russp

I'm trying to strip down the focuser on my Explore Scientific 127 frac, I've found a number of online guides and some of these are pretty good - especially  http://polluxchung.com/gso_crayford_fix/

BUT 

my coarse focus knob is made up slightly differently - see attached picture and I cant work out how to get it apart further to get at the bearings - the little hole has a grub screw in it - taken that out but the brass disc with the slots wont budge even though it looks like it should unscrew to release the silver knob - have tried wd40 on it. Anyone taken one like this apart ? 

On 02/12/2018 at 14:16, russp said:

That's really annoying .. mine is similarly stuck now and cant access it at all. 

 

As Jorge suggested using a Skywatcher wifi dongle sorted the issue - the unit would not reset itself no matter how long it was left including overnight with all the house wifi devices turned off. Luckily I was able to borrow the dongle. 

Same problen here - anyone solved this yet without resorting to buying the wifi dongle?

On 27/11/2018 at 06:50, JorgeR said:

Not to leave this thread open, I managed to resolve the issue of the mount stuck in firmware update mode with the Skywatcher WiFi dongle. It’s a pity this was the only possible solution offered by skywatcher, as having a WiFi dongle is useless for a mount that has WiFi already, but then again updating the firmware through the dongle  solved the issue. 

That's really annoying .. mine is similarly stuck now and cant access it at all. 

Something like this? It's simply a cheap nodal slide rail. 

My latest with the SA - Nikon D500 with Tamron 280-200 f2.8 lens at 200mm - 52 30sec subs at f3.2 ISO800 processed in PixInsight

34 30second subs with a dslr and a zoom lens (set at 380mm) on a SA from a semi rural UK garden

52 minutes ago, Ryan_86 said:

Nice ser up russp??

How does it perform when guiding?

Is balancing ok?

Thanks

Ryan

No idea on guiding yet, not had a chance to use it - I set it up primarily to use for polar alignment with sharpcap and as a finder scope with the intention of seeing if guiding helped. Balance is fine as shown but I suspect with anything heavier than my 300mm prime that's on above I may need a little more counterweight.

An alternative - side by side 

3 minutes ago, Bobby1970 said:

Thats incredible Russ

May i enquire as to sub length and other settings??

 

 

Theres about 34 or 35 30sec subs in there - shot at ISO 3200 (although I have found out since I would have been better off at lower ISO) in my semi rural back garden . It's all in the processing - PixInsight. 

DSLR with a 200-500mm zoom at 380mm on a SA.

Here's my setup - 127mm triplet main with 80mm guide set up for an imaging session - really pleased with the mount - been a good learning experience for a first scope.

You cannot do it without buying software from Nikon , costs around £200 , it's the equivalent of Canon's EOSUtilities software that Canon supply FREE with every DSLR , one very big factor in why Canon rule the roost for astrowork.

 Absolute Rubbish ! http://nikonrumors.com/2013/05/11/free-open-source-tethering-software-for-nikon-dslr-cameras.aspx/

Plenty of free and cheap alternatives. The only reason Canons rule the roost now is their ability to take the clip in filters and the historical momentumn that's meant that most developers of astro software didn't (for good reasons historically) develop the software to include Nikons although both Maxim and Sequence Generator support Nikons just fine and the newer ones connect with the standard usb cable supplied with the camera. 

All I can say is that both the texts that I've read that discuss mirror vibration (Every Photon counts doesn't seem to address it) discount it as an issue as the tiny fraction of time that vibration is induced is too small to effect the long exposures used for deep sky work. Short Lunar or planetary shots will be entirely different, I guess eliminating it can't do any harm and it is so easy it seems silly not to even if it does prove unnecessary.

vibration from the mirror on  30 second (plus?) exposure ?? really?  - I can understand it for macro work on short exposures but for astro? Isn't this just a solution looking for a problem?