DaveS

@Gina, I remember the saga of the disappearing roof, and the struggle to get it back on. Unfortunately I don't have any strong blokes I can call on, so have installed four 600 kg toggles to hold the roof down, plus I'm looking into passive measures to keep the roof secure in ordinary wind. Given the height of the walls getting the roof back on would be a non-trivial job.

Ha, thanks Chris. Those "ornate bricks" are slabs / chunks of Portland Stone, in keeping with the local buildings, similar to the facing of the smaller platform that has my 130mm 'frac on it., and help to raise the level of the mount enough to get a slightly better view to the south. There's over 8 tonnes of "stuff" in that platform.

I definitely have made the roof too light, the question now is what to do about it. F H Brundle have some 25mm square by 3mm thick steel tube, and offer a cutting service from the 7.5-7.6 metre lengths, so I could get 5 x 2.27m sections from 2 lengths, with a bit spare. This would be a straightforward reinforcement job and could be slotted straight in without having to touch the rest of the roof structure. Alternatively, strip the roof right back and use heavier gauge timber for support. This would put me back by a couple of weeks at least allowing for weather interruptions and the vagaries of Wickes's delivery system. It could also push me beyond the "Permitted Development" limits for height. Will have to give it some thought, but I may give Brundle a bell tomorrow.

While waiting for the weather to settle down I've been making a door for the obsy. Not strictly necessary just yet, but might as well, while I'm waiting.

With AA there's no need to faff around with Batch work-arounds. Drop your Lights, Darks, Flats and Dark-Flats or Bias frames into the relevant sections, choose how you you want to stack and align, and click OK. AA will then do all the calibration, alignment and stacking automatically, and it's fast.

Good question. I would go for the 268 as it has more options for readout modes (See the review that Steve linked above), and I suspect the build might be better. However, looking closely I think the back focus is longer with the QHY, something to watch out for if you want to put filters in the light path, as it could push them above the vignetting threshold.

The 183 produces horrendous amp glow, looking like a bright star (Supernova, more like) just out of frame. It *will* calibrate out, but your Dark Frames must be right on the temperature, keep the exposure down below (I think it's said) 3 mins, and don't use Bias Frames as they will mess up the dark frame calibration.

Astrograph has the QHY 268 plus several other QHY camera in stock.

My vote goes to Astro Art, now at V7. I use it for most of my processing, only recently getting Affinity Photo for "polishing". It is very fast for stacking.

Thanks for that link. Very tempted by the 268C, but I think I will hold out for the possible mono version, as I want to be able to do SHO narrow band.

When I opened the FITS files in AA7 they looked like nothing I'd seen before, nearly all black apart from a few stars. When I used Histogram Stretch all the data was up against the left hand end, and it said 0.1 bits (!) I had to apply several linear stretches before I saw anything like I'm used to. Normally my stretching routine starts with a DDP, but the DDP showed a threshold of 0, where I normally see a figure in the low thousands.

AN is generally pretty good (The current issue thumped through my letterbox today), Though I have become increasingly fed up with their "Monthly Guides". Time was, at least the "Object of the month" had a "How to image it" section, and most other worthwhile objects too, now it's merely "How to observe it". As someone who is 99+% imaging I'm feeling left out. I stopped buying their yearbook for the same reason.

Thanks for that tip @Rusted. I do remember now seeing that arrangement in your dome thread ages ago. I'll give it a go if I need to demount the OTA or mount at any time. But for the time being the OTA / Mount / Pier are staying as they are.

I'll have a think about that, but it may be that the studs are integral to the design. Also getting 19.5 kg of ODK12 plus 45 kg mount plus 13 kg cwt bar plus 15 kg cwts off the pier isn't going to be a trivial job. I had to rig a gantry to get the ODK on the mount, and had help to get the mount on the pier. The aperture in the pier is for accessing the nuts holding the studs to the top of the pier, there is another, larger, one at the base for accessing the bolts holding the pier to the concrete slab. The mount bolts down on to the top ring.

Hmm.. I think you'd have to weld a steel plate over the bottom section, then weld the cut-off top section onto that. But it's not something I want to do. Would rather push the height up and try for retrospective planning if anyone noticed.

Um Dave, the pier is one of These. Didn't cost me that much, but I still think a cut 'n' shut job is not doable.

Taking a step back and having a think. The strong winds forecast make putting the EPDM on problematic. and my next delivery won't be until Sat anyway. Also looking into getting a low tower / combination ladder for access to the roof. I think I will take the opportunity to give the garden a going over, as it's been a bit neglected while I've been concentrating on the obsy.

Very light, 25 x 38 mm. This was based on an original idea of using 3.6 mm ply under the EPDM. The 11mm OSB is considerably heavier I've been looking on the F H Brundle site and can see some 25mm square channel which I should be able to use for reinforcement, but I really want to get the membrane on quickly. If I decide to get in some heavier gauge timber then I will also need replacement breathable membrane, and may come in above the 2.5 metre height limit for "Permitted Development", I'm very close to that now. I can't drop the roof height as i will run into clearance problems with the 'scope. Oh, and I managed to get a delivery slot from Wickes by modifying the order. Wickes really is a pain, as the timber can say "In stock for delivery" but when I try to put the order in I get a "No slots available". Closer investigation reveals that it's not in stock at Yeovil, so cannot be delivered. Really am getting fed up with their ordering.

At a short 17 kg, even my little DDM60 would chuck it around without even noticing it.

No, Astro Systeme Austria, purveyors of fine telescopes, as in "If you have to ask how much..."

The ASA software package is written for the remote operation of professional robotic imaging set-ups. I'm seeing a lot of "new" sequencing packages, SGP, NINA, EKOS etc, but to me they are just playing catch-up to what the ASA software has been doing for years beyond count. That being said, Sequence and Autoslew are both (Sequence more than Autoslew) badly in need of bringing up to date.

Before I got my first (!) ASA mount I was using AstroArt 5 for capture and processing (In fact I still use AA7 for processing), and only stopped because I had to use Maxim DL as part of the ASA package (Something that really pi$$ed ($$ intentional) me off). The file names that Sequence uses are your target name and your filter name, that you, yourself, have set up in your target and exposure files. One thing that could be better in Sequence is the folder naming, where it will set a new folder for each night, something that has given me problems where I might have had more than one target in a session and found two in one folder, or even two folders for one target. I hope the next version 9If it ever appears) will address this.

GIMP 10.2.18 will open FITS files directly, and it's free.

Not sure, but I'll think about it. One thing I have to take into account is the clearance between the roof and the top of the OTA when in the default ASA park position, which is 'scope west of pier, pointing to the zenith. Although it's possible to change this ASA advise against it as the software can use this as a reference for the sky model. ATM I have a couple of inches clearance, but I think this will change when I get the camera and Pegasus APB on. Also planning on lining the roof with some 3.6mm ply that I was originally going to use for the outside of the roof.

Closed the browser and waited for CCleaner to delete the cookies. Reopened the browser and found I could now log in, but when I went to checkout found no delivery slots available . Someone really doesn't want me to finish this obsy.