Davey-T

2 hours ago, Dave Smith said:

Thanks for all the helpful comments and also the link to SolarChat. I tried plugging it in again and the light was still amber after half an hour and no sign of any warming up.

 So I brought in indoors while having a late breakfast. I left it plugged in and to my surprise found the light was green and the red section felt a nice cosy warm. I then turned the dial and it has since returned to green.

So I am now desperate to try it on the scope with the Sun but, of course, it is cloudy.

To answer earlier questions, the disc of the Sun did look featureless apart from sunspots and before this there had been no degradation of the image.

I will report back once I am able to get a glimpse of the Sun. 

I had one that the light turned green when indoors in the warm but as soon as I took it outside it turned red again.

Dave

Sounds like it needs sending off to Daystar Dave although this isn't without it's problems in my experience.

First insured courier isn't cheap and necessary export / import paperwork is confusing.

Then you have to hope that they actually fix it when they get it as I have had them returned as bad or worse than when sent so obviously they hadn't bothered to test them before returning.

Communication with Daystar is a bit hit and miss, generally I've phoned and emailed the lovely Tiffany who is sometimes very helpful and others incommunicado.

As said it should have a five year warranty but this isn't made clear if it covers the whole thing or just the etalon.

Customs can be a pain when it's retuned as they appear to have no concept of something coming back into the country after repair,  they hung onto one of mine for weeks trying to prise some import duty money out of me.

Dave

Does the LED change from red to green ?

Dave

I use an iPad for the ASIAIR don't know if Apple have something like Windows remote desktop for remote access, I use a USB WiFi extender from my obs'y at the bottom of the garden, not quite 100 feet away, to monitor it from indoors using RDP.

Dave

10 minutes ago, The Admiral said:

Some years ago I tried a powerline adapter so that I could get our TV tuner/recorder connected to the internet. I only got about 3.5Mbps IIRC. Can the mains circuitry be fast enough to get an image transferred for viewing in short order?

Ian

My ASIAIR saves images to USB stick then have to remove that to  transfer them to PC after session, not sure if it's even possible to download them on the fly.

Dave

Two frames showing movement over about 70 minutes early hours of 10-05-22

Dave

3 hours ago, Stu said:

That’s a shame Dave. It was ok here yesterday, but not stunning so I had a few quick looks in white light, that’s all. There is a new AR 3007 visible so hopefully things will improve.

Hi Stu, it improved during the day but the wind got gusty which didn't help with the 150mm refractor, got a few vid's then AS3 started playing up, ran them all through it but it only saved the first one and said something about checking settings whatever that means but haven't had time to investigate yet.

Dave

Woken early the Sun shining in the window so set up solar rig hoping to catch some steady early seeing but it's so bad it's a job to even focus so not holding out much hope ATM

Dave

1 hour ago, Len1257 said:

Can you explain why? I know that acrylic can be over painted whereas silicone won't. But otherwise I thought silicone was superior?

Silicone doesn't wear well outside, as said above CT1 sticks like s***

Dave

Some sort of acrylic sealer not silicone.

Dave

Very nice David, had a go myself yesterday for the first time this year 😄

Dave

6 minutes ago, Freddie said:

Nice. Good to see you out for the first time. Do you think you may have been slightly off band with the Quark?

Probably, just had the knob centred, to be honest I had a job remembering how to set it all up 😂

Dave

Nice one Bob, haven't done much astro' this year but got a list of comets to have a go at now.

Dave

Finally got solar imaging rig setup.

A few from yesterday, Tecnosky 152mm, Quark Chromo', PG Bly, .5x fr

48 minutes ago, George Sinanis said:

I did try it indeed without the filter but, not without the filter drawer. The results btw were the same. But, i do not understand how could that impact the image to get such a coma.

 

 

Looks very similar to mine when it was new from FLO, they sent it to Es and got it fixed.

Dave

Nice one Den, haven't even set up solar rig yet this year as have had a few problems so missed all this activity but will try to get back into it over the next couple of days if I can remember how to set it all up 😂

ATB

Dave

Just the normal dust bunnies, flats should take care of them, might need a microscope to actually see them.

Dave

25 years in the making now 25 minutes to go 🤞

Can anyone tell me why Stellarium thinks comet  67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko is between the Moon and Jupiter but Sky Safari thinks it's below the horizon ?

Both seem to have the right time and date set.

Dave

Had another go and now got some sort of icon that says loading but seems to have stalled.

Dave

After ten minutes or so it suddenly started moving along and installed.

Just tried to download SS 7 Pro to my new iPhone and just got a grey icon with waiting  on it for twenty minutes.

Anyone else downloaded it successfully ?

Dave

On 06/11/2021 at 08:54, GalaxyGael said:

Hi @Davey-T, 

Reviving this for a specific query. When your primary was too tight, what star aberrations did you see? Flaring and clipping? 

Flaring in the corners as I recall, it took a couple of attempts to get it right not helped by the fact that we never get consecutive clear nights to test anything.

Also tried an assortment of collimation tools including a very expensive Howie Gllatter but found this the best HoTech SCA Laser Collimator with Cross-Hair | First Light Optics
plus a Concentre to accurately align the secondary.

7 hours ago, ollypenrice said:

Interesting that you're at 100 gain. We've yet to try that.

Only ever used mine at 100 gain as recommended by someone, can't remember who but not enough clear skies here to do experiments 😂

Dave

1 hour ago, Tommohawk said:

Are you  having any particular issues with APP? 

Not really, it's just remembering to tick the right boxes, I've been using Maxim for years and it requires practically no human intervention compared to APP, watched a good tutorial and managed a decent widefield rendition of Horsehead and Flame that needs more data, should get some soon hopefully, I was up late / early recently an Orion was showing well.

ATB

Dave

Nice one Tom, I'm still trying to get to grips with APP and my new ZWO ASI2600MC.

Dave