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18 minutes ago, edarter said:

Ref light polution, I don't have anything as yet  its on the 'to purchase' list. its a toss up between an LP filter and a dew heater next. Then guide cam etc etc

Welcome to the wallet emptying slope that is AP 🙂

No need to apologise! 

It's a learning process for all of us.  If you can take some flats, that will help with the vignetting that shows in the image at the top. 

Not sure about the colour, there seems to quite a lot of light pollution and dealing with this effectively is always a challenge, particularly with an astromodded  DSLR. What method are you using? 

32 minutes ago, wxsatuser said:

Canon banding issue.

Is that likely with a 600?  I know it plagues the 750 and on but I thought the ones before didn't suffer from it (certainly my 700 has never exhibited it in 5 years and 33,000+ frames) 

Is the cross hatch pattern present in your flats (assuming you took some) ?  

It looks like walking noise.  As I understand it, it's a stacking artefact resulting from a gradual movement of the guiding scope/camera relative to the imaging train.  Can be caused by mirror movement in reflectors, Viton tipped screws in the guider clamps or half a dozen other possible micron sized shifts.

Getting rid of it in post processing never fully worked for me, although clamping everything down hard helped a bit, but what really fixed it was moving to an off axis guider.

Nice Rosette, by the way. 

Your procedure sounds right, so perhaps it's just a little tweaking that's required ( the advice about checking focus above is very worth following).  

With my AZEQ6, I find sitting on a camping mat under the mount and sighting over the top of the mount (before scope and counter weights are added) allows me to get Polaris lined up reasonably well.  Then adjusting it in the reticule as per one of the many polar alignment apps usually gets me within 5 arc minutes which is enough for my guided imaging.  For visual it's not necessary to do more than a rough alignment.

When you're in the home position, can you see Polaris in the finder scope?  If not, how far out are you?  This may give a clue as to where it is and perhaps why it doesn't show in the polar scope

I did suffer this problem for a while. 

Tried a dew heater round the secondary mounting block and while that worked as far as the dew went, the wires (which were pretty thin and carefully aligned with the spider vanes) played havoc with the diffraction spikes in the images.

In the end I settled for an extended dew shield, made out of thin(ish) neoprene foam rubber about 40 cm long.  It slides over the end of my 200P by about 5 cm and keeps the secondary dew free (at least until the primary starts to dew up).

You can still use an Astro modified Canon DSLR for terrestrial photography (See Juan of Cheap Astrophotography's thoughts here). 

And in support of that, here are a couple of non-astro images I took with my Baader filter modified 700d last summer (apart from cropping and reducing them, the colour balance hasn't been altered) along with one of IC1396 taken with an Ha clip filter.  And to chip away at another myth, I haven't any sign of banding on my 700d in the five years and 33,000+ frames it has been in use:

That looks like coma.  

Can be corrected with coma corrector (!)  I use this one on my SW200P  but one draw back: it can create reflections on very bright stars.

Coming a bit late to this, but with Sky and Telescope's Pocket Sky Atlas and a piece of card with a circular hole cut in it to match your finderscope FOV, start at Denebola and try and hop your way through the Virgo Galaxy cluster to Vindemiatrix.  

Here's the chart I made up for this (the orange Messier numbers don't work too well under a red torch!) but you get the idea:

Not familiar with that particular scope, but if it's anything like my Skywatcher, you shouldn't need to purchase screws for the main mirror - they should be knurled already.

For the secondary (assuming yours are again like the SW) something of a suitable size from here might work (not sure if the nylon will be stiff enough).  I actually used stainless and painted them matt black.  From memory they were either M3 or M4 but yours may be different?

I think they will appear once an image is loaded and checked...

You can achieve goto on an EQ5 mount with the AstroEQ modification.  Ideally this uses stepper motors and can then slew quite quickly using one of the planetarium programs (Stellarium, Cartes du Ciel &c).

The web site is https://www.astroeq.co.uk

If you're handy with a soldering iron, building your own is quite a good option and belt driving improves the guiding quite noticeably 

Thanks, David.  

We wait with baited breath...

As of this morning (1 Jan 2020) the 4.2.3 Beta version is announcing it's out of date and refuses to start. 

I may have missed it, but is there an update?  The option to turn off white balance was very handy for those of us who use StarTools for post processing.

I'd skip collimation for the moment, and have a go at finding and focussing on something (star or planet). 

Once you've found something in the eyepiece you will see how quickly it moves out of the field of view.  At that point, as long as you can point the axis roughly north (does not have to be very accurate for visual use) then you can use the slow motion knob to keep it in view.

And above all, enjoy!

Does that notepad file have the correct extension (.ini) ?

And have you put the lat and long in the .ini file correctly?  (+50d00'00"  and +00d00'00" 

Not sure if it has any bearing, but try removing the space from the file name so that it becomes (stargazershome.png in the ini file and in the png file.

You likely know this anyway, but the AstroEQ needs to be powered up before it is connected to the laptop.

HTH.

I have one, although I can't remember if it came from FLO. 

It doesn't reverse (or invert) the image. 

It saves me sitting on wet grass when I have neglected to take out my neoprene foam mat!

I fitted a pair to my EQ5 for visual tracking, and then ventured into astrophotography. 

At this point I discovered Tom Carpenter's AstroEQ.  This cost about the same amount, all told, but gave fast slewing, goto and much more accurate tracking and guiding.  If you are into a bit of fabrication of brackets and some soldering, the AstroEQ can probably be done cheaper than the Skywatcher motor upgrade.  

If you can't eliminate flexure any other way, then an OAG will certainly help.  I moved from an adapted 50 mm finder scope to an ST80 (ghastly thing, as others have observed, the appalling focuser flops about all over the place) and then to a camera specific OAG and the improvement in round stars was instant and dramatic.  

Not sure what camera you are imaging with, but my Canon OAG keeps the prism well clear of the light path:

12 hours ago, Atreta said:

I'd have a second thought about the 200p for astrophotography. If i remember it i correctly it will also not focus properly with a dslr.

That's not quite the case.  I have been using my Canon 700d with a Skywatcher 200P for five years now and it focusses just fine, with or without coma corrector and with or without a barlow.

I agree that the PDS is probably a better choice for a dedicated AP scope, but the 200P also works well.

Can you confirm that you have two 5 kg counterweights, as it will need both of them to balance.

1 hour ago, Tom g said:

 I’ve picked Betelgeuse and it was in the West and the mount slewed and stopped in the south

 

Are you quite sure of your alignment stars?

For your location in northern France, Betelgeuse doesn't get into the west until around  06.30 GMT.  It doesn't pass the meridian (due south) until 02.30.  

Hello Tom, welcome to Stargazers Lounge.

I don't have your mount but are you sure about the co-ordinates of your location? 

It decodes as near Aibes, in northern France. 

If that is where you are, then how accurately are you pointing north in the home position?