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AndyKeogh

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Everything posted by AndyKeogh

  1. I will look back in my records. I have been there in February and my recollection was that it was cold but excellent skies,
  2. Good pictures 😊 I have never seen an aurora. In case I do, what camera settings and lens did you use?
  3. Which mount is this for? My EQ6 is not in use at present so if someone is passing Ponteland then they could take it up to you.
  4. Sandra continues to make progress, but will still not camp! Are you up there house hunting? Andy
  5. I hope it improves in 2 weeks as I am booked in for 10 days in the caravan Andy
  6. It is indeed sad that this has happened . I just hope they were well insured. has anyone else noticed that the mounts and scopes are missing from each pillar. Would the mounts melt completely in such a fire?
  7. Hi Derek, may I suggest some editing is required. Please note: That although there are some spaces left for say: for Tuesday the 2nd and Wednesday the 3rd, that if you want to book for those nights you will not be allowed to extend your stay over the next night the 20th, if the camp numbers were to be greater than 25 pitches. That's some jump from the 3rd to the 20th and the text following the 20th is out of context. Sadly I will not be there this year as Sandra is adamant that she will never camp again !!
  8. As Derek said very impressive. I suspect this was about 1am. What exposure was required and did you have to do anything special to stop star trailing? Andy
  9. Does the Hitec Astro cable work if it is plugged into the handset controller? As far as I can see from some quick research here https://www.celestron.com/blogs/knowledgebase/what-are-the-aux-ports-on-my-computerized-telescope-for the only RS232 interface is in your hand controller. So I guess to answer your original question the driver you need is a Celestron handset. You asked your question in an EQMOD thread about Hitec Astro’s EQDIR adapter. Now that adapter replaces the HC. Because the EQMOD software replace all the functionality of the HC and lots more besides. You may therefore get more details if you ask your question in a Celestron AVX forum
  10. OK it seems the cable is being recognised and windows is using an FTDI driver. So it should work. The question now is what is different between this cable and the others which have worked? I have had a quick look at the stellarium user guide and it would appear that you tell it to use com 6, I do not use stellarium so that is the limit of how I can help. Have you had Stellarium actually controlling you scope with another cable? Andy
  11. It was the same for me last month with a new 4G router except I had to drive back home to pick up a screen and keyboard before I could get the imaging rig to work Still it was a nice 300 mile drive !! Countryfile weather forecast seemed promising for Tuesday onward albeit a little cold as the week progresses. Hope you all get lovely clear skies. Andy
  12. OK the property box is a drop down. Could you select hardware ID rather than description and take another image please. I can see from your cable image that it is an FTDI chipset. Need the hardware ID to confirm that That is what w10 recognised it as. Does com6 only appear after you plug the cable in? If so can you also screenshot the driver tab as well. TIA Andy
  13. Can you upload a picture of your cable please. Hitec Astro used to use Prolific chips and some were unsupported by W10 So the consensus was to use the FTDI 232R chipset . So the question is what chipset does your cable use? If you look in device manager at the port devices and then plug your cable in how does it identify your cable? If you right click on the description and select properties Details tab what values are listed? This image is for my Hitec Astro EQDIR cable. A little later I plugged in my FTDI cable by which time W10 had updated the status to my COM3 to PHASED OUT since 2012 but in the screen below you can see the id for the FTDI chip (COM4). This does not need any driver loaded as it appears to be directly supported in W10.
  14. You need to provide more details about your hitech Astro cable. It is a long time since I controlled my C8 using the Avx predecessor the CG5-AS-GT. My recollection is that it used an RS232 interface and Celestron had its own app to control the mount. I also had a USB to RS232 adapter as most computers stopped supplying a native RS232 interface. What OS are you running Stellarium on? Andy
  15. No Derek 😔 I meant the week in which past camps have been held in November. Winds, tents flying about the place spring to mind but there may also have been some stunning viewing as well. Andy
  16. Thank you Derek , Guess there are few stars showing this week so good for you to plan so far ahead 😉 Any chance you can post past weather statistics for that week? Andy
  17. It looks lovely and calm, are there many others staying this week? Hoping to book a van for next month in the hope that Sandra will be able to walk without pain by then. Andy
  18. You could just take the mount down as all you want to do is set the altitude so that you have a reasonable start point for drift alignment. Have a look on the net for illuminated tent pegs. They work great on campsites to stop people walking into the scopes and they do not ruin your night vision.
  19. Hi Mark, I faced your problem last night when setting up my equipment at a very dark campsite in Dumfries an Galloway. I was just setting alignment via the polar scope when the clouds rushed in but there were a few stars visible to the south so I had to complete the task with drift alignment using PHD2. I only went for one iteration of each axis but that was good enough or 2 minute subs with less than half a pixel movement in either axis between subs. My advice is place your scope where you will get the images you want, learn drift alignment, as Olly Penrice would say, it is the gold standard. If you set up your scope at the bottom of the garden you should be able to get your altitude setting pretty well set up as long as you make sure it is levelled first. Move it up to your patio or location of choice, relevel, use a compass to align with north and then play with drift alignment. A nice feature of PHD 2 is that you can make some notes as you align and it will remember these for your next session. For AZ ,I record which alignment bolt to tighten depending on whether the slope is positive or negative. For altitude adjustment I record which direction the star should move according to the sign of the drift. HTH Andy
  20. Thanks. I will be taking my Astrotrac & pier to Cape Verde later this month so I will try that and see what the outcome is. I am hoping not to have to drift align the Astrotrac as that generally takes hours
  21. Do you actually take 2 images or do you reuse the last horizontal image as it has already been solved?
  22. An interesting article thanks. Reference 1 also looks like a fascinating read https://archive.org/details/AmateurAstronomersHandbook Andy
  23. Thanks Themos , have downloaded the app and will try it out in the future. In the meantime I have found this neat ruler http://ruler.codeplex.com/releases/view/3554 Its extremely light on user documentation. Its best features are that by grabbing a corner with tool tips on, it can be changed into a rectangle with the exact width and height required and its opacity can be changed from the right click menu. Tried it last night but the clouds rolled in just as I was on (hopefully) my final iteration. Note when viewing a star's movements, your errors have to be reversed; right means move star left and down means move star up etc. Discovered after I doubled the errors in the first iteration I was using Polaris as the reference star and its position on the screen was changing by about 10 pixels/min so I will either have to speed up or use a star closer to NCP Andy
  24. Your sigma is very high at 70. The log says no stars found so try reducing your sigma. I would try halving it and do a local solve. Keep halving til it works. Have to checked that the image is good? Andy
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