RichM63

I'll run out of superlatives! It really is an amazing result. Congratulations to both you and Tom. Also a huge thank you for sharing a sample of this Masterpiece. It truly deserves to be published and exhibited full size. I look forward to the forth coming TV documentaries. What' next?

Well in my case it was down to the PO and human nature, as the secondary fixing bolts could be adjusted he had done just that, causing the whole assembly to be moved off axis and badly twisting one of the vanes. (he sold me the telescope as 'broken'). All I did was to slaken off all the 4 bolts, straighten the bent vane and then sequentially retighten the bolts until the secondary mirror support screw was dead centre. Then fully recollimated the whole telescope, using images and Als Collimation Aid, followed by defocused star tests. Full secondary/primary collimation guides can be found both here and on video. AstroBaby's guide is a good starter point. The biggest cause for twisting is over tightening one side. I find that when I'm near, then I use both hands and tighten opposing bolts at the same time.

Olly has a good point. When I first got my 200P one of the vanes was twisted and visible. Easily fixed though.

I loved the Clear Outside sig' image. Sadly the only way that I could edit my within guidelines signature, 5 lines text + 2 images was to completely remove the CO image, thus 5 lines text and no images! Posed the question in the Foibles restricted section, to be told that the restriction is due to folk having 'big sigs' of more than 5 lines. eg. above! Thus sadly, no more can I see at a glance what my accurate forum sponsored weather forecast is.

Ha ha ha. Good job. :) Have a sneezing fit and you'll demonstrate the 'expansion of the universe'.

Corr, I've got a Green line across the top, and a dark Blue line across the bottom for the next 2 days!

This thing is BRILLIANT!!! Every time I boot up I get a line of green across the top, and a line of dark blue across the bottom, then look up outside and yup, crystal clear skies. None of my previous forecast sites could manage this. Thanks Team FLO Rich

Great work Steve and team. Woohooo, I've already got 2.5 hours of Astro darkness.

Hi Grant, everything you mention above is fine. I have the site displayed on a second portrait monitor and unfortunately a bit to the right got cut off in transition. (the delete Xs) doh. The problem was at my end not yours. All the very best, Richard

This is a great tools resource nice to have everything under one roof. Using the FOV calculator I can't seem to manage to joggle back n forth between generated views of an object. They show in the list on the right and feature with coloured circles + labels on the picture but how do I move between views? Example, details entered SW200P, EP 32mm 70° generates picture, then SW200P, EP 6mm 60° generates picture but how do I get back to the original picture without having to reenter all the details? Is there a missing clickable link in the EP image list on the right panel? All the very best, Rich

^lol, on the Clear Outside web page there is a How To Use menu, within this there is an lightly animated tour of the Forecast page explaining what the various displayed information means. hth, Rich

OK Grant, I have recleared the IE9 cache, and still no joy with the Start Tour Button., but only in the IE9 browser all others tested OK. The new time option display also works just fine and set default location is also OK including my obvious time zone difference. Curious issue.

Hi Grant, essentially no, nothing happens when I click the Tour Button. The button depresses but then nothing in IE9. Well not quite nothing, a dotted rectange now surrounds the button. (active scripting enabled). OK in FF 30 odd. OK in Avant Browser with IE9 rendering engine. OK in SlimBrowser with IE9,IE8,or IE7 rendering engine. (handy browser for people who still love IE6) OK in Opera 12.17 OK in Maxthon 3.4.5 (although Start button displays on the left rather than central as per the other browsers). OK in Lunascape 6.8.10 (with both Gecko and Trident rendering engines, did not try with WebKit engine). OK in Safari (but must enable Java Script ((disabled by default)) button dispays on the left). OS, Win 7 Ultimate. hth, Rich

Working for me just fine over here in France. Nice work. Seeing, Transparancy and Jet Stream speeds might be worth displaying. Not having any visible clouds doesn't mean that it will neccessarily be a good observing night. (as an example I was using meteoblue.com) + I can't get the Tour to run under IE9

The base of the mount does not move in DEC after PA, only the telescope head can swivel independently of the aligned base. The RA rotates around the polar axis not side to side through it. Remember celestial movement that we 'see' is in arcs not straight lines hence the requirement to have the scope move in such a way that it can follow an arc at the business end. After good PA, you can use the DEC axis for slewing to target but hopefully you wont then need to touch it. Manual or motor tracking is all that is then required to compensate for the movement of the Earth with the RA side of things. We are not still, but are spinning and also orbiting,it just so happens that in the Northern hemisphere we have a handy NSP that remains fairly constant from our position on the planet. Lousy explanation, but this is how I understand things. What I don't know is how do they align for tracking from telescopes in space, I'm stuck on that one. Best, Rich

@Rob, do you have an off site link to your articles/edu content, I would love to be able to study in more depth. Cheers, Richard

What an excellent and highly informative article. Evidently written by a 'natural' educator. I look forward to discovering more from this author. Cheers, Rich

It started when I realised that I needed an RA Gear/Clutch pulley assembly for one of my EQ mounts. I searched the Net for days, but everything I found was for the All Inclusive Motor Drive Packages. I don't need more motors, hand sets, cables etc, simply the Gear/Clutch assembly. These things are apparently as rare as rocking horse poop, or hens teeth if you prefer. I made a stab in the dark plea to Teleskop-Service over in Germany (I am an existing client) asking if by any chance they had these parts lying around from a possible customer return. S/H would be fine by me. These parts are NOT sold seperately by SkyWatcher, you have to buy the whole motor drive kit. A chap called Thomas Sievers wrote back, explaining that they did stock the worm drive gear for the EQ5 and was this the part I wanted? I explained that no it wasn't and further described what I was looking for. (remember we are in different native languages). Thomas then wrote back with an attached pdf, asking if this was the type of part I was looking for.. and explained that if so they were able to supply a Vixen part that would perform the same function. EQ5 is a Vixen clone. It has the same diameter bores on the RA and DEC axes. Price was a bit steep for one clutch @ €45 delivered (approx £59), so I explained that I would be using pulleys and belts (ordered from beltingonline). However over the W/E Thomas had evidently been having a route around, and this morning sent me a mail stating that he had found not one but two of these RA Clutch assembly pulleys that I could have for the amazing price of €20 inc 20% vat, the pair including P&P. Naturally I grabbed his hand off. Now that is what I call STUNNING SERVICE. He didn't need to go to this length, I already knew that I was asking a relatively impossible question (there are historic posts on here and other forums about this part and lack of availability). He could have simply said No! But he made the effort, and did the research and came up with two solutions to an impossible question. Try finding this part through Google or Bing, without the reference to Vixen and you won't get any results. He could also have thought, pah, not much money in this, why bother. Or, 'OK so I found 2, I'll charge the guy a fortune', but no he didn't. The emails back and forth with Thomas at Teleskop-Service are testament to what customer satisfaction is all about. (one thing he did mention, was to carefully check my PayPal latest delivery address because that would be where the computer printed the shipping label to) Naturally I will happily continue to do business with them. Happy and impressed. Richard

To the OP, a great post, well written, and confidence inspiring for any relative newcomer. Cheers, Rich