cuivenion

The EQ6-R Pro is my realistic dream mount ?. Please don't take what I said as discouragement, good luck with your imaging.

It all depends on your budget and what equipment you already have. People have got good results with the EQ5 and similar mounts, but the lower the quality of the mount the harder it is. For visual the EQ5 and 130PDS are well matched but for AP a HEQ5 will be a real step up, I've used both mounts and I'd definitely go for the HEQ5 if you can.

The Samyang is pretty expensive brand new, over £400. It is supposed to be very good though. I agree that the flattener is overpriced for what it is, it's a shame because the example images on the site look excellent.

To be fair I think it has to be 1.25" to work with the focuser, but yes it is expensive.

That would be nice.

Probably a lot cheaper way of doing it! Out of curiousity I've read some info about using Baader MPCC coma corrector as a field corrector for short focal length refractor, not sure it would be possible with the ED50: http://www.stark-labs.com/craig/page9/WO66SD/WO66SD.html

I don't actually own one at the moment but I'm looking at getting one when they become available again. I just thought some proper tube rings would be nice, you can attach it to a proper dovetail then.

Not sure if anyone's come across this yet but this american company has started selling these: https://starizona.com/store/evoff-field-flattener-for-skywatcher-evoguide-50ed Now somebody just has to sell affordable tube rings for them.

It depends on your climate, if you're lucky you may just be able to use a dew shield. I would go with a secondary mirror heater over a heated dew shield though. I recently tried a heated dew shield and that didn't work well. I tried insulating the back of the secondary mirror with polyethylene foam and tape and also used a dew shield. That seems to be working for me at the moment.

Can you change the image in an entry to a reprocessed version of the same image?

On Windows 10 you can set the hours where you don't want updates to occur, I've got mine set from 1800 to 1200.

Here's the settings I used last night. AR030C GPCAM, Skywatcher Finderscope, 4sec exposures, maximum gain: Hope that helps.

I've seen posts of people using the synscan upgrade to add Goto to their Vixen GP mounts, but of course you'll have to replace the motors. You could use AstroEQ with your current motors but they will likely have a very slow slewing speed. https://www.astroeq.co.uk/tutorials.php When I had a Vixen GP I used AstroEQ with two Stepper motors I bought off eBay for about 16 quid each.

Same here, I use the the colour GPCAM too. That model is not that sensitive so I use maximum gain and 4 second exposures. As mentioned above darks are important. Sharpcap has a function for capturing and averaging darks so if you capture say 10 and then apply that'll only take less than a minute, and your frames will have no hot pixels to confuse the polar alignment plate solver. I'll have a look for my settings as well when I get back tomorrow, but you do have to tweak them sometimes according to sky conditions.

+1 here, great software and not just for the Polar Alignment feature.

Thanks for that, useful info.

Hi, I'm wondering what the purpose of this baffle is? Is there any before and after images showing it's effect?

It has parallax unfortunately so essentially useless for astro. Looks like I'll have to move it on to an airsoft user.

I was wondering if there was a lower voltage battery that would fit in the compartment, it takes 2032's. I wouldn't mind fitting an inline resistor although I admit I've no idea how to do it. I don't mind learning though.

I thought I'd take a punt on this: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Pinty-Tactical-1x40mm-Reflex-Riflescope/dp/B06XT11W79 Its fits the 11mm rail from my broken skywatcher finder, so no problems there. The good points are the build quality is good and it comes with lens caps. The cons are that the it dims the stars when you look through it, and worse of all the lowest setting for the red dot is way too bright for astro use. I'm guessing there's not to much I can do about the stars being dimmed but if anyone has any advice on how to reduce the red dot led output it may be useable.

It is a cracking image.