knobby

@cjdawson

Hi, do you have any images of your dew heater ?

I'm DIY ing something at the moment and had considered placing it inside the front lip but thought it would stop the cap fitting and also make electrical connections difficult.

Cheers 

Cheers Geoff... £56 😞

I love a bit of DIY and mine is about £6 so far.

Nice capture Fedele 👍🏻

Hi all, after some opinions please .

I've wrapped my C9.25 in insulation to try to minimise tube currents which seems to make a visible improvement and am in the process of making a very narrow dew band to fit just behind the corrector to help the dew shield keep the dew away.

Q1 can you see any issue with the heater being so narrow ? It's just 2 strips of nichrome in parallel, twisted and heat shrinked twice for safety.

Q2 my maths and meter calculated the resistance to be 7.2 ohms which at 12v gives 20 watts.

Q3 more of an observation but it surprised me to see that the 20 watts was enough to slowly cause the heat shrink to ... Shrink 🙂

Cheers and merry Christmas ⛄

If you use your phone as a hotspot you can connect the NUC and your laptop as you would at home.

That's excellent Barv. And yet another cracking image taken well outside of the conventional wisdom of 5 x pixel size .. you're approx 9 x but an excellent result.

Might be worth trying Siril, it's free and in some ways similar to Pixinsight.

https://siril.org/

Very nice M42 👍🏻

Really nice 👍🏻

I'll try to dig one out but have changed laptop recently...

Ioptron love to say 'backlash free' don't they 🙂

The Ra is locked, no way to balance It and apparently no need to (It chucks my C9.25 about with ease.

Dec is the same as any other Ioptron, can be adjusted to minimise backlash but all depends on your luck ... don't forget there is a belt in there that will give backlash if too loose.

And if by fluid you mean really smooth and free then yes, Ra is very free and 'spinny' 🙂

I've managed the 3rd axis balance by rotating the OTA as so the EFW and autofocuser become the offset weight.

Very sad to see all Gina's bits and bobs scattered everywhere 😞

Ioptron seems to use a very different approach to alignment than the Skywatcher or Celestron mounts I'd used before !

https://www.ioptron.com/v/Manuals/HEM27_Manual.pdf

Page 22 onwards talks about alignment but basically you polar align, set date / time / location (which It remembers as has a battery in hand controller) and that's It 🙂

You can synch to a target to improve gotos.

Not from last night but managed a quick smash n grab between clouds on Monday.

Really nice Mandy, I admire your dedication ... It was bloomin freezing here !

Hi Eshy,  I've not run mine long enough to do a flip honestly.

Mainly been using it for planets (when it actually clears)

It's not the 'reverse dec output after meridian flip' is it ?

Hi all, not the best but I've not had a clear night for ages.

Initially set up just to check / adjust collimation on my new C9.25 but couldn't find a decent star in the gaps ... Then Mars popped through a gap 🙂

Rattled off approx 30,000 frames at 5ms (from memory)

Stacked 5% and drizzled 1.5x as shot at f15.

Really nice, well done 👍🏻

3010 usually needs a reboot.

Maybe reboot then try .net 3.5 and then ascom.

Hi all, just off to bed and when locking the back door couldn't resist leaning the pixel against a coffee mug for 4 minutes 🤣

Cropped and tweaked a bit in Photoshop express.

Also removed the washing line ... I couldn't see it ... It was dark outside ! Using Photo retouch app.

Goodnight all and good luck to anyone out imaging still.

If anyone is feeling brave, new firmware ...

https://www.ioptron.com/Articles.asp?ID=345

There is a for sale section on here and also on this site.

https://www.astrobuysell.com/uk/propview.php

The flexible coupling 'should' prevent any damage but It will surely put extra load on the EAF.

I'd be inclined to use washers as above.

My effort on the original file in post 1

Siril software.

Slight crop - background extraction (twice 🙂 ) - Archsinh curves - photometric colour calibration - saturation boost.

Quite a lot of signal in there, possible tilt and incorrect flattener spacing maybe and focus looks a tad off but  nice image !

Not the only wat to do it by any means but Photoshop or GIMP works.

In case you don't have any editing programs I had a quick dabble for you.

Hope you don't mind ?

Really nice Mars.