knobby

The Synscan windows app is pretty good, worth a look.

Hi @Astro Alice and dad hope you spend many hours together staring at the heavens. My first proper scope was a 150 Dob ... You will have amazing views of the moon and planets (albeit small for the planets)

4 hours ago, FLO said:

We have some good news 🙂 

Our warehouse say they received 5x pallets of Sky-Watcher stock this morning. Another 8x pallets are arriving tomorrow or Monday. 

Not sure yet what is included but, whatever it is, it will enable us to clear a lot of customer backorders 🤗 

Steve 

Heq5 ... Pretty please 😊

Quick update, mounts gone back but out of stock for 15 days ... Sad face 😪 Almost went for a CEM40 but again, out of stock.

Looking forward to a good sample 🤞

Long story but the CEM40 is off the cards now 😒 going to wait for my HEQ5 to arrive ... Thanks for your help Paul.

11 minutes ago, robhatherton said:

New Mount arrived today with not a hint of connection issues I’m pleased to say!
 

Pity there’s no decent manual though!

Result ! Glad it's sorted.

All I can add is that planets are low so you're shooting through a lot of murky atmosphere and heat haze. You'll be very lucky to get much more than a blurry image till the planets are higher in the sky again. The whole idea of video / lucky imaging is that amongst the 2 or 3 minutes of video you collect , some of the frames will be during the moments of good seeing. When you stack the frames and select the better ones you end up with an image that you can sharpen. Don't give up and good luck.

Thanks again Paul.

Thanks Paul, very helpful 👍 are you controlling the mount with ascom / laptop ?

Hi, wondered if any CEM40 owners could tell me if they image with a C8 or similar and what results they get ? Also will I need 2 counterweights ? 

Scope / camera etc = 8kg.

Cheers 

21 hours ago, kmaslin said:

I have been using a Altair GPCAM2 130M camera with a 60mm guide scope on my CEM40/8" Celestron SCT setup and works ok

However when I try to use it on installed Celestron off-axis unit - it is very hit and miss as to whether I can find a guide star in the field of view even if I crank up the gain etc. Is the sensitivity of the camera not up to it?

Would you recommend an upgrade in the mono camera or any other changes/settings that I might have missed?

Could continue as-is with the guide scope but have other plans for that and also want to get full use from the off-axis unit

Cheers Keith

 How are you finding the C8 on your CEM40 ? Does it need two counter weights ?

They're really good John, what exposure length did you manage unguided ?

2 hours ago, tooth_dr said:

Yes, in my practical side by side experience it’s a lot better. I didnt make it up!

Cheers Tooth_dr, reaaly didn't think you'd made it up 🙂 just good to see real world experience vs figures, of course now I need to update my Gpcam mono to a 290 🙂 

2 hours ago, tooth_dr said:

I just switched from a 120MM to a 290MM for my OAG. The difference is wow! I regularly have my gain down to 40% or less to avoid oversaturating the brighter stars to guide on. The 120MM always like it needed 110% gain, just never quite enough. 

Is the 290 really that much better ? Interesting...

120 qe - 75% 290 qe 'about 80%'

Possibly a dumb observation but surely you can't just put the 1600 in place of the 294, you'll need a filter holder of some sort or are you just going sole mono ?

17 minutes ago, huntapix said:

I have tried naming the com port from 1 through to 16....some it says not connected to port and some it say error...timed out.......ive tried connecting to my computer two ways.......one way is a ST4 from the camera to the autoguiding port on the mount......the other way is to attach the ST4 cable to the bottom of the hand controller through to a usb connection to the laptop....thanks guys

St4 shouldn't be attached to hand controller ! Might do some damage that way. If you try guiding using the st4 cable from guide cam to mount, choose on camera as mount in PHD2

You could try the windows Synscan app, way easier to use than EQ mod, seems to pick the correct com port too.

If God created the universe ... Who created God ? 😂

They're prone to doing that ... If I'm right you need to leave it turned on, as far away from another WiFi for 4 hours then reboot.

Edit + Found this ...

It's pretty spooky, blue sky and a Moon looking like it's midnight 😃

Inspired by Nik Szymaneks talk on Sunday I had a quick stab at imaging the moon with an Ha filter.

72ed / reducer / Ha filter / ZWO1600 , 3000 frames stacked in Autostakkert,  quick process Photo shop android.

Taken at around 9 ish while sky was still blue.

Yep, thoroughly enjoyed it , thanks SGL and Nik.

I prefer the burnt yellows but the last one is really nice !

👍

That's really come out well 👍 you could try more frames and then drizzle maybe ? Might be a bit bigger but I'd be very happy with that anyway !