knobby

Almost embarrassed to post but haven't seen many Jupiters taken on this year's opposition. Very poor seeing through very infrequent gaps in the cloud. C9.25 - 2 x Barlow - zwo ADC - zwo 224mc on an Ioptron HEM 27. Best 10% of 8000 frames at 3ms.

Light hearted entry ! Waiting for Jupiter to poke through the clouds on opposition night 2022 ... Handheld, low light mode on a Pixel 4a, slight highlights boost and crop in Snapseed.

Excellent 👌

Next time it's clear (🤞🏻) I'll double check but I'm sure on my SW72ed with 0.8 reducer it barely moves in and out while autofocusing using APT.

How far does the focuser move in ? Surely 5 mm is enough ?

If you have 5mm movement available it should work, try using shorter steps in calibration. Mine only moves about 2mm in and out when focusing, might even be less ?

Seeing is everything, keep trying and one night it will come together ... Still a good image though.

It's easy in phd2, just connect the usb to the handset, run Ioptron commander, find the com port from Windows device manager , connect then run new profile wizard. A little foible I noticed is that the mount mount track until you've done an alignment unlike skywatchers.

I bought the HEM27 recently, choice determined by available funds and a @FLO offer at the right time ... I'm not really sure yet but I think I like it 🤞🏻 I'm still trying different guide parameters and learning the Ioptron commander side of things. Attached a guide log from 16th sept. No imaging, just playing with different settings, guide assistant runs etc. Pe seems to be about 40 peak to peak if I've read it correctly.PHD2_GuideLog_2022-09-16_203828.txt

I was just going to say that 😃 Also, if the RGB alignment tool won't run, re start registax in admin mode.

You could use Pipp to sort the ser file and let it centre, crop and select the best frames then use autostackert to stack.

In registax try the RGB alignment tool, it should make things a bit sharper , the colours look slightly misaligned. If it won't open try running registax as admin. Great shot though.

I'm going to have to learn WinJupos me thinks.

Maybe another way to approach this Is ... how many good frames do you need to stack to get a good image deep enough to sharpen ? If for arguments sake 1500 frames gives a good enough result, why go further ?

Quick update, nothing exciting managed a bit of planetary between the clouds last night. Extended legs about 1/2 way which was enough to feel pretty stable, I'll make something to hang the battery pack from for extra security eventually. When focusing it took about 10 seconds to dampen down vibrations ( was about 5 on the heq5 ) Also caught Io bottom left corner.

Yes, but it costs money 🤣

And now you're hooked 🤣

Rough idea of size comparison to AZ-Gti in eq mode ...

You've done well there ! Banding on the surface and hints of Cassini division 👍🏻

Zorin is a nice easy Linux to try, you can load it into a thumb drive to try it out.

That's excellent !

@AdamJ the stud appears to be about 11mm and the two screws that hold the mount on appear to be 82.5mm apart ...

Thread here

Hi Gary, maybe see if you have a club near you http://www.astronomyclubs.co.uk/Clubs/Default.aspx?CountyId=49 They can probably help.

It's a bit weird to explain and mine had no manual ... but the peg is a screw in stud that locates the middle of the mount but just positions it centrally unlike a Skywatcher that screws down. The 'tripod spreader' screws in the same hole from below.