Mike73

I haven't got a clue about mountaineering or fish but at least its taking my mind of the clouds 👍

@AstroNebulee I just noticed your location, when its clear and not too windy you have some amazing dark skies. I used to observe around Crackington and Davidstow, now I have my van and I have everything I need for astro photography (apart from knowledge😅) I can't wait to head up again (I'm in SE Cornwall, Bortle 4 😕).

I usually hibernate in August its just not worth the stress of trying to go anywhere its just too busy here. Although I had to go on a work training course 'up north' to Gloucester today and the M5 coming home has left me mentally drained. Thats it though, that's the last time I'm leaving Cornwall this year! *sits back under the porch drinking moonshine and playing hillbilly banjo 😂 Yep I love September here, I have 3 weeks off work booked so keeping all my fingers crossed.

Yep frustrating but it will come good in the end. I have high hopes for September 👍

I had one of his covers a few years ago and it was really good for the price, like you say Lee it never leaked and even his medium weight cover was very tough material. I ordered a new one from him last week but haven't heard anything from him, hope he's still making them.

Very new to AP but so far like you its been one hell of an adventure! Great seeing your progress so far but your lawnmower/parachute riding scared the hell out of me just seeing it on YouTube 🤣!

Completely worth showing off Steve 👍

Best using the laser with the MSM not the polar align reticule that they sell. I was sceptical with their claims of 5 minute exposures just with the laser but as long as you use either a well levelled wedge or a geared head it was completely possible but most of the time I shot 800iso @ f/2 for 2 minutes maybe a little longer if I went somewhere really dark. If you do chose MSM then drop them an email first asking where they are shipping from. It will probably be China so expect a 20 day minimum wait for delivery, I haven't heard of anyone receiving anything from their Euro warehouse this year?! 20 days will really take you up to the end of Milky Way season. I dont know much about ipolar but personally I dont think polar alignment for wide angle lenses is critical enough to need one, just sounds like extra expense and weight in your bag you dont need. The WO wedge became really handy when I needed accurate polar alignment, its also just smoother and easier to use than the standard Skyguider wedge. So you dont really need it but it makes life easier when you are fumbling around in the dark. If you are interested in the Skyguider Pro then watch Peter Zelinkas reviews on YouTube, I completely agree with his pro's and con's on the Skyguider.

I've just upgraded from a Skyguider Pro to a HEQ5 but the only reason why I changed was that I wanted more accurate tracking with longer focal lengths using narrowband filters so long exposures. Before I very recently took an interest in going deeper in space and needing bigger, heavier equipment I shot wide field astro landscapes for just under 10 years. You really need to be mobile and what ever equipment you use has to be fairly light weight and portable, the HEQ5 is just way to heavy and bulky + you only really need Ra tracking not Ra and Dec that the HEQ5 delivers. My local beach is at the bottom of a 100ft cliff and there is no way I'd even consider carrying my HEQ5 down there and back! 😂 I've used the Move Shoot Move and for any thing under 50mm I would say its the best tracker. The trick with the MSM is you really need an accurate way to polar align, many people struggle with using a ball head connected the tracker then another ball head on top of that. You really need a geared head underneath the tracker something like a Manfrotto 410jr or the Benro geared head and 5 minute exposures @24mm is a breeze. If you do need more precision for longer FL something like the Skywatcher Star Adventurer of Ioptron Skyguider Pro would be more suitable (BTW I'm selling my Skyguider Pro with W/O wedge and extras soon).

Glad I've seen this as I didn't know you had to warm it up before switching off. In Autorun, there's a slider to shutdown asiair and return to home after imaging run, I used it a couple times and thought it was great but surely that's not going through a warm up procedure? Or is it? Ive never been awake at that point to see for myself.

Definitely worth seeing full size! What a beautiful image, worth all the hard work congratulations. 🙂

I went for the 6.5 Ha but tbh that was purely down to budget (or lack of it) but I will be following this thread with interest. 🙂

Brilliant first image Steve! I'm in a similar position to you I think, new to imaging but with a background of observing. PixInsight looks pretty daunting to me right now, I've been using Photoshop for the last 20 years and I'm comfortable with that but no expert. There just seems to be so much to get your head around starting off with AP that I can't even face even more you tube videos on PI yet! 😀 Looking forward to seeing your imaging progress.

Michael, David and Richard thank you all for your replies! Richard that's lots of great info and from memory that's pretty much exactly what I did, I had maybe 10 minutes of cloud with a few spots of rain so I covered the scope and sat it out for 10 minutes then restarted my guide calibration from scratch but then this error cropped up. Maybe I did miss something when I reset the settings? David, yes the ASIair Pro is very similar to PHD2 but dumbed down a little. I've though that too Michael. I'm using a w/o wedge under the sky guider which is far better than the standard Ioptron base but if there was a sudden movement to the mount I would have thought it would show in both Dec and Ra? Looking like clear skies tomorrow so hopefully I will get to the bottom of this.

Yes but the problem in being new to astro imaging is you dont have any idea what equipment you may need or want in the future. From experience I know that my part of the UK does fairly well for clear skies but it does get windy, the nights when I could image with say a Newt or anything too large on any equatorial mount would be few and far between but I think a fairly wide field better suited to my circumstances. Right now I think I'm going for the HEQ5.

Thanks Mike .Good to see the dob squad are still going strong 👍

Makes sense, thanks Lee. I've been using Astrobin to see what mount and scope people pair up and I guess what was beginning to sway me away from the HEQ5 (which until this afternoon I was dead set on getting) was seeing the lack of HEQ5's and more NEQ6's. I know that's no reason to just copy everyone else but it was enough to sow a seed of doubt. BTW excellent website you have, bookmarked. That kinda surprised me but in reality it doesn't really draw too much. But maybe if you were using it for visual it would be a different matter.

I'm currently using a Redcat 51 with guider, asi 1600mm on a Skyguider Pro and fairly sturdy tripod, it works great to a point but I'm already seeing reasons to upgrade the tracker stack up. Most of the time I will be imaging from dark sites but the size and weight of either mount isn't really a problem. Taking into consideration that I'd probably do a Rowan belt upgrade at some point the price of the two mounts is fairly close. Considering that I'm new to imaging and the HEQ5 has been around for a long time and probably what most imagers started with, is this still the way to go? Power consumption... At the moment I have a 34Ah AGM and from what I've read the EQ6-R uses double the amperage than the HEQ5 while slewing. I have a camper van with a 110Ah Leisure battery and at a push I could plug into but would rather not as that powers the heater etc and I wouldn't want to run it too low. Do you think I'd need a bigger dedicated battery for the EQ6-R? I'm sure similar questions have been asked before but if anyone has any advice they can offer that would be great.

Thanks Michael and yes it does look that way, you've got me second guessing myself as whether I told it to track RA only, won't find out until next time I get out I suppose?

I'm hoping someone can shed some light on a problem I ran into last night...... I'm using a Skyguider Pro with ASIair and a Redcat 51. Last night the guiding calibration went fine and I had great looking stars with 5 minute exposures so I set up my Autorun. The Skyguider only tracks in RA so in app and in Dither settings I turned RA Only on, interval was set to dither every image and Pixels was set to 2. Everything worked great for the first 6 images then the guider wouldn't settle enough to continue. Just looking at my Guide Stability settings, Stability was set to 3", with hindsight I should of raised this to the max 4" but I dont think that would of helped very much. What I dont understand is that my RA was pretty consistent at around 1" but my Dec which I have no control over was nearly always at or above 4". It looks like the total RMS is averaged which is why my guiding wouldn't settle enough to take the next image. Is that right? Can anyone see where I'm going wrong or how to fix this? Thank you Mike

Hi everyone Its been a while since I was last on SGL, probably around 4 years but I never stopped looking up at night and in that time I often fondly thought of all the incredible things I've seen up there. I just needed a break and try other things but now I'm back! I was a visual observer that used to do a few sketches but I'm now dipping my toe in the astro imaging field with a modest set up of a Redcat + guider and Skyguider Pro so far but after getting over the initial shock and feeling of 'how am I ever going to learn all that!' a bit of practice with my DSLR and with the help of FLO's summer imaging deal that's on at the moment I'm waiting for delivery of a asi 1600mm, EFW and filters to arrive. I've been lurking in the background for a while, although I've nearly posted and asked questions a couple times I've googled my question and found my answer but I remember how good the community is here on SGL and I'd like to be a part of that again Great to see some familiar faces still here! 🙂 Mike

I always take all the bottom caps off, roll the filter pouch out, pop the clip on light on and then I'm ready to observe with minimal fuss. Yeah I do like my Delos, I could quite easily settle for the 10mm XW as I can see very little difference between the XW's and Delos. I may squeeze a x2 TV barlow in there for very high mags for PN's but no rush for that.

Your not helping with my eyepiece OCD Paul.

My EP case is fairly complete (like I've never said that before! ) That great big gap will be eventually filled with either a 17.3 Delos or 17mm T4, the ES replaced with either a 22mm T4 or 26mm T5. I find I don't use low powers very much so no great rush for those. There is Astronomic OIII, DGM NPB, Lumicon #8 and 82a# filters in the pouch in the middle.

Thanks. Yeah they are white pastel onto a black sketch pad.