricity of the gear. The adjustment screws move the whole casting holding the worm gear. This is true in both axes. Personally I would try to establish if there is something in the ST4 drive that is not operating correctly first. If it is stalling you will hear it. If it's not getting the drive signal you wont. Then I would look at adjustments before doing a strip down. I would recommend an adjustment anyway. If it's secondhand you don't know what has been done to it. Hope that helps. cheers gaj

Well I have managed to capture a few frames of the horsehead nebula and first run through with processing showed promise but for the fact that the stars are really bloated. So what did I do. Well obviously I googled Star mask horsehead nebula looking for a nice tutorial. Sigh. It's a sign of the times, Guess what I got. cheers gaj

Having travelled this path myself. I thoroughly recommend that you look into controlling the mount with Cartes du Ciel. Go look at EQMOD and ASCOM. You can just click on a star and the mount will go to it. Certainly makes life easier. cheers gaj

Yes. That's the one. Then get Canon Utility installed. When you plug in an power up the camera, the Utility should fire up. You can then due live viewing or set a schedule of exposures. You need to read the manual really. cheers gaj

That sounds like a pretty normal night for me. Except, you missed out the "where the heck is the USB cable for the camera?" . . . "Oh no. Windows has started doing an update." . . ."Why wont the filter wheel connect?" It has taught me patience. Otherwise I would have a pile of plastic, aluminium and glass scrap. It's character building. Grrrrrr. cheers gaj

Hmm. It's not really giving a true impression of scale is it! I like a good jigsaw. Reminds me of Christmas. Have we had Christmas yet? cheers gaj

Gosh yes. What an assault on the eyes that must be when slewing. Now let me see. Old office chair - check, two dustbins - check, stepper motors - check, Raspberry pi - check. Right, I'm off to the garage! cheers gaj

Hi Brutha just to reinforce what AMcD said. I made my pier so that I had location dowels that would ensure I positioned the mount in exactly the same position each time I fitted it. The intention was to take the mount off after each session. However, it wasn't long before it was being left on all the time. All I did was remove the scope and cover the mount with a rugged black bin bag. It's been fine for several years. I can't bring myself to leave the scope on it though. The other thing I have is a plastic bin. At the end of a session all the cables, focus control, games pad etc all just get dumped into the box for sorting the next day. It just makes strip down quicker. I hope you enjoy your pier as much as I have. cheers gaj

If I may stick my beak in here. I can't see it either. Have you tried plate solving on it? cheers Gaj