baggywrinkle

https://www.firstlightoptics.com/adapters/flo-125-inch-t-mount-camera-adapter.html

You need the above and the adaptor it screws into. That adapter should replicate the Canon bayonet lens connection. This will allow direct connection of the D250 to the OTA.

On some EP's there is also a 42mm thread that allows connection of s camera to the EP to allow eye piece projection.

You wont regret having a permanent set-up, especially with UK weather being so variable.

Whatever type of roof you use make good provision for securing it in heavy winds, turn buckle catches on the inside are a good option, plus spring loaded catches on the outside if it is a roll off.

They are non camping sites, but nearby is the Burnham Deepdale camping and backpackers. 

Kings Lynn & District AS has been doing stargazing outreach their twice a year as an outreach. At their Hygge and at their Music Festival. Both the Discovery sites are within 15 minutes drive. Titchwell has parking and is also a superb RSPB site, we've done outreach their too.

The Kings Lynn and District Astronomy Club has been (via its Chairman) heavily involved in getting two new Dark Skies Discovery Sites registered https://www.darkskydiscovery.org.uk/dark-sky-discovery-sites/map.html

These are at Barrow Common and Titchwell RSPB on the North Norfolk cost not far from Hunstanton, both are AONB sites too. There are more registrations due. We might seem a bit of a remote county with funny narrow roads and no motorways...but that has its advantages.

It is an F6 so a reasonably fast reflector, so good for DSO and with reasonable magnification you will get good views of the Moon and planets. A good all rounder.

It would not be suited to astro photography as it is a manual push too scope. 

My son has been truly bitten by the astronomy bug.. currently he is visiting the UK and he came along to one of our outreach events and one of our meetings. In NZ he has been going to astro events and really enjoyed them.

Never sure what to give a 30+ year old on his birthday I have handed over my Altair Starwave ED70  plus the Starwatcher AZ GTi head and tripod for him to take home along with a couple of decent EP's. He does not drive but uses public transport so the kit had to be truly grab and go. He can now enjoy some spectacular NZ skies....providing he gets away from Wellingtons lights...

I have used Hyperions on both <F10 and >F10 with no issues I could see.

Contact W&W, https://dewheater.com/

I have bought dew heaters from Barbara and all are good quality, she is also prepared to do custom jobs.

Tripods are OK but at high elevations they still cause cricked necks. I would recommend the monon pod and head shown...works well and you can be sitting or standing.

Just remember...there is always great weather and clear skies....above the clouds

I finally got to see this museum. The problem is that it is closed at weekends and as I am still working I needed to take time off. So I have waited until my son is visiting from NZ.

It is on Freeschool Lane just around the corner from the Eagle Pub which is worth a visit to see the preserved ceiling from WWII.

The Whipple is a free entry and usually opens from 12:30-16:30, check their website.

Though not large it is stuffed full with many objects of historical scientific interest and best of all many are astronomy related, globes, orrery's, astrolabes, telescopes all nicely documented. There is a real beauty of a Herschel reflector.

The other parts of the collection are wide ranging..nice to see a ZX81 and draws of calculators...I remember when the first calculators were both expensive and a novelty!

I've been using books from the Hatti Trust for a while, an excellent resource.

As above, Jupiter is low so the image you see is through a thick atmosphere. 

The waning Moon has some really lovely targets, trouble is it means a 3 am start...

These ones were around 5 am as I had a lie in!

The waning Moon at 05:00 this morning. Seeing conditions were good so I was able to use a 2.5x Barlow on some shots

All shot on the 12" LX 850 using the Altair GPCAM290 M and the trusted Canon 650 for a 3 panel mosaic of the whole Moon.

2000-3000 frames stacked in Autostakkert and sharpened in Registax, tweaked in Photoshop.

Click below to see all as they are in Flickr

This is my 3rd AA camera I also have the 178C and 183C.

My problem with the colour cameras for Lunar work was frame rate speed, image stability and therefore getting a better  focus,  especially for Lunar work, UK skies are not kind.

It was after a conversation with Nick I decided to go for a mono camera specifically for Lunar work as this would offer both faster frame rates and better image stability.

As ever it came well boxed but I was surprised how small it is compared to the baked bean tin sized 178 & 183. They do say good things come in small packages and so it proved. I did have an initial concern it might not be the best match for my Meade LX850 12" in my ROR obsy and a Celestron 9.25 SCT on an Evolution mount.

I was able to test the camera on both OTA and I am very pleased with the results.

I use Sharpcap for Lunar and planetary work and the camera was recognized straight away, and the control panel brought up the appropriate controls for the 290

The Meade 12" ACF  is an F10 OTA with a 3048mm focal length, my immediate feeling was how stable the image appeared compared with the 178C I normally use, the smaller chip in the 290 did mean I had a smaller image size compared to the wider vista the 178C can encompass. Focussing was easy as the frame rate at MONO12 setting and medium amount of gain gave me 60 FPS. I did not swop out the 290 and replace it with the 178 to see if the improved seeing was the result of using a mono camera v a colour one. 

If you run in MONO 8 mode the frame rate doubles.

Using the histogram I could also adjust the exposure and black settings to get a good exposure. As the seeing was very steady I also upped the anti by using a 2x Powermate and I was wowed by the resulting image, it was still reasonably stable and though I had to up the gain and exposure a little the FPS rate did not drop.

I shot 2000 frames rather than 5000 to ensure the mount tracked within the high magnification I now had. This was using the maximum 1920x1080 full chip area.

You can also set other areas of interest through the control panel.

The faster frame rate allowed me to take 2000- 5000 frames and using Autostakkert and adjust using Registax wavelets. The results of the Meade 12" are in the Lunar imaging section

On the next morning I tried the 9.25 SCT on an Evolution mount. on the patio. Seeing was again very good. As the Evolution is an AZ mount and IMO with a 9.25 OTA mounted it is working at its weight limits. I did not use the Powermate.

Again I was very pleased with the images, they are posted in the Lunar Imaging section for the 22nd August. I used 2000-3000 frames, I had though 5000 might mean the image would be cropped due to image rotation over a long exposure time on an AZ mount. At 60 FPS the exposure lasted 30-50 secs.

I did not see any real evidence of image cropping.

Overall I am very impressed with the speed and quality of the images generated. I will certainly be using this camera a lot.

Will I sell my 178C...?... No. That larger chip means wider vistas, but now I have the choice.

The Moon this morning at 03:15 to 04:00 BST 20.7 days waning.

Seeing was 4-5 on the Damian Peach scale and a high mist at the start.

As I have had to send my LX850 handset off for repairs so I used my 9.25 SCT on the Evolution mount.

Cameras were the Canon 650D as a 2 pane mosaic for the whole shot and the Altair GP290M for the detailed shots.

I was worried if I tried 5000 frames there would be too much image rotation as the Evolution is an AZ mount.

Each image was 2000 frames and between 25 -70% of the best frames stacked in Autostakert, wavelets in Registax and finsihed with PhotoShop.

The GP290 is a very very good camera

https://www.flickr.com/photos/165584972@N02/albums/72157710492838572

I have the Meade LX850 running again and tried an Altair Astro GP 290M cam, a small mono ccd fast frame camera.

Though a smaller chip than my AA178C I normally use the performance is excellent. 20th August morning at 03:00 BST was also very very stable for seeing. On the Damian Peach scale, almost a 5, something we do not often get in the UK.

The GP290 was running in MONO12 bit mode, and I used either 2000 or 5000 frames. Easy as the camera was working at 45 fps, fast.

For the detailed shot I added a Powermate 2x to the chain. The whole shot was a a mosaic of 4 images shot on my Canon 650D.

Processed in Auto Stakkert and the adjusted in Registax using a 1.5x drizzle and a final tweak in Photoshop.

Does anyone out there know of a shop/company that will collimate big bins please?

I have the AZ GTi and have used with an Altair 102mm refractor. It did not protest. The tube weighed in a 5.5Kg with a diagonal and finder.

One of the deep interests I have in the history of astronomy is that of the Far East, having lived and worked in both Japan and China.

The Science Museum in London has a lovely example of a start chart by Shibukawa Harumi from around 1698. Not having the spare £5-8K for an original I decided to buy a repro. This one mounted on canvas, I am very pleased with it.

This is of the central section of the chart and shows the stars and their asterisms used from around 1100 to 1922 until the IAU 88 were formulated.

You can see one constellation that is familiar to our eyes, for us the Plough, for China , Korea and Japan it is the Northern Rice Ladle

Though the  charts asterisms and names are based on those used by the Chinese from 500 BC, this, the Japanese, star chart, the Tenmon Bunya no Zu was the first star chart that corrected what it saw as errors by the Chinese.

15 hours ago, Star Struck said:

An excellent and informative writeup.

I have one of these mounts and love it. I use it on an EQ5 tripod with a Berlebach adapter. Solid as a rock.

I tried the tripod and extender you have, but do not trust it so it lives in the garage.

I have driven mine using the SynScanPro app on Windows, Android and IOS. All versions work well.

I also have a SynScan handset and that works well to. The handset gives you some options that the Wireless app does not e.g. search by SAO reference.

 

Tony

I bought the SW SA tripod to use with my Star Adventurer mount and thought it might have big vibration/wobble issues.  With the Star Adventurer I am generally using my Canon or Sony cameras for widefield and I have also used it with a Coronado 60mm Solar scope as well as a 70mm Altair Starwave refractor I have not had any big issues with regards vibration. I can say the same with the AZ GTi on the SA tripod and a much heavier tube on Wednesday night.

If the Star Adventurer tripod is used with the EP holder plate fully clipped in position it is reasonably stiff. I bought is for grab and go and have taken it to New Zealand because of the light weight

I can appreciate the EQ5 and Berlebach adapter you are using would be incredibly solid.

14 hours ago, jonoschen said:

Great report baggywrinkle!

How noisey is the AZ GTi?

If neighbors had their windows open at night in the summer, do you think they would here it?

I thought it quite quiet, a whir rather than the sound of a tank track. Certainly quieter than my LX850!

Skywatcher AZ-GTi mount

I recently bought one of these as a simpler alternative to my normal outreach set up and as a potential grab and go setup to take on holidays.

It has had good reviews and that was another reason for buying.

The other night with a full Moon preventing too much work with the big telescope I gave it a test run and I was very impressed.

Having previously read through the totally inadequate manual, downloaded the free Synscan Pro software to my android phone and watched the YouTube video I felt I was ready for the great outdoors and a live test.

The mount can also be operated with a Skywatcher standard Synscan handset which is a nice touch if you run your mobile/tablet down….or forget it.

BTW the You Tube video (Astronomy & Nature) is excellent and fills it the holes the manual does not.

The manual says the payload is 5Kg. My Altair Astro 102 mm Starwave weighs in at over 5.5Kg with a camera attached. Throughout my test this did not seem to worry the performance. This was all mounted on a Skywatcher Star Adventurer tripod with the extender.

The SW SA mount deserves its own review, I have found mine stable even though lightweight.

With a full Moon and scudding clouds, I decided on a one-star alignment. I levelled the OTA and pointed it north turned on the power and then linked the android software with the mounts own built in WIFI. It all linked up seamlessly even though there was a message ‘ WIFI might not be available’, I ignored this.

As it was night the software defaulted to red light. It is easy to use, though confusingly the Solar System object selection is found under the Stars tab. I chose Sirius as my one star.

Another criticism on the software was that I had previously downloaded it to my mobile from the Skywatcher web site and then had to make another massive download for updates to the software as it would not initially link up to the mount wifi. This was when I was indoors and familiarising myself with the set up.

Why cannot Skywatcher just get the right package up on their website?

The AZ-GTi takes its time date and position from your mobile or tablet, it then slews to the chosen target and tells you when it thinks it is pointing at the target. You then use the directional keys to centre it and press enter. Even with an excess of load the motors did not sound as though they were straining. A slight criticism here was that when hitting the down movement key I would often somehow hit the home button on my phone. Recovering from that was not a problem though.

The initial alignment was quite good and once centred I sent it to look for the Moon which it duly did and landed the Moon in the centre of my live view screen.

I then left it tracking for 10 minutes on its own to see how good it was. It was very good, the Moon was just off centre when I came back.

Next, I keyed in M45 and away it when and was only just off centre, which I thought remarkable for a single star alignment. I also tried Alcor & Mizar with the same result.

Had there been less cloud I might have tried a two-star alignment to get better accuracy.

As this was being used only in AZ mode I would not try longer then 20 secs for deep sky, but it will be perfect for late cycle Lunar shots when the Moon is too low for study from my observatory. There is an option in the software to mount and use the AZ-GTi in an equatorial mode.

I was concerned that the weight of the OTA & camera might overburden the AZ GTi and the SW SA mount and when focusing the wobble would not die down. I need not have been worried, the wobble damped out very quickly. I thought this was a good set up, it also folds down very nicely and would pack easily into a back pack or suitcase for flying. The AZ GTi is 1.3Kg and the SW SA mount with the extension weights 2.75Kg.

There is a selection in the menu to allow you to use the AZ GTi for solar observing which is quite useful. I have not tried that yet. Skywatcher have made that menu accessible only after answering a simple mathematical question which should ensure you could not accidently engage it and inadvertently point your scope and damage your eyes.

You can power from a power pack but on this occasion, I used 8xAA batteries.

What I liked: A compact grab and go mount with a decent payload capacity, the WIFI worked seamlessly.

What I did not like: Lack of documentation. This could be a more serious problem for a beginner or less experienced person.

Conclusion: A very nice travel mount with some very powerful tools in the software. I still love my Star Adventurer but that is more for photography than for a night under the stars doing visual.

I needed extra dew bands for my new set up. Initially ones for the Starlok cameras, today I needed to add some extra ones for the main OTA and the 60mm AA Finderscope. Immediate service! I've been using my camera one.

Barbara's design is very rugged  and I have been using them for a number of years with no brokeb connections.