Alien 13

I do think modern tech will change things, even my smart-phone can now do long exp imaging without a scope provided its mounted somehow, this can only bring more people into the fold but perhaps from an opposing direction.

The future....

Alan

3 hours ago, John said:

I can see the temptation there.

This is a bit of a confession but recently I have occasionally been tempted by these ultra-simple clockwork driven camera mounts to try and stick my DSLR on and try to get something. I think they are branded Omegon ?

So far I've resisted or missed getting a cheap one but maybe I'll try one at some point.

Or are these the devices of the devil that will inevitably lead me down a dark and expensive path ?

These devices are not the work of the Devil but more of a plug and play option to capture the experience of your observing session and there is certainly no need to go further if you already have most of the kit anyway.

Alan

Great launch and flight and great to have good conditions too....brilliant stuff.

Now off to visit an astronauts shop to spend some money 😋

Alan

T-30 minutes..

Alan

Looking forward to this one, thanks for the reminder John...

Alan

As refractor objective increases so does the f/ratio required to get decent colour correction so the "sweet spot" might be sub 130mm, larger refactors get unwieldy too requiring very expensive mounts. In my view the cutoff point is around 130mm where even a SW 130PDS or better still a Tac Epsilon 130mm will not only be faster but easier to mount, at 200mm and above it has to be a mirrored scope.

Alan 

Love it, just bought a new phone so will have to give it a go for astro/nightscapes, have a nice mounting system for it too.

Alan

Noise is a funny thing, a dripping tap drove me nuts when trying yo sleep even through several doors, put a cloth under it to dampen the sound but it still stopped me sleeping, think it was the regularity that drove me mad as I was always listening out for it...I suspect a regular camera shutter is the same.

Alan

I dont have an eyepiece but have observed Planets using my C90 Mak with the DSLR live view screen and they looked fine... might have been a camera X2 tele extender in there too.

Alan

Mirror lock up using the self timer in the timer routine would be my choice, does the 60D have silent shooting modes? I know my 80D has..

Alan

P.S. Canon cameras usually have a thin strip of foam in the mirror box to dampen the slap and this can become worn out/dislodged so worth a look or even experimenting with other materials...

Looking on my "Electrodoc" phone app it looks like a USB 3.x Powered B Receptical (female) and plug (male) but have no other details..

Alan

This is common with most kit these days (should be banned in my view) the problem originates with most of the PSUs currently in use having 70-110V on the earth terminal, grounding is best done through a 100 ohm or similar 5 Watt resistor with each item in use, this will stop the tingle but keep some isolation of signal/data between each unit..

Alan

5 minutes ago, jjohnson3803 said:

Ok, so the live coverage is a little schlocky, but congratulations to Virgin on a successful mission!

 

I guess they added some delay into the live transmission which may have added to this so if anything went wrong they could pull the plug quickly.

Alan

10 minutes ago, Sabalias said:

Thanks for the pointer Alan, works like a charm. In case anyone else has got a similar problem, you can solve it by setting the self timer on the camera to 2 seconds and kstars will still trigger the photograph but the first two seconds will be overridden by the camera parking the mirror. So if you program a 60 second exposure, with a two second self timer then the exposure will actually be 58 seconds. You will also need to include a program for a few seconds space between exposures I think. 
 

Stu

The two second delay is handy anyway to allow for any mirror slap vibrations to settle down, you are correct in the need for a few seconds between exposures so that and data can be written to the SD card or transferred over USB, I usually leave 10 seconds but I am always cautious.. 

If the camera has other timer/intervalometer functions built in they too can sometimes be included in a sequence...

Alan

I found that quite emotional, another small step for man...

Alan

At what altitude can you say you touched the edge of space? my best effort was on board a Korean airlines 747 flying over Russia at 52,000 feet due to the missile threat at the time, still got buzzed by a couple of Migs..

Alan

4 minutes ago, Astro Noodles said:

Really?

Yep, its those who inherit vast fortunes that get up my nose..

Alan

1 hour ago, Astro Noodles said:

Not bad for a guy who started off by selling second hand records out of a cardboard box.

I have nothing but admiration for any of these self made billionaires...

Alan

1 hour ago, Sabalias said:

Thanks Alan. Is that option in kstars or built in to the camera?

Stu

Its on the camera itself, a useful way of getting a single trigger pulse from the shutter button/intervalometer/other to perform the lock up and open the shutter after a pre determined delay..

Alan

To add mirror lock up into any timer sequence jut use the camera "self timer" function, think it is 5 or 10 seconds.

Alan

I have never needed any more than the palms of my hands but if you realy need mechanical aids then use a pair of table tennis bats, anything else introduces stress in the components..

Alan

6 minutes ago, VegasIII said:

That has actually crossed my mind, and did read that some felt the same way.  The fact that you have done it and gone back, kind of tipping my mind to not bothering.

 

My final solution was three allen keys held in place with a tiny bit of wax from a "babybel" and the heat from a lighter to release them once the reticule was set in position..

Alan

I swapped and quickly swapped back as the thumbscrews were constantly being touched/knocked causing them to come loose....

Alan

I did load Linux Mint onto my high end gaming laptop as a dual boot option and like most have said the installed software like Libre Office etc is fine for most uses, things I didn't like was the need to constantly enter passwords and the slow boot up time which was something like 14 seconds compared to the 5 seconds with Win 10..

Alan

On 22/06/2021 at 19:10, JamesF said:

That looks fun

Surely Cavor and Bedford beat Tintin to the Moon though?

James

Ah Cavorite, still got a jam jar full of the stuff and they were definitely the first to land on the Moon in a semi controlled way...

Alan