Ratlet

Back out again. Managed to time it really well as io was just coming round the limb. Started as a little wart and eventually got black between it and the planet. Seeing was much better. Oddly the BST's (8mm and 12mm) both performed better than the svbony 3-8mm. Eventually settled on the 12mm with 2x Barlow. The mobile phone adapter was very popular and we got some cracking images along with a really good video of Jupiter showing clear banding considering the setup.

Took the 130pds in to work and showed the folks Jupiter and the moon. Jupiter was okay, but a bit low down just now to be any real good. Moon looked spectacular though, even if it was full.

So the one on ebay has an interesting design: This would be interesting to use on a Dob... I've had a look at mine and my approach would be different. I would design a part to fit between the mirror holder and phone position adjuster, there are two holes with guide studs which would make this pretty secure. I would have a plate on the bottom that either gives a standard finder shoe or replicates the other style starsense mount, this would allow compatibility with my own brackets (because I am nothing if not vain lol). At the rear there is a nice space between the gearing for the phone adjuster to allow a support to go to hold everything in place: I realise mine is the other style, but it looks like the only significant difference is the base plate, the mirror holder and the rest appears to be the same design. Do you have a 3D printer?

If I had one I dare say I could knock it up a fitting that would work for the twist lock, but without one to measure it'll be a bit tricky. Would basically need to measure up the other end and then build in fusion 360 and refine the design till it worked. Alternative (which would be better for a finder shoe mount) would be to make something that fits on the bottom of the unit to allow it to mount to a finder shoe.

Can you remove the cradle from the mount? Having a look on ebay there are some people selling them (for quite a lot of money). The fixing looks reasonably simple but I'd guess it would have tight tolerances. Without a DX mount to test fitting I could possibly knock something together (provided I had lots of measurements) but I'd have no idea if it worked. I've designed one for the DL mount (I have it) so it would be nice to get the complete set with the DX mount. Looking at the DX I've no idea how hard it would be to remove, but I think as an alternative to something that mounts on the DX mount, something that fits between the mirror bit and the adjustable bit would work, provide it didn't put too much (honestly any) stress on the join. I've got a bit of a thing about astro 3D printing as most of the gear costs pennies to make, which is a bit unusual in this hobby. That being said, they still sell for crazy prices on the ebay.

I'd say the laptop will control it fine. I use a 5 year old mini pc which I connect to via remote desktop and it does it fine. Personally I'd consider an alternative laptop, just because you can get more bang for your buck and a better quality through somewhere like the dell outlet. EDIT: that being said, the laptop doesn't look that bad tbh. Will do fine, unless you plan editing images heavily. Ioptron mounts are usually controlled through the hand controller. Can you take a picture of the base of you hand controller? Connector might be a chonky old style usb like on printers.

There's an astronomy Scotland group on Facebook that is pretty active and they have a for sale section too. Some prolific imagers on there so I'm sure you'd be able to shift your gear quickly on it, collection too.

My current work pattern means the half the year (2 of every 4 weeks) are absolute no goes leaving me with the other half to even have a chance at imaging. As @Elp says optimising your setup time helps greatly and making sure everything works as much as possible ahead of time is pretty important. Another big help has been treating imaging as a part of astronomy in general. Usually I'll get the Dob/Newt out for imaging to start cooling and then setup the imaging rig, which takes about 30 minutes in total. I try to have an idea of what I want to image before I go out too. Once I get it up and running I leave it and image. If I don't get everything going within 45 minutes then I dump it in the shed and go visual. At the end of the night I don't pack everything away, I just put it in the shed and get it in the morning or the next day. I found the nights when I've gone out and battered my head against a software issue are incredibly frustrating and suck the joy out of life. By just walking away from the problem and doing visual I've found my stress levels about imaging have decreased massively and I enjoy it more. Of course, I've got very low imaging standards so I'm perhaps not the best judge.

As an alternative to a new shed, consider second hand on marketplace or gumtree. You might have a bit of a wait, but it'll be considerably cheaper than new, even factoring in van hire. You won't need anything massive and might be able to pick one up for free! Just need a few concrete blocks for a base and away you go.

In the run up to it, I'd try and get out to work out the kinks in your imaging rig. You're not going to try and image anything in particular, just to make sure everything works and you know how to use it. Personally I've found mentally having my goal to be 'a better session than last time' rather than 'image something' works well for morale. I think all my imaging sessions for the past year have basically been working out kinks or trying out new bits of (cheap) gear.

My garden, when I got laid off during COVID I converted half of it into a no-dig vegetable patch. It has been remarkably prolific with minimal work, although this year it has largely been growing leafy stuff for the rabbits and peas and strawberrys.. It'll need rejigged now. Plan is to make the path to the summerhouse wider (and shorten the plots) so it matches the door size. Get some more cardboard and bark down and a small paved area out the front. I'll have a large paver about half way down. Between the patio and the paver I'll have 2 nice area to dump the dob giving me good views. Also want to put a todmorden pier in for the imaging rig. The summerhouse is going to hopefully becoming an office for the wife in the day and a warm room/imaging room for me at night. She's studying computer programming with the OU and managed to get a summer placement WFH last year, that got extended to December and then became a full time position (whilst still doing the OU!), goes without saying that I am incredibly chuffed with her. We'll get the summerhouse insulated (I was concerned about the windows, but their 6mm thick!) and get power out to it from the shed. My old man managed to get a woodburning stove from a neighbour so that'll be going in, although we'll need to see what the distance from combustibles is for it so we may yet go for a new one.

I've got one of those multi target finder. I think mine was a generic one from ebay for a pistol. They work pretty well and are very robust. Perhaps a little too bright, but still works well, although I'm not sure what the diameter of the outer circle corresponds to. Looking at the price of the quickfinder shoe makes me glad that I've got a 3D printer for doing my own small parts. Maybe I need to start going astro prints on ebay lol.

The high school returned! Have to say they did a great design for it. Fantastic planning by the pupils. Took us longer to put the felt on than it did to raise the building. The doors were a separate unit so they couldn't go squint and because it straddled the join it sort of locks the structure together.

Not the post man, but the local high school just delivered this lot. Entered a raffle last year for a 6x10 summer house and won! Not bad for £50. Built by the third year pupils and the construction is better quality than most commercial units I've seen. The missus says I can use it for astronomy stuff. Not a roll off roof, but with the dob I'm better of dumping it outside. Going to get it outfitted with power an a wood burner and have a nice wee warm room for myself. Need to rejig the garden, but a pier will be going in too and I'll have a nice wee setup.

You need to subtract the cost of the case from the telescope then so basically you got the scope for free!

That ties in with what I observed (or rather didn't) with the 130PDS (also has an oversized secondary) on planetary.

I might give that a try. The trick as @alacant mentioned is that in focus the Takumars only focus blue and green so you need to get in focus and then back out slightly. Usually they are well behaved and can produce decent results, although in this case I missed the mark on both images (although I'm still quite happy with them as they captured some nice parts of the sky). I'm going to go for some CA free shenanigans next though and use the 130PDS without a coma corrector. The 533C is small enough a sensor that the coma is pretty well controlled without a corrector. Just need to decide what to image. Got a bahtinov mask for that thankfully.

It's a bargain at twice the price!

Aye, usually that's the method I aim for, unfortunately I must have knocked it off focus for the Veil (first imaged). Spotted the issue when I slewed onto the Crescent but I think I took it just a nip too far. I usually find processing responds better to a hint of blue/green than a small red halo. The photometric calibration usually gets rid of it completely.

Managed to get out and do some imaging with the 135mm Takumar SMC stopped down with a ring to F5.6 ish, Altair 533c, and SVBONY 220 dual band filter. Fluffed my focus for the first round on the veil, but got it pretty much as good as possible for the crescent. 27 minutes of data where processing was stacked and stretched with tiny tweak to the saturation and some green noise removal (all done in Siril), @vlaiv would be proud I think. If I were good at processing I could probably get more out of it. I think though it shows the potential of a cheap bit of vintage glass (and not missing your focus). This lens cost £15 on ebay...

Got the imaging rig out for the first decent session of the year. Focus wasn't great, but good enough for fb on the veil and crescent with the 135mm. Set up the 130pds for visual and set up in the west side of the garden for Jupiter and Saturn, both looking very good. Sneak peak at pleiades to wrap up.

16mm ovl wide field eyepiece. The eyepiece that taught me that my low standards have limits.

Averted imagination

Wish I could get a look at it. Thinking that it in combination with a Starfield 102 might be pretty tasty. How have you found it with a bit more time?

It will probably do in a pinch for planetary. I used the 130pds for a year with its oversized secondary and whilst it wasn't great out of the box a contrast booster filter helped massively and might help in your case. Since it's not what it is for it's not much of an issue, but a stacked yellow and moonglow filter did the trick for me and might do for you in a pinch if you found the seeing warranted a quick peek. What's your thoughts around the eyepiece position? I only tried mine on an EQ mount a couple times before giving up due to the eyepiece ending up at weird positions requiring rotating the scope and contortions to get my eyeball to the eyepiece. Will be interested to see how you get on with the coma corrector. Is it the Stellalyra one with the 75mm back focus and 1.1 X magnification?