tomato

Thanks for this @Xiga. Interesting that he encountered issues with the focus which required regular refocus, that’s contrary to myself and Gorann’s experience with the RASA. The flat USB cables supplied with ZWO cameras don’t have a great reputation for reliability, so might be good to change this for a round profile cable. I have never switched off the circulation fan on the scope when imaging, so I’ll do this next time.

Definitely not a fan of the Celestron squidgy material, given how precise the tilt adjustment needs to be. I'm not sure what their thinking was to include this, it isn't as if you are tightening the retaining ring onto glass.

And how about that all of this immensity has only existed for a finite amount of time (only 13.8 billion years), and, even more mind blowing, we know this… I find this Apollo 11 image very humbling, with the comment that all of humanity, less one, was in front of the camera.

The other 3 scopes I have did need to be approved by the FD. Top tip: always emphasise the resale value.😊

Just to clarify, I don’t own both 150s, my brother shares my enthusiasm for AP, he purchased one, I was fortunate to pick the second one up in the SGL classifieds.

There is a view that I’m barmy to have invested in a dual rig of that scale in the cloudy UK, but I took the view that when it is clear I have a fighting chance of completing a full colour image before the clouds roll back in.

Yes, I only came across it this year when looking for small, photogenic galaxies to image. NGC 3938 is another nice target which doesn’t get imaged very often, I think it looks even more like a mini M101.

Olly, Just another observation on the camera cooling which may be relevant given the climate at your location. On milder nights (10+ deg ambient temp) I found that with the dewshield in place my QHY 268 cooling could not maintain my set point temp of -20 deg. This was definitely due to the warm exhaust air from the camera being recirculated within the confines of the dewshield, as soon as I removed the shield the camera ran at the set point with around 65% of the cooling capacity utilised. No problem with the dewshield in place on cold nights. To be fair, -20 was probably in excess of what was required, but the cameras are obviously not designed to pull in their heated fan exhaust. If you are using decent quality power and USB cables you might find it a struggle to route them down closer to the corrector plate, I use Gorann’s arrangement with no (to my eye at least) unpleasant diffraction artefacts.

In my experience the Celestron RASA focus motor is a great bit of kit, easy to install and precise operation. I know Gorann’s experience is the focus doesn’t shift very much at all on these scopes but great to be able to check without getting hands on.

This is my personal view but I don’t get too hung up (pun intended) on cable management. Provided they don’t get snagged when doing a meridian flip or slewing (and you can test this easily enough in the daylight) then I take the view the incoming photons don’t care if your cables are minimalist and tidy. Also I change my setup significantly on a regular basis, so if my cables were all of the precise length, I would need at least 3 sets. But then I can appreciate that 3 tons of spaghetti hanging off your rig is not to everybody’s taste…

Looking good! And a departure from Atik’s Artemis capture software? A lot of change happening at once. I got my RASA/OSC combo up and running with NINA, with no drama.

Just looked at a photo of the Pier 8 set up, I see what you mean about all the weight hanging off the wedge. Do you know by any chance how big the concrete base is that the wedge is bolted to?

Presumably you operating the L500 with a wedge rather than in Alt/Az mode?

Maybe somebody (a non Astro person?) wants the garden space back. Looks like it needs fixing up a little but a real bargain for someone.

Just looked up the details on the camera, that’s nice!

Great job, as good as any Pillars of Creation that I have seen captured from the ground.👍

Great image, plenty of sharp detail and colour.

Great list. Noting your location, I think you can add a key W word, namely Weather Watching!

Probably a question for the BAT forum, but will there be a nominated single target to image? Presumably that will be required if we are going to get sufficient data on one target, but that is going to be tricky if the imagers signed up are all over the globe. And M106 will be poorly placed from the UK when Astro darkness returns.

Not too bumpy I hope, that will play havoc with the F2 RASA collimation.😉

Great news Olly, Best of luck to the both of you with the project. I knew it was only a matter of time after you saw Gorann's RASA OSC Squid Nebula....

It will be quite a challenge. Looking at the list of kit already signed up I don’t think there are two setups the same.☺️ But hey, “We choose to do these things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard”.

+1 for Cuiv’s NINA vids, they helped me out a lot.

Just for the record, the delighted and very grateful SGL members that Malcolm has helped out are myself and @Tomatobro. We had a plan B if the boards were not fixable, but might have known that @malc-c would score the winner in extra time. We should now have a Syncscan/Alt/Az RF switchable controlled Dob.

I agree if you are prepared for the financial outlay and long lead time you will get a superb observatory at the end of it. It’s quite sad to hear that he cannot find anybody to employ that shares his work ethic. Good luck Keith with the website, great to see you have one in the making, which is more than can be said for me.👍 Steve