Catanonia

Quite common to do and thinking about doing it myself again.

My OAG is a pain for my SuperNewt, so currently I am side by side with a refractor, but it weighs alot and needs an extra 5kg on the bar.

So thinking about this setup, but will introduce flex causing guidance issues.

Luckily I am @ F2.8 so can get away with short exposures. But normally people move away from the fract on top because of flex.

Heard the news last night and although we all knew it was going to happen one of these years, I was still shocked and saddened when it happened. If only everyone could have 1% of the inspiration and presence of the late Sir Patrick, then the world would be a much better place.

So sadly missed, such devotion to the amatuer cause and from all accounts, there for everyone.

My only regret is that I never got to meet the great man.

RIP Sir Patrick, the next SuperNova should be named after him.

Cat

Using ST4 guiding with QHY5 via PHD.

Locks are tight and scope is balanced.

Will try adjusting the settings in PHD as mentioned. As for guide rate in handset, never seen it other than tracking type which is set to sidereal

Thanks all, baffling.

I wonder if someone can set my mind at ease as this issue is completely baffling me.

I have recently stripped down my NEQ6Pro mount and now I am struggling to get PHD to work and I am afriad it is something I have done.

Here is a breif description of the issue.

1. Polar aligned, but not drifted. As precise as I could get it.

2. WO66 only on the mount with QHY9 and QHY5 OAG

3. Sidereal tracking on the mount.

4. I cannot get PHD to calibrate, it goes to about 60+ west calibration and fails with star has not moved enough.

5. If I switch of tracking on the mount, the star does move across the PHD screen so the mount is doing something.

Now for the wierd bit.

6. I can guide for nearly 5 minutes with the mount only and no PHD.

Now I now the WO66 is a widefield and stars will not move much in its FOV, but this is silly. I have used PHD and this scope before.

Surely I have not accidently got perfect polar alignment and drift ???

I thought PHD would "move" the star to ensure calibration, but it refuses to do anything as the star stays perfectly still.

Thoughout the whole night (unguided) M31 barely drifted across the screen !!!!

HELP !!!

Is there something wrong with PHD ?

Thanks all, it has been a tough few months,

Still quite a bit to iron out, got really frustrated last night so gave up.

Hi all again, been away for an age what with losing my job, problems with wifes health, retail park being built behind my garden and above all a broken CCD and mount all in the last 4 months.

I have missed all of the good skies we have had recently, but eventually I have sorted out a few things.

1. CCD now, eventually, refurbished from China and working.

2. NEQ6Pro has been stripped and rebuilt by myself

3. Wife is better

4. Retail Park, been a busy campaigner and even ran for towm council to get the points across. Looking like it will be rejected on traffic, but it will go on for years

5. Job, lost my job, time to move on. Good news is that I am now contracting and potentially earning 2x as much in a very exclusive market.

So eventually after all of the stripping, re-calibratting, re-laerning of how it all works (amazing how much you forget if you don't play) I managed to get 4 x 10 minutes HA of the Wizard Nebula NGC 7380 to test the refurbed kit out. I was hoping for a full night, but the clouds came in against the BBC forecast. Amazing how things never change eh

SO on my SuperNewt 800m @ F2.8 with a QHY9M CCD in Ha 8nm. 4 x 10 minutes roughly processed to an image.

Nice to be back in the saddle again, although with my contract work, doubt how much time I willl be able to devote to astro now.

Here she is, be gentle, it has been MONTHS sine I last played.

Cat

WO Flattener II is the one, but they are as rare as hens teeth.

mmm, so would an 8nm Ha filter be ok at F2.8 assuming it is a good make ?

I am finding that the 8nm Ha filter I have has no real advantages on the F2.8 compared to the F7 or F5.6 scopes I used to use it on.

I was advised sometime ago that you should have a business card gap between the primary and the mirror clips.

Well I have come to the conclusion that this is wrong, totally. Well if you are using a GSO type cell.

If you don't clamp the mirror, then it will shift and alter the colimation as the scope tilts from horizontal to vertical. Just put some logical thinking behind it and it is obvious, well not to me at the time.

I understand why it was said, mirror pinching, but as long as you don't "clamp" down on the primary, it won't shift and affect your colimation.

Tales of the F2.8 world, brought to you by an extremely frustrated Cat

Where did you get that idea? Or is this case of my dads bigger than urs ?

Not sure where that came from and certainly wasn't my point. Put simply, things that are in regular supply do not fetch as much as those that are not.

Also as Bizibilder says, supply and demand.

Sometimes I hate the attitude of "some" people on this forum.

The is a misconception that astro gear will retain it's value. Just not the case with the common stuff such as 200p and the like. They are everywhere to buy new, so 2nd prices will reflect that. That said, less common stuff such as WO66 and the like will get higher prices, especialy if they are discontinued. I have a WO66 and a rare WO Flatener Mark II and I wonder how much they would go for, especially seeing I haven't used them for nearly a year.

Spiral galaxies should not exist as the stars on the outside of the galaxy revolve at the same rate as the inner stars.

Physically this should not happen due to gravity.

So the theory is that dark matter is the spread out matter in the galaxy to balance the mass of the galaxy.

Surely, a more simplier approach is that our interpretation of Gravity at large distances is well WRONG ?

Let us not ov er complicate things,thing logically ?

Or Dark Matter is the interaction or clashing of parallel universes ?

Thoughts ?

I have always wondered about entropy and the energy moving to chaos and disorder.

Ok so where does the energy go to ?

It can't just disappear can it now according to physics ?

Yet the universe is expanding at an ever increasing rate, we put this to Einstiens mistake of the cosmological constant, now effectively renamed Dark Enerygy (he was actually right)

HOW ABOUT THIS.

1. Energy in its sense we know it disipates to nothing, ie so thin we can't measure or see it and it has been happening since time began.

2. Over time this IS Dark Energy, the disipated "real measurable energy" we no longer can measure or see

3. This dark energy is what causes vacuums to expand and hence the universe to ever expand at an increasing rate.

Put simply, Dark Energy is the energy we can no longer measure due to its disipation, and adds to the expansion rate ?

The rantings of a loony ?

Thoughts ?

Watching a video about globular clusters and how old they are, relics of the universe, but in our and other galaxies.

Recent descoveries show that new stars are forming in them now, unheard off.

What is the bet that globular clusters turn out to be satellite galaxies with mini black holes ?

One could say they were older galaxies captured by the major galaxy which would explain a lot.

Thought for the day ?

Might give some moon watching a go

Having very similar problems with my corrector / reducer and newtonian running from F4 to F2.8

I found that my CCD was not level to the CCD case. I used digital venier calipers and found a 0.5mm difference across the CCD chip.

Also if you have now messed with the secondary, re-cats eye and check the secondary peep hole on the autocolimator (offest) as well as the primary one to ensure you have it spot on.

Watch the clear skies appear now I have shipped my CCD back for fixing. Probably be without it for a month or more

No doubt will be the best skies all year.

Fantastic news and well done Nasa, such a brave and daring landing.

Has this anything to do with your collimation marathon, Cat? Pretty maddening if so.

Olly

might be mate, but certainly wouldn't have helped.

Thanks all, the fight is on against the retail park and I have been rattling a lot of cages in the CC

Anyways, back to stars Might try and find some time and re-process this properly.

Thanks all.

There was an interesting article on this subject in a recent BAA Instruments & Imaging Newsletter.

There is apparently a camera tilt unit made by Gerd Neumann that addresses this problem.

There is also one made by FLI but it is somewhat more expensive.

Callum

See the thread qoated above by r3i

I remembered you had a thread on this a while back, to which I contributed: http://stargazerslou...page__hl__ qhy8

Since then we've been moving house and my kit has been in storage and haven't been able to do any imaging for ages, so haven't had chance to check if the tweaks I made to my QHY8 have completely solved the orthogonality issues that I was having. In the meantime I came across this bit of kit from Gerd Neumann: http://www.gerdneuma...lting-unit.html If I'm still having problems I might invest in one. It looks similar to the Optec Equuleus device but a lot cheaper.

Ah not seen that post, very useful bit of kit.

I am currently testing out a washer under one of the cover screws on my QHY9 mono. I now have an average variance of 0.1 mm instead of 0.5mm

I see a lot of threads with people struggling with eggy stars in certain parts of their images and I too had the problem.

Mine was exagerated due to running at F2.8 and it was and still is doing my head in.

Well in the end, I took out my digital calipers and measured the distance from the CCD class to the front of the camera.

The results shocked me. One side of the CCD front was a whole 0.5mm lower than the other side.

Has anyone else checked theirs ?

Is your chip square, mine wasn't and similar problems