tooth_dr

I’ll get a few photos up of the construction, interior, etc, but this is it currently.

Thanks 👍🏼 I haven’t set it up yet so I’m just manually moving it. I’ll bear that in mind re park position.

Thanks Peter, I did turn it round earlier. Will get a look at the rubber strip tomorrow.

Seems pretty even. I think the missing rubber strip is the issue

Thanks for checking! Rubber strip not there. I think I remember seeing one in a box, I’ll check tomorrow.

Fantastic capture. Didn’t quite get it today, so nice to see your image.

Hi Today was the first rain since I erected my dome. As I was standing inside it I could feel a few spits of rain on my face. The rain was blowing in through the top of the slot (see photo where light is coming in). This is a used dome - is there something missing or does it need modified with a little flexible flap added?

You could prob increase the colour but it’s a lovely image as it is. I actually have data of this from April. Have processed it twice, gave up both times.

My friend has my pier welded up. A few edges to round off and then he’s painting it tomorrow. Looks really good I think. With the diameter of the holes on the mesu wedge an 8” pipe wouldn’t work. He managed to find a 4’ long piece of 6” pipe with 11mm wall thickness locally and went from there.

The 290MM is expensive, and on paper it is hard to justify based on figures alone. But in reality it works really well as an OAG. I also use it for solar imaging, so I felt more justified in the cost.

What about a baader clicklock. That would be a direct replacement for the piece you have removed.

Yes, in my practical side by side experience it’s a lot better. I didnt make it up!

I just switched from a 120MM to a 290MM for my OAG. The difference is wow! I regularly have my gain down to 40% or less to avoid oversaturating the brighter stars to guide on. The 120MM always like it needed 110% gain, just never quite enough.

Really nice image Carole. Starnet does seem to produce really good results for me, but it doesnt run like a conventional program. Having said that it's very simple to use once you know how to run it. I hope you dont mind, I took the liberty of trying it on your jpeg. It didnt work well on the colour RGB image directly, so I converted it to a mono image, then used Starnet. I then used that as a lum layer and added it onto the original RGB posted above. It would probably work better if I wasnt using a jpeg > TIFF. Just food for thought for you.

That's come out rather well indeed! Could the Oiii be rescued in Starnett++ and still be used??

Nice close ups. I bought a tilt adapter for my 290MM and it works perfectly. I popped in my 120MM for a quick test session and the rings reappeared even with the tilt adapter.

It's currently siliconed and bolted to the concrete The height didnt really matter too much as I am making a new pier to suit. My current observatory has wall height of 150cm, so I've found the dome, at 172cm quite high.

Looks like a good job John, the brick work looks nice.

I have got the same figures guiding with a SW guidescope at 185mm as I do with my current OAG setup at 1200mm. The difference is there can be movement between the main camera and the guidescope so that good tracking in the guidescope doesn’t always correlate to the same in the main imaging scope. I think you are on the boundary of guidescope/OAG at 1000mm

Finderscopes with the bracket are on sale (used) frequently at about £20-30, and you might even find one with the right camera adapter included. You don’t need any fancy mounts or guide rings etc. Sounds like you are making progress anyway 👍🏼

I’ve actually just stopped trying mosaics. I gave up after 3 or 4 sessions gathering data!

Good job John. Capitalise on the good weather 👍🏻 I built my dome yesterday

Breathtaking Alex. What an image.

Lovely detailed set of images Paul.

Amazing! Solar time lapses are something to behold.