tooth_dr

Cheers. I picked up something yesterday at 1:10am that’s why I was wondering!

Fabulous capture and presentation. Was this on the 12th or 13th?

Grub screws arrived today. Thanks again @johninderby @fireshipjohn

Past two nights I've noticed a problem with my QHY9 camera. Initially I took a few images, to assess framing and focus, and all was ok. But then the images started appearing as blank, and there was no histogram visible in the software. I increased the exposure time to 20s and a starry image appeared but it has a broad white band down the centre of the image, covering about 10% of the image. I tried updating the drivers and changing the USB leads, but the problem still persisted. I tried at 0 degrees and -20 degrees but not much difference. The shape of the white pattern changes, and in some cases it decreased to three single white lines Any ideas what is going on here? The camera is second hand, and I've only used it a couple of times, but on both those occasions it performed fine. Otherwise I've not changed anything in terms of power supplies etc. Any input welcome. TIA Adam.

Nice capture btw

I got a similar capture last night, that was the only one of note. I have a little meteor camera that can pick up meteors live as they happen at 25 FPS down to mag +4 or +5 but at 8mm FL. I think the light just gets too spread out on the all sky cameras, which are shooting at 2.1 or 2.5mm FL and F1.6. For example I recorded probably 50+ perseids over 2 nights at 8mm covering a small part of the sky, and got about 4 on the asll sky camera.

Nice one Gary, that is a really professional looking job.

Nice capture. I did the same, but came out to find the battery pack had exhausted after 7 exposures, despite being 3 out of 4 lights on it. I dont think I've ever had any real success with meteor capture using a DLSR!

Thanks Donal, its very different from the usual deep sky imaging we do, image capture feels much more involving, and you feel more part of the process. Processing though is hard - it looks like it should be easy, but it really isnt.

I got home from work at 3pm, and was having a pretty bad day due to work related matters. My wife encouraged me to get the solar scope out and I am glad she did, lovely proms on display today. Lunt 60mm, 290MM. I very much enjoyed using the new focuser bracket and pressure tuner, though the uneven illumination makes mosaics tricky.

This. An orange version of TV.

You bought the pulsar one for sale on here 👍🏼 My pier is 500mm at the base and my concrete base is about 80cm square. I suppose the narrower you go the more chance of movement but depth is important too. Mostly these things are overdone to prevent failure, which is costly to rectify.

Perfect. I’ll remove the dome from the equipment profile in SGPro and just let POTH do it. That will also limit the plethora of places for settings, as currently to change an offset I have to do it in three places. It’s looking partially clear tonight so if my luck holds out I’ll try another run tonight. I always feared that the slit in the dome was just another thing to go wrong, and with a ror shed the sky is freely visible. But the dome should significantly outweigh the roll off roof in terms of benefits once i get it set up.

Very nice setup. Makes my widefield image positively zoomed in 😂

I have a lot of respect for you!!! I certainly will now complain less about my dome after hearing all these trial and tribulations

Thank you for the reply Nicolàs, I appreciate it When this message happens in SGPro, POTH completely locks up and crashes when I click 'connect dome'. I have to force it to close and restart it. I dont think it works right after this and would necessitate a reboot of the PC, but at this stage I've platesolve and am sitting ready to image, it's a PITA.

Thanks Steve. So the dome works totally as normal if the POTH slave button is ticked. SGPro (I think it's in SGPro) does a dome update every 60s, so what appears to be happening is that SGPro is commanding the POTH box to untick, and ticking it's own box with SGPro. When I check the slave box in POTH, and it's unticked, I go into SGPro setting, and the slave to telescope box is checked in SGPro. It seems like there must be a conflict there? Perhaps I should just not connect the dome to SGPro, if it works in POTH I wonder why I would need to connect in SGPro? That might not the problem though either.

Hi Steve I did exactly that, and used a dremel to carefully remove the skirt off the shutter section and about 2cm past it either side. The shutter now operates perfectly, cheers. Unfortunately still having problems and spent two hours last night, finally giving up at 1am, feeling tired and frustrated. Something isnt quite right with the dome, POTH and SGPro. I will try to summarise. I can connect ok to mount and dome to SGPro via POTH. I have a look on CdC and then slew to my first target using say CdC (also via POTH). I then take a photo in SGPro and platesolve this, that works fine too. Then randomly it will say in the notifications in SGPro 'external disconnect of dome detected'. I can no longer connect to the dome and in POTH it just hangs and I have to shut it down. I then unplug the dome controller (Shelyak) and reconnect and I can then connect to the dome. I have to reset the home position using the dome software and resync the home position. When I reconnect in SGPro, all seems fine, but it doesnt track the scope. There are 'slave to telescope' check boxes. If I tick the one in POTH the dome seems to rotate properly, but once connected to SGPro, this box automatically becomes unticked and one in SGPro is ticked (under slave setting for POTH dome). The dome doesnt rotate though. However if I tick the POTH slave to telescope it starts to track the mount again, but then it reverts back to being off automatically. It's hard to summarise this is words, so that doesnt make much sense I'm sure. But essentially SGPro seems to want to disconnect the dome on occasions, and when it does connect it doesnt track. 100% this is a user input/software error, but it's frustrating as anything. Any help would be appreciated. I do use the Shelyak dome controller, but it's via POTH so hopefully someone can help me see what I'm doing wrong.

Thats them ordered. Ended up buying a few more bits to justify the £6 postage.

Tell me about it! I needed four stainless steel button head M6 bolts to replace rusty ones on my dome, and ended up spending £33 on various sizes of bolts that I 'might' need in the future. Any you cant buy just a pack of 4, you need to buy 20 to get the best value 😁

Thanks Mark, appreciate it. I’ve found them above.

Thank you so much. Perfect

I've tried to find these, but I cant seem to get anywhere. Slotted or allen key style, doesnt matter. Has anyone bought something similar? I can find companies taking large orders, or bespoke orders with 25 days waiting time. I need 3 of them. Thanks Adam

I bought a used 2” Baader 7nm filter off here a few weeks back, it’s working really well I think. Works down to F2.8

Great job Mick, I like this target.