Shelster1973

To my (untrained) eye that looks to me as if the mount is not tracking in RA at all. If you do a 'dummy' setup during the day and just have the mount tracking via EQMOD, does it move as expected? It may be a setting within EQMOD that needs adjusting.......or not being one to point the obvious, you have enabled tracking within EQMOD? I have made that mistake on more than one occasion. If you can manually slew the mount in RA then the motors must be working fine and it has to be a control issue somewhere along the way.....

That was the exact website I was looking at to get my tube. Will be getting the base plate, top plate and fillets from LaserMaster and will be getting these in 5mm plate. Once it is all welded together and bolted down, it should be strong enough. Am not wanting to hang a bus off the top or carry out NCAP tests on it. Edit - Rant - £28 for the tube.....happy with that. Then £21 in package, postage and VAT...not happy with that. Almost doubles the cost for buying it. On the sunny side, it is a hell of a lot cheaper than buying a pre-made tube and I get the satisfaction of doing the welding myself, although I may have to have a wee practice as it has been 20 years since I last welded, but is like a bike and once muscle memory kicks in it will all be fine. Rant over

Would 3.2mm wall steel tube be suitable enough for a pier? Have been looking for a suitable tube on the tintyweb and found a 6" diameter 850mm tall one for £30 and I am tempted to get this as want to keep the cost down as much as possible.

Cheers for the reply Will be getting it powder coated as will give a better looking finish and my skills with a rattle can are abysmal. Will be doing the welding myself though as I do like that type of thing. The concrete is already poured and cured for the base, so the cable routing is out. Have managed to do some clever dressing of cables coming from mount, so doesn’t look too shabby and does not catch.

Sorry for reviving old thread, but was wondering did you have the hole put in the base so as to route cables up through the centre tube? Am thinking of using the suppliers you have linked for my pier project and am wanting to keep it as simple and cheap as possible. I won’t be having any cables go up through the pier, so can get away without the hole. Can even go for a square base if that is cheaper. Also, last question (for now) what adapter did you use on the pier top? I have the Altair Astro multi adapter for my EQ6R-PRO.

That’s good news there souls. Always good to gave mates like that

Would be interested to see how much the pier fab comes in at. While I do like the Altair Astro one, £500 is a lot to ask for it. If I can have it cheaper and doing the same thing, then am all for it

The first part of the hole is 200mm deep and then the inside part is 450mm deep. Not sure of the width of this as did jot measure but would say it is somewhere around 400mm The sand and gravel did not have any weight on them. I got them from B&Q and they are their own DIALL brand ones

Base has been poured today. Decided not to bother with shuttering as the base will eventually be underneath a deck, so won’t be visible. As far as I can tell it is level front to back and side to side, but will check tomorrow when it has had a chance to go off some more. Now just the save-up for the pier and I am almost done Mix amount was 1 x 25kg bag of cement, 2 x large bags of sharp sand and 3 x large bags of 10mm gravel mixed in 2 batches

Made a start on my pier base this afternoon and realised a few things 1 - I am horrendously out of shape (plus the chest infection a few weeks back hasn't helped) 2 - My garden is a nightmare 3 - I am not going to need as much concrete as I thought Started the hole 750 x 750 as planned and made it as far as 200 mm down before it went Pete Tong. Spade would not go any deeper and on doing a Time Team and hand scooping the dirt out realised I had hit bedrock........so out comes the SDS drill and I proceed to open up a hole within a hole and after much sweat a swearing made it to the massive depth of 450 mm before I could get no further. At least I know I am on solid ground with the base now. Will be getting materials and doing pour on Friday after the give me my monthly allowance for attending work. Few pics as they always make things look real Main hole Close up of hole in a hole My friend the rock and now in a slinky side on view. This was what i have reached down as far as.

Cheers Swoop1, that's my plan. Was initially unsure as how to secure the box in place, but seeing the use of old flag stones has helped. Will more than likely go for pegs to hold it down and don't have anything else really. Will have a look around and see if I have any random formica boards anywhere and use those for the form, with a liberal smearing of oil on them. Am not hugely worried about the final look, tbh as will eventually be putting decking around the area, just want it proud of the soil level so as to not have any pooling of water around the base. Smooth will be ok too as am planning on bolting the pier down. Will use drill and resin in some threaded bar later on, as do not have the pier atm, so am happy to just create the base / plinth for now

Oh yeah, gear on the pier (poetry there) will be what is in my sig. EQ6R-Pro mount, ED72 scope, guide scope and camera, CCD, filter wheel and filters plus primalucie auto focuser and a USB hub. Scope will eventually be an Esprit 80, but have more pressing things to buy before that.

Yeah, that was a ridiculous price. Have been looking around this morning and reckon I am looking at around £50 to do it myself. Am also going to do the random rebar hammered in trick too to give it some support and also anchor the block too. Will ask around in work and see if anyone has a mixer I can borrow off them too. Probably should have explained the question a wee bit better too. Am just looking for a way to contain the concrete that comes out of the ground. From looking this morning (busy day in work) I can simply screw together some pieces of wood to create a box and then hold that in place with some heavy weights on each side until the concrete has cured. Will then just lift off and give me the look I am after.

The world is a weird and strange place. I spent the majority of yesterday researching this exact same thing, so am going to blatantly jump in on this one and use all the advice given so far. For me, I will be getting the Altair Astro pier and bolting it down, so am following their advice and going for a hole 450 x 450 x 750. I contacted a local concrete firm for a quote for some ready mixed and they said that they did not do such a small amount. The minimum they can mix and deliver is 0.5m3. Yes I can make the hole slightly larger to accommodate (well, twice as big really), but am not happy paying the £171 they have just quoted me. Will be doing a self mix. My question (said I was jumping in 😆) how do you create the shuttering around the top of the hole? I am looking to have the top part squared off and sitting above the level of the lawn.

Craig welcome from a fellow Devonian. You will really like the mount. Feel feee to ask as many questions as you want and don’t worry if you think they are stupid. I always say the only stupid question is the one you don’t ask.

As you look at the mount the cable needs to be to the left

The heads for those are very small Allen heads. Something like 2mm or there about. You should have got an Allen key in the set. You have to use the small part and can only do small turns each time due to the restricted access. It does get tight, you just have to persevere

In the pic above this post where you are holding the adapter in left hand, you can just see one of the grub screws your need to tighten to the mount. Put this in the polar scope opening that is on the fron and then do up the two grub screws in there. Once it is in, you won’t need to remove it, just the camera if you want to

How many other programs are connecting to the mount? The great thing about com ports is they only like one connection if you download and run a separate program called Stallariumscope, this acts as a middleware for all the programs that want to access the mount. You start this program first and it handles all communications.

Just saw this and will be following with interest. 'Lead EHT Scientist:- So we have made a great discovery. Here is a picture of what we have found. A big piece of ........ nothing' and next week we will discover 'purest green' ?

Decided to switch target tonight and went for the venerable M101. Managed to get 7 x 600s for G,B,L and Ha. This is a rough and dirty Lum sub, with zero processing other than a stretch and curve tweak. As i blindingly obvious, I need to give my filters a wee clean, but did manage to get some flats in too, so that all may calibrate out. Went for a full go of letting NINA run everything and all worked well. Did have a few small issues with the flats wizard though. Kept getting ewrrors about not being bright enough and too bright and some of the flats looked completely off the scale. That was using it in multiple mode. Managed to get it all sorted when doing single iterations, so not that much of a biggie. The only thing I need to look at now (which may be there, i just havent found it yet) is having individual subs go into dedicated folders based on the filter in use......but enough waffle, here is the pic

Do you have the temp probe with the Sesto too? I contemplated buying that, but find £41 a bit on the steep side (hey this is astronomy....) for what is effectively a thermistor and a 3.5mm jack. Am doing some looking around to see if I can find out what particular thermistor they use and see how much they cost. Can then knock up one that fits exactly to where I need it and does not require me to hide masses of extra cabling

Miguel Yeah., at the end of the evening, just unpluyg all power and USB leads, remove the counterweight and then lift and shift the whole thing back inside the patio doors. Am lucky that I live on my own here, so do not have to move it too far and out of the way, I can cope with it being setup and where it is. Am really liking the ED72 so far. Here are a few samples taken with it last night. They are nothing to write home about yet as still need to work on focus (have the Prima Lucie one coming and am also printing off a Baht mask for the scope too) and they are also single subs with zero post processing other than a stretch and curve done

Nothing spectacular in these two images, but her are very quick and dirty ones from tonight. Have just carried out a stretch and quick curve on single frames here. Ha Frame Green Frame Focus needs a fair bit of work, but have just ordered the Prima Lucie Sesto Senso, so will be adding that to my setup and also into NINA when it arrives

Am up and running now and from what I have seen so far, this is an amazing piece of software. It is what I wanted from SGP all those years ago when I bought it. Have had some good results using it, but feel I may now only be using NINA from here onwards will post some images up when I have them. Have gone for the good old Heart Neb tonight and am shooting it in Ha,G,B and lum. Going for 600s subs