Chris

Thanks! and you're very welcome I'm just pleased I found M13 without a finder! The finder shoe and a Baader SkySurfer RDF has now arrived, so onwards and upwards

Recently I've been attempting deep sky imaging with beginner telescopes, in particular the Starquest range by Skywatcher. Partly down to money, but also partly for the fun of it and too see if people new to the hobby can use their first scopes for imaging. Thanks to a fellow SGL member I now also have a decent little imaging scope in the form of a William optics Megrez 72 in which to plonk on the Starquest mount. The starQuest mount is basically the modern equivalent to the EQ2 and runs on 2 AA batteries, so the bright and easy to find Hercules cluster seemed like a sensible target. Plus I haven't imaged it in years!

Sorry to hear about your troubles, very frustrating for you. I was thinking power supply because these mounts go a little crazy if they don't have the right Volts and a decent amount of Amps, but if the hand controller is telling you the Moon is up when it's not, despite entering the time location data every which way possible, along with updating the firmware. I can only think the handset is a bit iffy.

Good to hear, Mark, I'll get to that soon

A second option could be to use thin strips of sticky back velvet flocking paper but I'm going to try the marker pen first. If I'm not happy with the pen I can simply place the flocking strips over the top. With a bit of 'surgery' the flock can be wrapped around the back of the secondary so it has more chance of remaining attached.

Yes this +1

HI Stu, I was just going to try a permanent marker pen for the reason that it's a relatively low risk procedure compared to using paint

Fab review Stu, I agree with the 3 spider veins producing quite an attractive 6 mild spikes compared to the usual 4, and an OTA only version would be pretty cool. Conversely the little single arm Dob mount that comes with the H130p and H150p can be quite handy for little refractor and Maks, so I could imagine a flat pack version of that mount at a suitable price selling quite well.

I'm glad someone else thinks this makes sense because flocking the secondary shield is on my list of further mods. Also going to make a dew shield for stray light and dew as the focuser is so far forward. Plus blackening the sides of the secondary is on the list.

Excellent night out and report, Stu. Looks like it means business on the Ercole and Gitzo. Nice haul of objects too!

Thanks Rob, I try I think the dew shield is a great idea, and I happen to have a spare sheet of foam. The videos been pretty well received with nearly 200 views in one day and lots of comments on YT, so I think I should do a part two soon! Maybe further mods could be a dew shield, blackening the edges of the secondary mirror, and maybe a bit of flocking paper. If you have any other ideas I'll add them in

Wonderful Jeremy, be sure to post up a pic when you've done!

Well I have several videos on my channel so far regarding the 150p if you get time to check them out. I don't think it would be a huge jump from the 130p, but it's a very portable 6" of aperture This is my channel page: https://www.youtube.com/c/DIYAstronomy/videos

Thanks Mark, hopefully it's useful, it was fun to do I linked the foam in the video description on Youtube, but that won't show here. I'll pop it below : https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/A2-Giant-Foam-Sheets-for-Arts-Craft-Projects/302450788780?hash=item466b78c9ac:g:vdEAAOSwf1ReqfTU

Thanks Stu. We really did have the same idea didn't we lol Lovely stealthy looking light weight setup you have there

I've been tinkering with my new Heritage 150p! Performed a mod to the focuser and made a semi permanent light shroud that can simply stay attached to the scope even if you collapse the truss rods. I'm yet to test it out under the stars but it looks nice if nothing else.

Here's a step by step guide to making a light shroud, which can stay permanently on the scope! plus the Simple PTFE tape fix for the focuser. I spent maybe a tenner doing these mods so well worth it in my opinion. I hope it's useful :)

Hi Frankie, no problem, glad it was useful. I answer all your questions in the video and even show you how to correct the over exposed levels in DSS. Watch from 4:15 on wards and all will become clear

I was a little daunted by comet image stacking after taking a bunch of close ups of Neowise, so I did some research, and pieced together what I believe is the simplest method for comet stacking in Deep Sky Stacker. There seems to be a few ways of doing it but I struggled to follow some of the videos so I thought I'd attempt my own. I'm hoping it will be straightforward to follow even for a beginner, that was the goal anyway. ***Sorry about the audio levels between 00:30 and 3:30, I got copy right claimed for the backing music (despite getting it from a well known royalty free subscription site!) When YouTube removed the music they messed up the audio.***

Thanks Rob, I did think they were a touch too yellow. I'm guessing this is an achromat thing? unless it was the Baader IR cut filter screwed onto the camera? My thinking is that you would need to drop the trusses down as little as possible to avoid losing light, but it would be good to hear from someone more in the know about this. My educated guess would be that moving the secondary down the tube too far would mean that some of the reflected light from the primary would miss the secondary because as you move down the tube the path of reflected light from the primary gets wider. Does that make sense? What do you think Rob?

The way I understand it is if you adjust one of the primary mirror adjustment bolts significantly it will pinch one side of the doughnut as the primary moves out of collimation. The pinching is created when the Fresnel rings get pinched rather than the middle of the doughnut moving. Any asymmetry is down to this pinching, you just need to make sure you don't go wild and defocus a ton half filling the eyepiece as this dilutes errors in collimation so you can't notice them, you just see the secondary and a large fuzzy disc. It may be that we are talking about the same thing? With this in mind I want to make it clear to the OP that I mean defocus a star until it appears as a small doughnut, not a big one

Yes always do it at high power with the star centred in the eyepiece to rule out eyepiece aberrations, that's correct.

That mount suits the scope well, John. Is the scope that far forward for eyepiece access, or is that the balance point?

I took about 1000 frames for each run, so yeah around a minute because the frame rate wasn't particularly high.

You know what, I didn't remember to do that until I was trying to get sleep that night, doh! lol I'll drop the truss rods for planetary imaging round two