CraigT82

Interested to see this comparison but tifs of 50mb each is a bit large, not to mention my device won't open them! Could you convert jpeg and repost? Cheers

Nice. The use of electrical tape as a ring liner is new to me but makes perfect sense as a grippy interface The use of a bike QR Lever is inspired!

That is a really nice image, super detail! Those Mewlons are really something tasty scopes. I wonder what the system strehl is for the 180.

That Baader FFC is doing a great job of keeping the image sharp to the edges. With the f/4.5 diffraction limited field diameter of 6mm (at x3) and the full sensor diagonal of 15.8mm I would expect a blurry mess at the edges but they actually look great! What an interesting bit of kit.

Yeah the ringing is a real PITA, and in the past I've junked images altogether because I just couldn't control it. I'd love to see some kind of paper on what it is exactly and how it comes about. 8 Saying that though it really is barely there in Mike's images and only visible when pixel peeping... definitely doesn't take anything away from the overall images which are top notch.

Very nice Roy, so much fine detail to see and a really nice 'HD' feel. Are you usign the full size of the 183 sensor for these?

Superb Neil! Even got a clear view of the rille in Valles Alpes. Hadley Rille looking lovely too.

Some nice fine detail visible there, aperture of the 9.25 showing it's capabilities. Nice work👍

Oh yeah the EQ5 is an improvement over the EQ3-2. Not massively better but slightly better. Your first post reads like you just wanted to add goto to your existing EQ3-2!

Just about to hit the buy button on one of these, for lunar and planetary. Was thinking of the 462C but the larger size of the sensor of the 485 means that when using with an ADC, the planet could stay on the chip after adjusting the ADC, as opposed to it moving off the chip of a smaller sensor and then having to move the scope off axis to get it back.

Beautiful M51! Really nice work

Fantastic Mike! If I had to pick at something I'd say there is a bit of ringing in the crater shadows in the crops from the mosaic but I can't see them in the full size image. Really well done 👏

Superb M51👍 Really like how you haven't pushed the saturation too far

Well the frames that made it were absolutely spot on! Your stars look perfect to my eye and there are so many faint little galaxies in the background that I haven't really noticed before and would probably just totally disappear with poorer tracking. Just goes to show what a 'budget' mount and a 'budget' scope can do in the right hands! 👍👍👍

That's a real belter! Stunning when viewed full sized. What were the exposure lengths for this one?

All the frames you posted are suffering from the same thing... trailing in the RA direction (see screenshot below for RA direction angle: see how it matches the direction of trailing in your images). Some of this is probably periodic error, guiding should be able to deal with that. But some of it is likely due to horrendous backlash and nothing is going to help with that apart from reducing the backlash using the three different types of adjustment on the EQ6. 1) spur gear meshing. You need to get the gear on the motor shaft nicely engaged with the gear on the worm shaft. You will need to remove the motherboard and faceplate and use a screwdriver to loosen the motor mounting screws. Use your fingers to push the motor down/in whilst looking through the peephole (see second image below) and tighten the motors screws again when the teeth are well meshed. 2) worm gear/ring meshing. The worm gear is the shaft with the 'slanted teeth' which is turned by the motors. This engages with the worm ring which is a larger diameter gear and turns with the scope. This adjustment is done by loosening the 4 hex bolts in the worm housing slightly, and then adjusting the two recessed grub screws (tighten one, loosen other) which moves the whole worm gear block either closer or further from the worm ring, before tightening the 4 hex bolts again. 3) worm gear end float. This is the sideways movement of the worm gear shaft and is adjusted by turning the slotted ring under the small round black cap on the side of the worm housing (as seen in the pic). Too tight and the motors will stall and if too loose the shaft will move too much. There is no concrete rule to which order you make these adjustments in, and you won't get it right by making just one adjustment to each... rather it is an iterative process with a lot of back and forth and moving the mount with the handset in-between each adjustment to see if you have caused any issues with binding or motor stalling. There are plenty of vids on YouTube showing how to make these adjustments and a video is always better than written instructions imo!

Fantastic... extra crispy at 100%!

Nice shots, would love to own an ED100 soon day

Very nice set of images there

Really interesting stuff! Another cool thing I need to add to the list of stuff I want to do

That is great work Mike, I know what you mean about difficulties in getting nice images when the crescent is thin but you've nailed those. Green filter is really allowing the big frac to work it's stuff. I have been considering a siebert barlow for a while so will be good to hear about your experience with it.

Lovely image, perfectly sharp at the limb which is hard to achieve with an achro. How are you finding the QHY 462? I've got a 462C on my shopping list but not sure about ZWO or QHY version. I think QHY because I prefer the shape of them... can be slid right down into the focuser if needed.

Will go on EQ6 for now (on short pier). See how I get on with that. It's heavier than my fullerscope but crucially it is shorter Edit: just ran the lever arm calcs and the 300p comes to 78Nm whilst Fullerscope is 61Nm. Will be quite a bit more difficult for the old EQ6 to throw around 😕

Well... I've gone and bought the old blue 300p that was in the classifieds. Really excited to get it pointed at the moon!

Wow that is a real stunner Neil.... such fine detail being resolved. 9000 alignment points must have took ages to run in Autostakkert?!