CraigT82

The weight of the camera may be causing the focuser to sag under gravity, or even the OTA tube to flex. OOUKs thin aluminium tubes are not known for their rigidity unfortunately. Edit: you could check if this is the case by putting the scope flat on a table with the focuser pointing straight up and then repeating the Cheshire/camera test. If the issue goes away then you know it’s likely flex somewhere.

Really nice shot with delicate processing of the sky, right up my street 👍🏼

To be fair on the Mewlon it sounds like he had something wrong with his scope. I’ve heard plenty of Mewlon owners praising the scopes rock solid collimation As for Knobby’s dilemma, I’d be looking hard at a used C9.25. About 9kg and easily carried by any of the new harmonic drive mounts, even could be pushed into service on an EQ5 if necessary. Packs an aperture punch for its weight and a proven performer too for planetary imaging.

Nice shots, I love this target there’s so much going on.

Probably due to the inherent dithering of planetary imaging

Thanks Mark. I haven’t used it in anger yet, I think I might rotate the scope in the rings so that the Focuser is on the outside so I’m not tripping over the tripod legs.

Sirsalis J seems to be at the end of a long ridge (or plateau, even), you can see this in the image postage but it's very obvious is the shaded relief map. The two impacts, Sirsalis J and F are on opposite sides of this ridge, hence the varied shadow angles.

Yes… the less distance between the Barlow lens and the camera sensor the less the power increase of the Barlow lens. Assuming you can actually unscrew the lens and it’s not fixed that is. I can’t say that screwing a 2x Barlow lens directly onto the nose of a camera will give you exactly 1.5x, as that will depend on the Barlow itself. You might need to do some experimenting to figure out the power of the Barlow you have when used like this. Otherwise some Barlow manufacturers post charts or formulas to allow you to calculate the power based on the distance between lens and sensor - I know Baader do for their VIP Barlow, perhaps Televue too but I’m not sure.

My most expensive Astro purchase by far… Shiny new AZ-EQ6. Bought from FLO, customer return so nice little discount. No signs of use whatsoever and even the boxes were in decent nick. Holds the old 300p nicely, will be for visual this year with the aim to getting back to planetary imaging next year (or m perhaps later this year if the spare money gods smile on me a little more!) Gonna try it out in EQ mode tomorrow to see if four CW will be enough. Hoping so with the extension bar. Edit: It DOES balance with 4 weights, happy camper here! Takes a full 7kg less to balance than the same scope on my old EQ6, thanks to the longer and thicker CW bar.

Just FYI Auto focus routines can be set to run on binned images which speeds up the image download time. I used a Lakeside Astro kit with my old Atik 383L (same sensor as your camera I believe?) and with binned images for focusing it was a couple mins at most to focus between filters.

Bigger is better IMO. But whether your seeing allows you to capitalise on the larger aperture is another matter. You could go ahead and make a full size aperture and then experiment with masks over the front of it to give you different sized apertures? I think a single A3 sheet of the Baader film would cover an 8” aperture.

Hiya, you’re right the larger focuser causes an issue as the eyepiece is then held too far out. However due to the Heritage’s truss tube you can just collapse the trusses a little and that pushes the focal point further out to meet the eyepiece. You can see how much by in the image below. Luckily the secondary mirror on the Heritage is somewhat oversized so there a no light loss by shortening the tube in this way.

If you don’t have the DIY skills to make something for a DC supplied mount then your best bet would be the prologik meter. You could try a cheap clamp ammeter which can be had for £25 but even then you’ll need to split the positive wire out of the power supply lead. Also like others have said the readings may not be very usable either. I’m half tempted to buy a big bag of panel ammeters, project boxes and a reel of cable and start making… I reckon I could undercut the Prologik guys quite significantly.

That’s a nice bit of kit, wouldnt have looked out of place bolted to my old Fullerscope mk3 (with it’s deadly 240v synchro motors!)

The 678mc looks interesting to me, similar read noise to the 462mc but with a larger format and with smaller pixels (2.0um vs 2.9um), which would allow imaging at shorter focal lengths: Altogether much easier to get the planet on the chip!

Announced on Twitter…

I used to used the ZWO OAG with my 200p, the guide stars were always banana shaped but PHD2 would guide just fine. It can help to have the guide cam slightly defocused to help PHD2 calculate the centroid a bit better. On my set up I have the OAG prism intruding into the light path somewhat, not horrendously but it was definitely slightly in front of the sensor. It didn’t affect the images and flats should take care of any dimming of the image due to the prism. So don’t be hesitant to push the prism in a bit more if it helps with getting nicer guide stars or better focus. As for rotation I always had the long axis of the camera aligned with RA, whatever the target… it just made everything easier; from aligning multi nights imaging to diagnosing tracking errors.

Really nice images there Neil, Jupiter is looking quite different to last year. It’s nice of it to change it’s cloud belts around each season to keep us interested! Rather that a filter wheel have you though about a filter drawer? Much lighter than a wheel and makes it easy to swap between filters. This is the one I’ve used…. https://www.365astronomy.com/TS-Optics-Filter-Quick-Changer-incl.-1x-1.25-Filter-Drawer-Low-Profile

What slightly annoys me about that image is that it’s been rotated so that the diff spikes form a + rather than an x, which for me is a like a hallmark of Hubble. Not impressed!

I you have the cash and are happy to spend it that’s great. My point - and the whole reason I chimed into this thread- is to point out that there is an alternative, thrifty way of getting the same end result. Not trying to knock anyone’s way of doing things. Plenty of us on this forum who like to save the pennies where we can.

Nice find! I’d say it’s definitely not a stony meteorite as they usually have a fusion crust and contraction cracks with lighter mineral visible underneath, also more rounded too. It doesn’t look like a pure iron meteorite judging by the cut face (you could also rule out iron meteorite by testing the density) So that leaves stony-iron meteorites. It does have a bit of a look of a Pallasite meteorite maybe but they tend to have more of a ordered ‘fragments in a matrix’ look to the cut faces whereas this looks a bit more chaotic on the cut face. Pallasite meteorites are some of the rarest of all so likely not that. Unfortunately I think it’s probably slag but if it were me I’d get it checked out just in case.

A - nope B- yep (Now I’m half expecting you to post a perfect looking image captured with the parameters outline in A!)

Doesn’t matter if you measure on the AC side or the DC side… the current varies with the power consumption just the same. You just get a smaller value for current on the AC side as the voltage is higher. Here is a (rubbish) video I made using the one I linked to:

What you’re paying for there is a shiny case, nice leads and an LCD display. It still only reads down to milliamps, same as the cheapo Amazon one, so precision is the same.

That does like a nicely made bit of kit but if you don’t want to spend £65 one of these can do the job for a lot less money… Decdeal LCD Display Electricity Usage Power Meter Socket Energy Watt Volt Amps Wattage KWH Consumption Analyzer Monitor Outlet AC230V~250V UK Plug https://amzn.eu/d/0rLbE73