upahill

My 2 cents - dont shy away from eBay/ secondhand. PayPal buyer protection is pretty good and will cover you against receiving anything not as described. My first (and current) camera was a Canon 1200D - picked it up as a faulty unit on eBay for a cheeky offer of £80 (2 years ago) - its only fault was being unable to write to the SD card, which didnt bother me as it hooks up to the PC for downloading. I would strap a canon and the cheapest telephoto lens I could get to the mount and just have a play - you wont be able to do long exposure until you can track, but you'll get there if you get the bug. I have taken some great moon shots in the past with £15 car boot manual lenses with adapters. If you get the bug I would not upgrade the EQ3-2 to motorised but rather save a little for an EQ5/6. EQ5 mounts regularly go on eBay for £250-£350 - EQ6 for around £600 its a lot less hassle to save for an EQ5/6 than to try and diy mod something (depends how handy you are), if you really want to get into the imaging side of things though - "put the money where the mount is". Its probably the piece of gear that will stick with you the longest and be the most responsible for getting good long exposures. You can progress to using an upgraded mount and your dslr/lens setup straight away without the need for a telescope and get some really good widefield shots whilst you decide on your best choice of telescope. Plus you can put your existing telescope onto it for visual use too. If I was starting again from scratch with just a camera I might look into mounts like the star adventure - £130-£220 second hand. A lightweight setup for widefield and just cameras / small scopes. Whilst these are less expensive and much more portable they wont help further down the line if you decide to go bigger with the scope, so a used EQ5 Synscan would still be preferable to me. Check out some of the simpler setups people on YouTube use to get an idea of the results. Some of my favs include AstroBackyard and Galactic Hunter. Both used DSLRs early on with great results.

Postie just dropped off a small box courtesy of @david_taurus83 - many thanks Now I just need something to gather the photons that pass through it 🤨

It's not a problem thats going to go away anytime soon. I was suprised to see that the marquee and tents were going in the further field, last year that area looked like it was lower than the other fields if i recall correctly. I imagine finding a campsite that has all the facilities, and is willing to have large extended bookings is tricky during peak times. I like the time of year, just a shame that these long periods of rain and the wye flooding is becoming a regular occurence.

Should be reasonably brittle, I use a pair of sharp side cutters to clean up the edges once the bulk is removed.

Getting back into the swing of things, first "proper" image processed from the obsy. Struggled a bit with reducing the star field to make the neb pop so may go back on that. It's a suprisingly dense area.

Have just spotted my refund for the pitches, not the food though which was a seperate order so ill assume that will happen later. Now if only I could remember what card I paid with, and if it still exists? 🤣 Edit: @FLO I have emailed regarding this as im pretty sure now the refund is in the ether, the card/account no longer exists 😛

Thats incredible, the sheer volume of water is difficult to think about. We didnt open our shop in Hereford today as we didnt think we would get there from Monmouth, everyone in Ross is warning the water levels are still rising (im guessing it takes a few days to seep through everything and drain in the waterways.) I must have left before that, or slept through it - but yes it was quite unsettling being so close to the river and wondering if we would have to make a mad dash for it.

Sorry to hear this, it might be worth checking to see if you have an travel insurance policies that would cover you, sometimes you get policies included with things like bank accounts and it might help. Hopefully due to the flooding/weather the hire company will show some leniency.

Oh no what a shame was getting very excited, even got the caravan dragged out and clean today. Probably for the best though, floating is a nightmare for P.A. Thanks for the notice and sorry to everyone who worked hard putting it all together. 😥

Saw a picture earlier of a few hundred thousand apples floating down the river again like last year. At least we wont starve. Drove past ross-under-wye yesterday and its pretty epic. Hopefully the campsite's flood defenses will keep us all in place.

If the Wye gets any higher you'll need a tugboat rather than a tractor. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-50199254 Highest in 20 years supposedly, although I seem to remember it being worse a couple of years ago. No heavy rain forecast for this week coming though so dont think it will be a repeat of last year.

Based on the forecast I have now commited to not bringing the imaging setup, but will stick with the LX10. I'll be learning how to use it pretty much from scratch so if anyone is free and able to offer any tips on aligning and using the Magellan unit I would appreciate picking your brains.

Dehumidifier is in and working overtime. If I stick with this one ill need to plumb a hose to it to enable it to never fill. Next little job was to install some filter on the internal light so I dont screw up my D.A every time I need to change a cable. I do have a red LED head torch but its handy for big stuff to be able to get a little more light. The mount has dried out, been cleaned a little and some of the sticky stuff removed. I could really do with repainting that counter weight though! With the cabling done again and a little neater this time I will have to go through a new polar alignment this evening before anything else. The pier isnt very level up top, and to make it worse this EQ6 is obviously slightly different to the one that was on it previously. The raised lip where it mates to the pier adapter is ever so slightly deeper and wider so its rocking. To fix this temporarily I have raised the whole mount on three washers before clamping down. If I ever get a lathe I shall redo the internal recess on the adapter to offer a little more room.

Ah, if it printed in that orientation then it shouldn't have failed at all. Your top layer infill looked like layer lines, and the cylindrical holes looked very neat so I assumed it was printed with the small rectangle overhanging. You mention that this part is a slider, if thats the case you may want to orient it so that the holes are printing vertically, you will have to tackle the overhang of that rectangle but wont get the stepped edges on the cylinders which could affect the motion of the finished product (Im not familiar with what you are printing but as a general rule I try to print cylinders and holes in vertical orientation) Good luck with the reprint.

Assuming it was printed on the side facing us then yes an overhang like that will need supports. It would need internal supports too. If enabled your slicer should be able to work out what supports will be needed and where.

Nothing really, just preference, I have tried INDI and couldn't get on with it, would prefer to stick to a windows based setup which would mean buying a SFF Windows PC - more expensive than a hub. I have plenty of systems around me which can run everything already so its just the more cost effective solution. I might reconsider when I am using a larger scope, or have some disposable income but right now I am WAAAAYYYY over my astro budget

Well the wind the other night blew the aperture clean off the dome and soaked all the gear inside, so its been drying out over the past day or so. I think everything has survived so spending the clear day now sorting out the mess, de-spidering and running some trunking under the deck to get power to the pier without the trip hazard. Since the sky is crystal and the forecast is looking good for this evening the focus is on reassembling all the gear so I can test it all out later. I will probably run a seperate trunk for data cables, but not sure yet where I want the laptop/PC set up to be. This is one of the things I will experiment with today - I have custom USB cables to make to keep everything as short as possible but want to ideally avoid having a micro-pc mounted on the scope itself. Instead I am thinking I will just mount a small hub on the dovetail and run a single USB cable back to the computer. I will distribute 12v to the devices in much the same way with a seperate 12v hub. I have been looking for a Powered USB 3.0 Hub PCB which I can integrate into a custom housing but not had any luck yet. Eventually I will need ports for Mount, Guidecam, Imaging camera, Focuser, Filterwheel and an automated flat/flap of some sort - so at least 6 ports, Will spend a couple of hours tackling those annoying little jobs that need finishing and see where I get to and hopefully post some pictures.

Looks good. The problem with weak infill is it can be easily missed, once the top layers go on and cover it up it looks great, but the structural support it was also adding just isnt there. I ripped a picture off the net to demonstrate... This infill would probably be good enough to support the top layer but isnt going to add much strength to the part, so when you knock it it could break. It's worth dialling in the settings for infill to give you the strongest possible parts. As with this part the external perimeters can look fine too, but the infill will often print using different speeds / overlap so needs to be tuned. Another tip would be that a part like you printed probably wouldnt need a raft if the bed is nice and level. There is plenty of contact with the bed. You will get a cleaner finish on the bottom surface and save some material. You must be over the moon to get parts like that though, took me months of fiddling with my first printer to get anything close to it. 👍

Infill looks a bit stringy there and might be printing too fast, can't quite tell but what are your layers looking like, any gaps between them?

Do you have the magnetic build sheet on your model? I thought it was quite flexible and parts should just pop off if you bend the build sheet. Ours was an older model without that sheet so havent had chance to try it. Like Chriske says I rarely print over 35-40% infill for anything. Infact the majority of my infill is 10-20%. You set the microns in the slicer as the layer height, so 0.2 - 0.25 layer height for the main body. Smaller layers increase the print time but make the finished output cleaner, larger layers are quick but not so pretty. Regarding your screen, one of the issues I have had in the past with them is the ribbon cables seem particularly prone to picking up interference if run too close to power/bed cables. Could be worth considering checking for that next time you are having issues with it.

I find the fox screaming pretty un-nerving, it can sound exactly like the neighbour being brutally tortured to death and screaming for help. It's only the fact that we know what foxes sound like that has stopped us from calling the police. ... and were not that keen on the neighbours. 😂 We have also been adopted by a cat, it lives in the barn and uses that as its hunting ground - it doesn't venture into the garden because of the dogs but will late at night. Have been sat at the laptop imaging with a red torch on my head only to turn to the side and see a spooky illuminated cat staring at me from close range. They can be pretty ninja like.

Oooh we've gone from quarantine right into the thick of it 🤣 Does anyone know how many parking spots are near the entrance, SWMBO is working for a fair chunk of the SP so will be back and forth, if we can park out of the way it might be better.

Had another go at processing the M45 data last night. One thing really bugging me is the halos around the larger stars. I am assuming these are caused by the UHC-S filter in the T-ring adapter but cant work out if the fact they are not concentric throughout the field is indicative of filter alignment, or just normal. Eitherway I think im going to move on from M45 until I get a bit better at processing, it seems very difficult to bring out the detail without super long exposures.

Yes the pump is in the waterblock, and controlled from the CPU fan header usually, if its PWM controlable you could rig something up to reduce the pump speed and reduce vibration.

If you mean colorfabb I did look and it appears to be free to the UK by DHL I would consider a large plastic tub with a hole & filter on the side and a bar for it to rest on inside. That way 99% of it is sealed from dust etc.