Merlin66

Interesting project... I did similar using a tin shed. The wall height did restrict the views but with all the surrounding houses etc etc it was not a real issue. When I moved to St Leonards I inherited a 6 x 3 mtr workshop. Decided to remove the roof over half and run it back over the existing section. The pier I had was extending by welding and adding a "Titantic anchor!!" extension piece to bring the telescope closer to the the wall height. It's been is use now for almost four years - no issues no drama other than due to the mount height visual observing is very (very!) difficult and everything is now controlled "semi-remotely"

+1 for Stelledoppie.

Can you share what you did to solve the problem??

Hartung used a small 60 deg dispersion prism behind the eyepiece to help find small planetaries. The surrounding stars will show small spectra bands whereas the planetary will be a steady bright spot. Works well.

These 80mm Binos are being over-sold....There's no way you will achieve a "x144" useful magnification. I'd say the mentioned x20 is more realistic. These are very light weight ABS plastic Binos (4 Lbs) and could be carried on any sturdy photographic tripod. IMHO these would not be recommended for astronomy. Something like the Celestron versions would be much better. https://www.celestron.com/collections/astronomy-binoculars

I used a 6mm wide x 30 tooth wheel (bore 6mm to match the motor) and a matching 100 tooth XML belt. The bracket was the original plus some spacers to get a reasonable belt alignment with the 10:1 knob and good tension (not too tight). (Additional "refinement" - I sawed the boss from the toothed wheel and drilled tapped an M4 grub screw in the toothed section. This gives a neater look.)

Hmmm. What aperture and weight????

All's well that ends well.

+1 for Astroart.... It punches well above it's weight.

When you unzip the download, you get three folders: BIN, DOCS, PRESETS The Bin folder holds the ffmpeg.exe - just copy that to the AS3! main folder which has the Autostakkert.exe

In Aladin/ Simbad it seems to be all IC63 http://simbad.u-strasbg.fr/simbad/sim-coo?Coord=00+59+01.37%2B60+53+17.8&CooFrame=ICRS&CooEqui=2000.0&CooEpoch=J2000&Radius.unit=arcmin&submit=query+around&Radius=10

Yeah, No encoders...... BUT: SW website says- Using the integrated RS232 port, you can control the telescope from your computer and take advantage of today’s most advanced astronomy software. The illustration of the SW EQ6Rpro doesn't show such a usb(?) connection????????????????? R= Rowan belt derive????

Yes, celestial equator.

Running out of ideas.... This is my AS3 folder showing the ffmpeg.exe (this is a C:/ location)

Always better to calibrate on a star closer to the equator. PHD will then make corrections for the dec of the target.

The guys on the Antique Telescope Society forum I'm sure could help. https://ats-forum.groups.io/g/ATS-Forum

The numbering of SW EQ mounts is a maze..... Numbers/ letters all over the place! The best I can glean from the alphabet soup is: -R = Refined (!) includes belt drive and encoders, as well as the USB (EQDir) port -Rh = as above but with the Renshaw "Home" encoders. Az- = Belt drive and encoders

The latest release of CdC V4.3-4194 now includes satellite data from Naif spice kernel. The precision is now just a few meters because this same computation is used to drive the spacecrafts. (Most (all?) other planetarium software still use the Explanatory Supplement to the Astronomical Almanac calculations which are now pretty dated. I found Saturn's Phoebe position was not correct, leading Patrick to update CdC. I'm appreciative of his hard work and continued support for Cartes du Ciel)

Neil, OK I downloaded: ffmpeg-4.3.1-2020-10-28-essentials_build Extracted to the AS3! folder and made sure the ffmpeg.exe was in the same location as autostakkert.exe I don't have any mov files but downloaded a sample from the net..... AS3! opened it OK.....

Icosahedron, Thanks for the update.

Check out: https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/716548-problems-with-autostakkert-and-filetype-fuji-camera/

I see it's recommended to have ffmpeg.exe loaded in the AS3! folder..... This handles the MOV to AVI etc. https://ffmpeg.org/

https://www.astropix.com/wp/2016/03/10/converting-mov-to-avi/ Does this help??

I use PIPP to convert from MOV to AVI. https://sites.google.com/site/astropipp/ (Don't know about MP4)

Valerio, It's more usual to use a tungsten lamp to prepare a spectral flat. (you can see you have some doughnuts in the red) Using this technique and approximating to the Planck curve can obviously work (a la Buil). It's more usual to use his "long" method with a suitably placed A type star. I assume you calibrated the lamp from an earlier reference spectrum? You followed the instruction, very well and obtained an Instrument response. The profile obtained looks different due to the CMOS camera you used. The pronounced dip around the 5700A (and some of the others) is due to the Bayer matrix. The sanity check for a response curve is to divide the original by the response and see if it matches the "reference" ( i.e. the Planck curve for 2950K) When this is done, there's a pretty good match - inferring the response curve was doing its job. (You can try the same exercise with your solar spectrum and using a G2v reference. - I've already done this and the response curve generated is very similar!!) Your camera is doing its job and is, as you see, quite responsive in the red - not a bad thing. Re Slit gap This depends on the resolution you want to achieve and the star size at the telescope focus (check out SimSpec) Narrower gaps give higher resolution, but reduced throughput, for fainter targets it's sometimes better to loose some resolution to get better SNR. You're doing well!