ollypenrice

Sorry, I hadn't noticed the dates - but I've had worse!! lly

Imagine what would happen if they put Robert Hooke on the pound coin while they were about it... Oo-er missus. Olly

Firstly you need to be slightly misaligned. I've never actually set out to misalign, I've just exploited the misalignment that was there already! (By not endlessly refining the PA but settling for a 'close enough' alignment.) You then disable the guiding in Dec on one axis and see if that's the axis you do or don't need to guide on. If the mount guides in Dec that's fine. If it drifts off target you need to re-activate the direction you disabled and disable the other one. Write down the result of this test (if you're anything like me...) and reverse the disabling after the meridian flip. Olly

It's good to see Takahashi doing something about the issue. Hope you get sorted. Olly

It's very well known and certainly not my idea. I find it works, though. In saying that if some subs are good and some not it cannot be PA, I should have added 'while imaging the same target.' Olly

Has to be the winner! lly

Not a bit of it, Ron! I had my first mobile only about a year ago and it's a flip phone designed for grandmas, according to the sales person who dealt with me. I can never find it, hate being cluttered up with it and can never remember the number when people ask. I dont 'txt' under any circumstances. I consider the thing to be one step up the food chain from rap music... lly

Smartphone? What's that? Olly

Mine too, though I don't get much rotation so far as I'm aware. Olly

Given that it took over 200 years of telescopic astronomy to find the stellar parallax on a baseline of two astronomical units or nearly 200 million miles I think we can safely dispense with the idea that it arises from the distance between one side of Rob's pier and the other. We all know that he's a stickler for fine resolution but... If there were neither cone error nor non-orthogonality then surely the images would have to align perfectly. So what can it be? Non orthogonality of the camera? When the mount flips, any difference between camera angle and lines of RA and Dec will turn into twice that angle of difference between the image before and the image after. Also, when we align our cameras along RA and Dec, by slewing them while exposing, we are doing so with any cone error already in place, so that cone error is factored into our alignment. Now surely this error we have factored in is 'sided.' That is, it matters which side of the mount we are on when we carry out the procedure. Again, any error will be doubled when measured as a comparison between 'before' and 'after' images. And to take this a step further, won't the cone error we have factored into our camera angle be local to the area of the sky in which we carried it out? In a nutshell there is a complex and interactive relationship between cone error and camera angle. Olly

Yes I know, I'm a dinosaur - but all this 'stuff' can (and often does) eat up a perfectly good night's imaging. Software automation can be like kids and homework. They will spend more time and effort on finding ways not to do it theselves than it would have taken just to do it. Now Springbank never did anybody any harm.* Olly *This is not a quotation from the BMA.

Humph, robotic focus. Any of you guys host five robotic scopes? I do, and I also host five fingers on each hand and they are not connected by USB.... lly

But perhaps the problem with the older scopes can be the blue correction, which didn't need to be anything like as good at the shortest wavelengths as is now needed for digital cameras? My Mk 1 F5 Genesis (remember that one?) was Tak-like in narrowband but out of its depth in blue. Olly

You'll struggle to find a scope that can do better at F3.9 than that. Top left isn't perfect but it isn't bad and you can write a quick Ps action for 'rounding stars' (one at a time but there won't be many) to fix that corner. Mind you, if you were using an 8300 chip you might not be so happy... While it ought to be possible to buy a scope knowing that it will give perfect stars corner to corner within the specified image circle it just seems that you can't! One thing, though Steve (Kirk!): put the official flattener on your TEC and there you will have a flat field you could land a glider on. WIth full frame ours isn't even slightly taxed. Olly

It's a serious question! I don't think you can get M31 in a single frame with anything resembling a telescopic focal length. If you get the full outer glow it is a two panel in full frame format at 500mm FL. That means you have to have something that will cover full frame to get anywhere near, in one. The claimed image circle for the Esprit 80 with flattener is a rather paltry 33mm so that won't take a big chip. For the big Kodaks you need about 45 or 46. Theory says 44 but that turns out to be a bit 'iffy.' It was after some thought that we went for the older fluorite FSQ106N option here. The 88mm claimed circle rather puts the problem to bed. Buying second hand you can ask for a sample image from the scope, too. It shouldn't be this difficult but it is... Olly

Besides the two Steves on here I have come across several other problem Baby Q posts, all about corner stars. Mine was fine and there's one here in our robotic shed which is also fine but I no longer recommend the Baby Q when asked because there are too many bad ones circulating. When you can't trust the European importer (and you can't, as Steve's experience shows) or the QC then it's time to take a rain check. The clincher in Steve's case came when he found the same camera perfectly satisfactory in a later scope, so it wasn't chip tilt. In an all-screwed assembly that's about that, surely? We now run a pair of old FSQ106Ns here and are 100% happy wth them. Olly

Yes. Sigh of relief! Olly

Would switching from side by side to piggyback be an option? As for concrete, I don't think heat is an issue. We have a six tonne concrete base for our 4-scope remote hosting shed and daytime temperatures reaching the high thirties in summer. I think the effect on seeing is negligible. Likewise in one of our own 'in house' roll offs we imaged at 0.66"PP with a 14 inch deep sky rig and had no issues. Olly

When you cannot be sure of the distance you cannot be sure of the real speed of movement. If your brain has convinced itself that the object is distant then it will be very hard to dislodge that notion and you will therefore greatly overestimate its speed. If you are intentionally out looking at the stars you may well be predisposed to think in terms of long distances. Something much, much closer moving much more slowly would be my guess. A drone seems highly possible. I don't offer this as an explanation but just as an example of how our eyes deceive us. I'm out all night regularly since I run an astronomy guest house and recently I noticed a slowly moving light near to where I would have expected to see Capella. My view was limited by the house and a tree at this point. The light was moving randomly and quite slowly but I was sure it was moving about. I kept my eye on it and moved to more open ground. As I did so the movement diminished and finally stopped altogether and I was simply looking at Capella. Why the impression of movement? I don't know, but the limited field of view and possibly motion in the tree branches had created it. Olly

Nor do I. I host a robotic FSQ85 which did a recent first light and, with an 8300 chip, the corner stars were not perfect, they were elongated radially from the centre a tiny bit. A pixel peeper would have been disgruntled (and in view of the price one can understand that!) but I'm a pragmatic imager and I'd have bought that scope and camera for my own use. It wasn't far from perfect and I think you'd be taking a risk in swapping it for something else in its class. Yours is far worse and I would not accept it. I do think Takahashi have a problem with the Baby Q. As an aside, I now use a couple of old FSQ106N fluorites, mine and Tom's, worth about £2K a pop and they have no trouble at all with full frame sensors. Quite a bit cheaper than a new Baby Q.... Olly

Without doubt. Olly

Just a further comment on two posters above. Pieter was too modest to say that he is an expert mechanical engineer and Steve was too modest to say that he wrote yet another bible, this time on how to live happily with SiTech! Olly

It's the multi rig that really does the business for us. That's the dual Tak. The TEC is a luxury on the side but the multi rig is fast... Now, sure, I personally have lots of clear skies here but the guests who come for just a week have just a week. The tandem is the thing. I counsel... multi-scoping! Olly

As I said above, I think Takahashi are overly optimistic in the flat field claims they make for the FSQ85. There does seem to variability from instrument to instrument, too. I used mine with a 15mm sqyuare chip and had excellent results but I think Takahshi should be brought to book over their field size claims. This has been much discussed on here. Olly