Owmuchonomy

This is not unusual. Before you strip it down, do the RA worm play adjustment process, also described on Astrobaby's site. Also, check the worm bearing locking rings are reasonably tight (under the plastic circular removable covers). It may be just that, that needs some fettling. http://www.astro-baby.com/heq5-rebuild/heq5-we1.htm

First light via the 130 PDS with the new ASI 174MM this morning gathering a few small blemishes on our star's surface. Deepest joy, as I did all the capture with my MAC for the first time too. How easy is that! I compared a stack with and without a Wratten 56 filter. It was definitely better with, so here it is. The larger spot including penumbra is about 3 times the size that Mercury will appear against the Sun's disk on the 9th May during its transit.

In preparation for May 9th and because I am panicking as my Lunt is not here yet I made a white light filter for the 130PDS. I set up this morning in Alt-Az mode to do some visual and of course was taken aback by the shear size of AR2529. I wondered if my ASI 120MM would work so I stuck that on too. Here is the result from a 60 second SER file this morning. I feel a bit more confident for May 9th for Mercury and April 20th for the ISS solar transit.

Excellent Rob. As a Mod can you move my post from here ... .... To this thread. I must have messed up.

Blimey. all I do is similar to Louise. I fire up sky safari, use the camera chip orientation tool, match that to my camera/scope orientation. Use GoTo to hit the centre of the chip image I had on sky safari and then use EOS utilities live view to check and adjust it a bit.

Yes, it looks very nice. I hope you enjoy it and don't have any issues with it.

Craig Stark of PHD fame suggests not exceeding a 4:1 ratio guider to imager in arc seconds per pixel. This concurs with comments above. I am at around 6.2: 1.7 with my set up.

Primeluce Labs do M48 X 0.75mm spacers for a few Euros. I bought 3 for my now defunct frac but they are like gold dust.

Well, thanks to @Nightfisher, I acquired my used 130P-DS in January. Wednesday was the first time I could try it out. I was very keen to see if I could get along with imaging with this scope because for two years I have battled with a 4" triplet ED refractor and finally this month I secured my full refund. That is a story for another time and place and a few beers. For that, I could have purchased 15x 130P-DS models. So using my 60Da I grabbed 32 subs of the Pacman nebula region before the cloud drifted in. My main objective was to see what sort of field and star shapes fell out of it. Why didn't I do this in the first place? I am quite happy to live with star spikes at this price point. It was a complete doddle compared to battling with flatteners and orthogonality issues and the rest. I must admit I have over processed it I think but for a first photon capture at f/5 I am very pleased with the set up. Here it is in my obsy. This is the image. I am not too worried about my processing failures but the star shapes for a first effort are way better than I am used too. There is very slight coma in all corners but its even and that is just spacing to play with. The focuser has taken a tiny 'pacman' style bite out of the top of my stars but that is also a well known issue with the stock focuser tube length. Easily spotted and sorted. Am I chuffed? You bet; for the outlay on the OTA how can it be any other way.

I have one of these. I use my SCT 9.25 one side and my 130p the other. It is very nice for visiting neighbours and friends. As long as it is balanced well I think it will cope with your set up no problem.

I can't really tell what your setup is. For example I don't know what a projection ring is. All you need to do is remove the eyecup, attach the 43mm ring then attach the t adaptor and then the Nikon body. This is then the eyepiece projection set up. Can you post a photo? I do know for certain that the 8-24mm BH zoom does not always work in this mode but I don't think you are discussing that eyepiece.

Yes, the focuser has to be moved significantly. You will get quite a large increase in image scale using the eyepiece projection method especially with the 8mm hence its usefulness for planetary imaging via video mode. Is this what you are trying to do? actually, all my solar images are taken by this method using a BH 10mm and a Lunt 50.

Hi Pete. It's not an exact response but both my Canon bodies work fine with my BH eyepieces. I use this method of eye piece projection for planetary imaging. Do you have the Baader adaptor for the eyepiece to T ring? From memory it is a thin 43mm ring. It may be that your scope has insufficient focuser range. I have used my setup on a 9.25 SCT and a 4"" refractor successfully both of which have generous focuser ranges.

Wow that is some guide trace. Kudos!

Hello and welcome to SGL. I believe your scope is f/13.5 and sits on an Alt/Az mount. If so, these present significant hurdles to doing any astrophotography. The equipment will restrict you to short exposures of bright objects only, just the Moon to be honest. If you wish to consider astrophotography seriously then the general advice will be get a faster scope and an Equatorial mount. Therefore my advice would be not to waste your money on trying to get a camera to suit.

If it helps I did ascertain when building mine that it is the same base as an EQ6 so you may have more luck searching for that.

I had exactly this problem, on the 8 minute worm cycle. So I concluded an eccentric worm or big swarf in there somewhere. I just spoke to the retailer and they replaced the mount after I ran Synta's test protocol to prove the fact. The replacement has no such issue so I am much happier. It is not acceptable to have such issues on new products. The more Synta hear that directly or via warranty claims the better their QC should get. I don't see the advantage of going in blind whilst comeback remains a justifiable option. The mount is way better than my original HEQ5 pro in its ease of use and construction but then maybe I have learnt how to deal efficiently with Synta's idiosyncrasies.

iPad mini and IOS 9.1.

Great news. Please can you remove the iPad bug whereby every time i use it I get 'Failed to find current location'. It does eventually find it but after restarting the App.

Yes the subs are great. I think its a flats issue but I'm still experimenting. Flats are important for the 300 f4 because of significant vignetting on my chip.

I'm not quite in a position to contribute to that yet but not far off. I am stacking 3 hours of data today for the horse head taken using my 300 f4. However I have an issue with DSS with this data so am struggling. I get a weird zig zag gradient across the stacked tiff. I've never seen this before. Normal gradients are expected but this is weird.

No, the corners are not flat on a big sensor. Probably OK on smaller sensors. Now, my 60mm macro is as flat as a pancake.

As above. I have the 300 f4 L. At f4 focusing is extremely tricky. Compared to my frac at f5.59 then the field is not flat either on my crop sensor.

I feel for you Gnomus. I have virtually the same issue with my refractor which it is claimed produces a flat field even on a full frame sensor and it has at last been picked up by the supplier after me sending very similar corner crops and other data. My findings point to (and my gut feeling is that) the likelihood the collimation is slightly out as Olly says above. However, mine was almost a third of the price of yours. I wish you good luck and I will follow your plight.