pixueto

This customs duty seems to me quite arbitrary and capricious. At the post offiice they implied that some days you get lucky, some you get unlucky with it. The fact that you QM didn't pay duty for the very same item says it all. I could understand paying £1 or £3 but... £19 that's about 40% of the price of the item. That's a joke.

Guys, going back to the EQ5 mod, I just got the USB adaptor from soestring astronomy today. I bought it from USA because the price was £55 with no RJ cable as oposed to the £80 from the UK but with the Rj cable. Well, I'm really annoyed. After waiting for ages for it, I had to pay £19 in customs duty. Ridiculous! I think this is the last thing I order from USA.

It wasnt easy but it wasnt hard just takes about 5 hours to do and is very delicate fiddly work with small ribbon cables to fix in and out un awkward places.

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5 hours?!!!! You just put me off. I'm too clumsy for hat kind of thing:icon_confused:

was it very difficult to mod? Are you going to upload a thred to teach us how to do it?

This is how I take my flats a white tshirt stretched over the end of my scope held on with bungie strap and a 24led torch positioned in front hanging off an old sea fishing tripod a wooden pole would do the same job.

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Hi QM, I'm still trying to figure out how to take flats. Do you set the camera to aperture mode AV or do you keep it in manual? If it is in manual, what exposition time shoud I use for the subs?

Thank you very much as always for you help.

Thank you, I asked for a trial key. Seems quite cheap.

I got my canon from UK astrobuysell for £140 and I love it to pieces. If you get cables long enough for your webcam and your mount you could run the show from home, couldn't you? I'm planing on doing this from my sofa and going out every 10 mins but I wonder if it will be so enjoyble then. Wouldn't it be too easy? Surely one doesn't feel as involved in the whole process if the computer does everything?

Well, I just got the dual axis controlled modded. I hope it'll work! Checked the RA and Dec buttons and it seems that I haven't broken anything. I ordered the GPUSB adapter from shoestring as it's 30 quid cheaper. In the website it says that he is busy and orders can take a while to be delivered. I wonder how long it will be till I get it.

Guys, I got my first telescope last September, a 8'' dobsonian. Then I realised that I wanted to do spectroscopy and imaging rather than visual so I sold it in December and bought my SW 200P. Started imaging planets with no tracking, then in January got a dual axis motor and a Canon 350D so I could have a go at DSO's. I was very pleased with my first two targets but since the weather isn't helping. Now I am considering autoguiding and modded my controller. This is madness! I blame it on the weather and this thread.

I see. I have a spacer and thought I could use it to get focused if I needed but I might need the oposite after what you are saying guys. Thank you very much. I might give it a go using your system them QM.

Thanks for helping with this. So is the QHY5 wider than a 1.25 eyepiece? I am looking for a way of using the finderscope with a 25mm eyepiece. I would use it as a finder, then lock the target, remove the EP and introduce the webcam with the 1.25 adapter to start autoguiding. In that way, I wouldn’t need to add any more weight to the system. But I am trying to avoid any DIY. The adapter from modern astronomy doesn’t seem the right size, does it?

Guys, can you help me with this? Is the finder to QHY5 adapter from Modern Astronomy suitable for a normal webcam with a 1.25 adapter? I've never seen a QHY5

Indeed we are being quite unlucky with the weather lately! I hardly managed to do any imaging for several weeks. If it isn't cloudy, there is a full Moon. In my last picture I noticed some dust managed to find their way to the sensor. i've used the blower and a tiny brush. Hope I did not damage the filter. I washed the drush a hundred times and I practiced with a OIII filter first but as yet I haven't been able to see if everything is OK as I do not have any lense for the Canon 350D.

QM, I had a look again at youw website. Thank you very much mate for your help. You are making our life much, much easier. About your video about fixing slack in gears chapeau! Maybe it would have been even better if you had showed a mount that needed fixing but I'm being greedy here!

The only thing I would like to do different compared to your setup would be a less DIY solution for the finder/guider. Do you know of any adapters for that model finder that can be used to insert eyepieces? I could then use it as a finder and a guidescope without much trouble. I am really clumsy at DIY! I wonder what's the resulting focal length of the finder to calculate the magnification after you use a eyepiece of 25mm.

That Youtube video would be brilliant! Really liked the ones on using PS. By the way, how many minutes is the Horsehead nebula stack that you show in your curves and levels tutorial? I only managed to get 7 mins on this target so far and I don’t see any sign of the horsehead.

QM, notice that I’ve read somewhere that although PHD will correct your Dec error if you don’t choose to drift align, the Dec error keeps building and it will affect your images with field rotation. I understand that the RA tracking error created by the mount can be corrected but not the Dec caused by a bad polar alignment. Are you aware of this or is this only a problem for subs of over 10 mins?

Well, the way I see it now is that if you have the money (well over £700 as you said for a HEQ5), you may just as well save it (with your DIY, you would save over £500) and get a nice and lighter 80mm APO refractor which would be a good addition to your modded EQ5 to have a go at wide field imaging. In my case, I don’t have the money so this is out of the question. I already had the dual axis motor and a webcam for planetary imaging so your mod would cost me just under £100… not bad! Already ordered the guide port conversion. Why on earth is the GPUSB adapter so expensive!!!! The thing that is holding me back is using the PHD software (maybe you can elaborate a bit in your website about your settings and thinks to watch out for) as when Stan and you discussed the different parameters I didn’t understand what you were talking about! Also, with auto guiding, I must learn drift aligning. I’m sure it will take me a while to get it right and it’s too cold at the moment!!!

Thank you very much QM, you have been an inspiration to us all. I’ve been very quiet carefully taking in all the information in this thread. Please, do not close it yet. Please upload some of your images when you start working on your targets. Surely there is still some fine tuning that needs to be done and we can all learn from you. There are loads of people with a 200P EQ5 kit that up until now thought serious imaging couldn’t be done on a budget. Well done!

After Malc-c suggested some suitable finder scopes for guiding, I wanted to know more about the Altair Astro he suggested and found this:

Altair 60mm Miniguider with Autoguider Webcam focuser, tube rings, multi-purpose base :: Autoguiding Equipment :: Altair Astro

Anybody tried this? It’s about £150, far cheaper than upgrading the mount to a HEQ5.

If you can use the system to guide manually, you would end up spending the same amount of money than for the EQ5 mod.

Any thoughts?

1) unless you have one of the more expensive finderscopes that allow you to use inter-changeable eyepieces (such as the one below)

then I'm afraid your suggestion would not work as you can not attach a barlow to the finders that SW use on their scopes

An alternative is to use something like the £150 Altair Astro 10 x 60 shown below which has an illuminated cross-hair and could be used for manual guiding

An alternative, assuming QM wanted to go down the manual guiding route would be an off axis guider

That sounds interesting. How does the weight of those compare to the standard SW 9X50 finder? We are mounting a 8'' reflector on a EQ5 and the weight of the system is a main concern. Also, do you know the focal length of those finders? Since my eye isn't as precise as a computer, surely there must be a minimum magnification for this to work.

Thanks

Hi guys, probably what I’m going to say is stupid but wouldn’t it be possible to use the finderscope with say a 3X Barlow and a webcam to manually guide the scope for 10 mins? Wouldn’t that be easier than getting bugged down with the software if the end is to get subs of several minutes? I’m probably saying something stupid but I find this route more appealing than bullying my computer into working with the scope. What is the focal length of the finder?