dark knight

On the esprit ed120 there is a 5mm air gap between the dew shield and the glass elements/cell so can understand why putting the dew band on the dew shield wouldn't necessarily be the most efficient place

Hmmm the fog was definately on the innermost glass surface, maybe some damp has got inside the tube and caused the fogging? Going to order a 2 inch dessi cap to see if that will remove it, only other thing i can think of is to use a hairdryer on low heat and put some warm air inside the tube and see if that helps dry it out, open to suggestions first of course. Also there seems to be a severe difference in opinions on where to put the dew band, some saying on the dew shield is a waste of time as it needs to be behind the front element directly on the ota, the dew shield doesnt sit tight against the ota and therefore doesnt transfer the heat to where it is needed

I'll try that thnx, i think its the inner glass that is more problematic with mine though as its a triplet

Hi all, really struggling with where to position front element dew band heater. Telescope is an esprit ed120 pro, the problem is the built in dew shield means the dew band is some 5 inches away back down the tube from the front element glass which after half an hour is still fogged up, any ideas?

A warm welcome back.

Cut required m2 out of the lawn and put astro turf back in its place😁

There are usb powered dew prevention bands that run off a small rechargeable power bank battery

DC to DC voltage step down converter coupled with a dummy battery for my dslr, allows me to run the the dslr from a 12v supply instead of the mains, oh an i'll second the velcro!!

I use different software for each application, phd2 for the guiding camera and NINA for the imaging camera, the two pieces of software run simultaneously and in harmony on a single laptop

Wow that is stunning David!! I think my esprit 120 ed with its matched flattener should be ok, ive never done bias or flats before so plenty to learn, ive previously been using a modded canon 1000d and had some ok results but really like the idea of the 6d full frame

Wow hiya Michael, a fellow 6d user, thanks for the pointers, is yours astro modded ? Where do i set the dither to 12 pixels, would that be in NINA?

Just wondering if anyone can give me a good start point for the settings when using this camera for astro, mine is unmodded presently and is connected up to my esprit 120ed pro, all controlled via NINA and guided via phd2 mounted on neq6 pro. Any pointers are very welcome.

Well after a disastrous evening imaging trying to combat dew ive decided to get some help, also thought it better to also get some help with guiding after struggling with phd and my qhy5 guide cam, enter the fight my new allies,,,,,,,,a ASI 120mm mini guide cam and a h-itech 4 channel dew controller

Yup, i will be getting it modded, just got to decide on full spectrum or not

Well I'm now going full frame astrophotography, hopefully this will go well with my esprit 120ed

After you receive it back a quick review of the company doing the conversion would be very welcome, I'm looking at getting my canon 6d converted for astro

After the council installed an LED street light at front of our house I contacted them about the light intrusion into our garden, within a month they had come out and dimmed the light so our garden is now back in darkness, well done West Wilts Council, now anyone found the off switch for all the clouds?

I had a skywatcher 200p and used it for both visual and astro photography on a neq6, it produced reasonable photographs and i found it quite capable but remember reflectors need regular collimation.

Im more into the astro photography side of things and would say the mount is critical, something like a neq6 mount would provide a very stable platform and can carry a decent payload of equipment, it is fairly heavy though. It can easily manage a 10 inch reflector for visual and an 8 inch reflector with photography accessories. It really depends on how portable you want to be, where you going to use it, back garden or trip out to dark site, whether you want to run everything via software and a laptop, how you going to power everything etc etc

+1 for software, has to be number 1, platesolving makes you wonder how we ever managed without it and to think its all done in seconds bringing an unparalleled level of accuracy to framing a target, then there's the image processing software and of course we need something to run all this software on so a laptop makes it to joint number 1 for me

After doing lots of reading im now looking to upgrade from my modded 1000d to a modded 6d, i think the full frame sensor of the 6d will be ideally suited to my esprit 120ed pro

+1 for Turn Left at Orion

Have you tried saving images to the camera sd card instead, maybe the download to your laptop is too long (are you using usb2 ports by any chance), this may cause the busy notification

Problem is the thread on the kit flattener that came with the esprit 120 ed is m62