Alanjmolloy

4 hours ago, Snooze said:

How do you find it? I read that it's harder to balance with a dslr attached to it since the L shaped ring is not long enough?

I read somewhere else that some people swap around that ring, albeit I've only seen it done on the william optics version, 60mm. Worth checking if the foot can be swapped around. Hope I'm making sense.

6 hours ago, Snooze said:

Very nice indeed! By the way how do you find the 72ED? I have seen very mixed reviews and from the pictures I have seen there seems to still be a bit of CA on brighter stars? I'm currently looking for a small ED refractor and would have liked the new evolux ed refractor but it does not seem that it will be released any time soon.

 

Cheers

I really enjoy using it. I am really looking forward to the Evolux alright, but in the interim, for such a low price, the 72ED a great grab and go scope. At <2kg, it's about the lightest in that aperture with any sort of ED glass, unless you go mad money for something like a borg. I also put it on an altaz mount too for quick visual and it is great for quick looks at the moon or doubles. 

Really happy to get an image together finally. Star adventurer, guiding with phd2, 20*90s with darks, flats and biases, a skywatcher 72 and the OVL flattener and a modded 600d with an optolong pro. Looked like it was ok for longer exposures, with 10 min test shot looking pretty good too. First foto is the 20*90s with calibration frames. Second one is just the single 10 min one without calibration. Both processed in SIRIL. Both heavy crops to 1/4 original fov.

On 09/05/2020 at 23:27, Stuf1978 said:

@Alanjmolloy Yeah I roughly align through the SA reticle then use Sharcap to nail the PA down. I never frame my targets up before polar alignment, so I have to move the scope after alignment.  I find as long as I tighten everything down properly on the SA wedge and don't tighten down the SA clutch too much it doesn't cause too much of an issue. Once I'm aligned and my target is framed up in the scope and my guide scope is pointing in the same direction it's just a case of setting the guiding away in PHD2 (make sure you have deactivated declination). I was surprised at how effective guiding is on the star adventurer as it's massively increased my exposure time and the number of sub frames I can keep. 

The only time my camera fouls on the wedge or the tripod is when I'm shooting something that's more or less overhead which is not very often. Hope that helps 😀

Really helpful, thanks!

Once I get a break in the clouds I'll give it a stab here. Locked down in Ireland so it will be an Urban Bortle 8 shot with a lot of the sky blocked by trees/buildings but at least if I can get round stars and greater than a minute or two in my ED72 I'll claim success and post it here. Thanks for your help! Alan

On 05/03/2020 at 13:50, Ken Mitchell said:

Thanks!

I had a good PA, subs were very good at 240sec. Guiding was around 2", pretty good for the SA

I've been doing some 'experiments' with phd2 to refine PA on the SA. As it doesn't guide in Dec there is usually some drift and the graph won't stay in the middle.

This can be used to perfect your PA. When the red dec line falls to the bottom of the graph it means Polaris is too high on the polar scope hour circle. When it drifts to the top, Polaris is too low. From there on you can do some fine adjustments. Usually the red dec line disappears from the screen after +-10 (in my previous sessions) now it stayed in the middle for the whole session, around 3 hrs.

I also just cleaned and re greased all the gears which might also play a roll.

 

Ken

 

Ken,

Your work is amazing. You set a really high bar that it would be great to follow. I have the same guidescope. Two cheeky questions: do you have a foto of your rig? I'm trying to figure out how to set up my SA for guiding and have been playing with a lot of options, I have the guidescope currently on a ballhead screwed onto the L bracket. Second question: How do you polar align? I'm worried I might be knocking things off by polar aligning and then moving the scope and guidescope around.
Do keep the fotos coming, they're amazing!

Alan   

On 02/03/2020 at 10:24, Stuf1978 said:

I guide the star adventurer when I use the 72ED and it's pretty effective. I've managed subs up to 5 minutes with nicely rounded stars (haven't tried longer subs yet). As daemon indicated good polar alignment is required and I use Sharcap for that 😁

Here's my set up: 

@Stuf1978 This is a great looking rig. Mine is similar but I haven't cracked the guiding bit yet. When it comes to the polar alignment, do you just rough align manually, then use sharpcap with the ballhead but leaving the main scope roughly pointing near your target or do you do something else. I think where I've been messing up is trying to get everything pointing at the pole, using sharpcap, then moving everything which probably knocks things off. I also find that with the exact same set up as you, my camera, guide scope and everything else hits off tripods and wedges if I try moving RA much. Very restricted. Any advice on this (or PHD2) appreciated. Currently I'm assuming its the polar alignment messed up, because I get really bad streaking and a terrible graph in PHD2, although at least it calibrates :-). 

Great info @Victor Boesen thanks!

Really tempted by your tak diagonal. Especially when you’re reviewing it with the same scope and eyepieces that I own. 

I still haven’t made my purchase but whenever I do, I’ll post here to let you know which I purchased and how it performs.

Great info Victor! Delighted to hear about the performance and not much color. Just need to decide whether to follow your lead or splash out on a Baader bbhs t2. 

interesting that you’re using the ES 82 eyepieces. I have read that they catch on the tak eyepiece clamp. 

If if I end up going for the bbhs I’ll post how I get on. Thanks for your great info! Alan

4 hours ago, Victor Boesen said:

Hi, I've only tried it once where I was testing the focus with the diagonal so can't quite commend on the quality of it but I will post when I've tried it out properly.

Thanks! Can’t wait to hear. Hope it goes well.

Hi Victor, have you had any views through the new Tak prism? I too have the skywatcher scope and considering a diagonal upgrade.