pipnina

Tell me about it! I used about 1500 worth of kit until march this year. HEQ5 + pre-owned D3200 + 130PDS+BaaderMK3 CC. I used that from 2017-2022. Then in february I bought a risingcam 571. Then I bought £3000 woth of chroma filters... Then I replaced the 130PDS with an 8" f4 TS newt, which I never got to work as I liked... Then spent money on a second hand 130mm triplet... Oh no oh no. I looked up how much I spent in total this year... I felt very guilty... After 3 years of saving money and living with my dad to save for a "house deposit" i blew a lot of that in 9 months chasing better images haha. I'd been looking at even just the astrocam upgrade til then going "One day, but man they are expensive!"

Sadly you need to be careful when buying dedicated USB hubs too. I bought one from a local shop, USB3. And my RisingCam 571 complained about it only having a 2.0 connection, and did not work as a result. I ordered a Pegasus box on 31october... Still not here yet but flo said their expected delivery was in "early december". I guess Pegasus are struggling for volume.

A friend of mine found a website that did just this, for Linux tutorials. They were incomprehensible, wrong, repeated themselves. Totally useless, but they were able to get themselves onto the first page of google!

I wish not to be rude as I can only choose to assume the guy has best intentions, but the guy's website has a lot of clickbaity articles and based on the fact he is asking here for info, they probably aren't very useful. I did see one featuring a focusing mask made from chicken mesh (!?!). At least he seems to genuinely be doing the astrophotography and isn't just spamming articles wihout even touching a telescope, but in the end if someone wanted to know "what camera settings for astro" or "best camera for astro" or "best first telescope", they'd be better off if the website had links to relevant SGL and CN forum threads. I suppose researching threads, writing about conclusions from them and using the threads as references, academic style would work though? I know I gave up on articles for hobby advice years and years ago. Youtube can be good, forums are best, but articles are so much more likely to be clickbaity rubbish written by someone who barely knows the subject at best, or plain written by a computer (machine learning) at worst.

My present (collab between dad and grandparents) is already under the tree Stellalyra 6mm UWA by your recommendation! Looking forward to trying it out on mars if the weather cooperates before mars disappears again. Hope you guys have a nice Christmas period!

As I understood from Vlaiv's reply, you'd need to compare the roots of your integration times to get an estimate of the SNR difference. So square root of 80 divided by square root of 20. So your lum should be twice as bright as the NIR. But I think Vlaiv was also talking about doing actual analysis on the images themselves, which would probably be more accurate, but maybe it will work just as well with the guestimate?

That depends on how you want to present it I suppose? 400-700m luminence plus 700+ could make some interesting colour combinations, in which case pixel maths could let you add "red" NIR to "white" luminance. Or you could use LRGB combine tool but that is less precise. Curious to see what you come up with!

I've found with my own HEQ5 that the first slew attempt is miles off. Kstars/Ekos shows errors in the order of 8000+ arcsecond on ra and 3000 on dec quite often. But then it narrows in very fast. I've tried things like resetting the alignment data and all, but it's not helped much. I consider it a rather untroubling issue as the computer gets it to the right spot relatively quickly regardless. I imagine some get their HEQ5s to work very nicely, but it has all the flaws from my perspective that you would expect from an entry level scope-AP mount.

I can't see the problem, but it could be the web browser interpolating the image. When you zoom in on an image displayed with nearest neighbour interpolation, stars may look a bit square if they are relatively sharp. I can't see anything much wrong though. I think your image looks quite nice.

The 150mm f8 RC would have a focal length of 1200mm. For most guidescopes you have a focal length of 200 to 250mm. This means with the pixel size of your 120mm, the guider pixel scale is going to be around 1/6th that of the main scope, which is not desirable (assuming main camera has same pixel pitch, which is likely given you mention DSLR, but you don't seem to mention a specific camera used for the RC6). At most you want to have a 1:4 scale difference between the guide scope and the main scope. Ideally 1:3 so I read. This is why OAGs are so much more popular than guidescopes for slow cassegraines.

The guidescope is, sadly, most likely worse than a lot of lenses 😕 It's fine for guiding but I'm only using a 6x4mm sensor for that, it has a 1.25" camera side connection and I have an APS-C sensor.

Hm, so maybe even M42 to astrocam isn't as simple as I thought! Such a small difference in thread design, so much annoyance! Are there good bayonet adapters for the old lens mounts to T2?

My telescope being out of action for a while has led me to look at potential low cost optical replacements to tide me over. This is where I learned of old camera lenses with M42 fittings, and even lenses intended for 120 format film. These are remarkably cheap and some old threads on here have shown that they are quite capable, even if they are not necessarily up to modern standards in all regards. With that in mind, all of the threads back then spoke of attaching them to DSLRs, which makes sense as adapters for the bayonet fittings would be more commonly desired for terrestrial photographers. However when attaching them to an astrocam I suspect it may lead to more headache? Mostly I would think when it comes to backfocus and or the need for a tripod thread to exist somewhere. Even longer lenses (135, 150, 200mm fl eg) seem to lack a tripod foot, which would leave my astrocam and lens pair with no suitable method of being secured to my mount save for tactical application of cellotape haha. Are there any here using such a setup today? All the old threads are from 2010 to 2013 and perhaps the tastes for cheapo lenses have changed. There is a film photography shop in Plymouth which i have visited and has a wide range of lenses and camera bodies, I intend to pay them a visit if there is a possibility of making this work! Cheers

Images of the shed and her creations are a reminder to me that when we pass, we become what we have left behind for others. I think Gina has left us much indeed. People reading old threads on here will often see her advice and experience when researching for their own endeavors. A shame that the shed had to go in such a manner, but sadly sheds are not an easy move and very unique to the builder, so this is not unexpected

If you have a white shirt, like the business style ones, you can pull that taught over the camera lens/telescope end and keep it that way with a rubber band. Ensure there are no wrinkles or creases. Then point the lens/scope at a computer screen or ipad or television showing a white image. Many screens have colour or brightness shift off-axis but the shirt mitigates this, and helps you produce valid flats post-imaging! As long as your focus position is very close (ideally the same) as it was before, you should be good!

I've just gotten home from work and decided to take a look at it in daylight. Having aired my brain for a while. I sadly don't have a Cheshire any more (sold it with the old newt I had, figured the newbie needed it more than I did), but I might have to go and get another if this it's going to be useful for fracs too! I do however have a TS 2" concenter and a Baader laser. I tried to see if I could see any reflections using the concenter, but sadly with no way to illuminate the lens while it's in place (maybe I could rig something, torch inside the tube maybe?) I only saw a foggy objective... I did notice however that the concenter was NOT showing the edge of the objective to be concentric to the rings in the etched acrylic... I got the Baader laser out and my printed target paper, sure enough my focuser is out having already been through this once. I suppose tightening the screws that keep the focuser on the rotation bearing must have moved it. Maybe if I double-triple check that the focuser is square after fiddling with it again, I could also set the lens cell back to being flat against its own tilt adjustment... And then work from there in whatever method I can use to get it proper... Ai ai ai this is not what I hoped for haha.

Wouldn't be the first time something unexpected was wrong with the scope! I only just got the focuser issues sorted, as the 2" crayford that came with it was absolute rubbish (would not sit straight, and slipped out slightly every time the auto focus motor moved!). Took a lot of stress and expense (and bribing of the machinist at work) to replace it with a suitable TS 3" R&P. So it would not surprise me in the least to learn something else complicated is wrong! I'll have a Google for the guy! Thanks for the name! I really hope not! But in the case that it's so, does it show up in a certain way in star tests? While I have noticed symptoms of miscolimation in images and at the eyepiece, so far I think it only looks like (to my newtonian-familiar eyes) primary tilt as described by images online, but does decentralised individual elements also have a specific set of symptoms? Tests showed the scope does only produce about 800mm of focal length despite the previous owner saying it should be f6.6, which is closer to 850mm, although the distortion model was immaculate in pixinsight and there is no issue with colour as the autofocus routine is finding all 3 of my RGB filters to be parfocal. Cheers

There's Trouble with Triplets? Might explain my frustration then as I'm using a triplet apo (SET Optics 130 f6, can't find much about it, got it 2nd hand) It has a rather large number of little screws around the lens cell, but I haven't touched them as I assume they adjust the three lenses individually. I have touched the screws around the edge that seem like they're for tilting the whole lens cell in one go however. Maybe I'll have a look and see if I can get someone to look at it 😕

Just come in after about 2 hours of staring at slightly defocused stars and twiddling with the front lens cell. I have either made things a lot worse, or have managed to change nothing! I tried only adjusting one of the 3 collimation points (loosen main screw, tighten grub screws) which was the one roughly in the direction of the offset bright dot in the middle of a defocused capella. I could see in my 10mm EP (80x on a 130mm scope), a large outer ring, some blurriness in the middle (a bit of atmospheric turbulence tonight) and a bright spot to the right of center. But no matter how much I adjusted the front lens cell, the bright spot would not move. Do I need to put the lens cell in a certain orientation for it to be adjustable? Like loosen all the grubscrews and just do up all the main screws just barely, then start loosening them off to adjust tilt? I also noticed that when I turned to jupiter, the dot appeared on the left side instead? And I could only see through a small part of the EP, but maybe that was a reflection... I dunno. It seemed very odd. It seemed like getting closer I never got to see the whole 50 degrees of afov, only a small off-center circle of it, but then, jupiter was in the field and very bright around that area too... Are there any tips for doing this by eye? I seem to be making a mess of it : ( Considering sending it away for someone professional to work on it haha. Do @FLO offer that service maybe?

And from what I hear about radio hams, they'll probably manage to collude to work out where the noise is coming from and come have a chat if it bothers them lol. I've heard they are a very knowledgeable set of people, as to be allowed to use the equipment at all you have to go through a lot of training and courses. One lived opposite me for a while and had a big antenna going from house, to garage, to fence to house, and apparently talked to people around the world using it. Didn't speak to him much however.

The big problem with adapters like these is they consume a lot of backfocus. This one starts at 20+mm, which is as thick as my filter wheel! They could be suitable for some of the fancy refractor, or typical cassegraine correctors, but where most correctors ask for a 55mm~ spacing, you'd likely have to give up an important bit of kit to accomodate one of those. I think that adaptor also would rotate the camera as you perform an adjustment? I can't quite tell. It's an option I've considered but they don't seem like they'd be helpful for anyone using a 55mm spaced corrector, unless they only need the camera and an OAG perhaps. It also moves the camera so definitely affects focal position, I don't know how much moving the corrector only affects the focal plane position but it could cause less motion and allow easier "real time" view of the corner star shapes changing.

Having seen many posts about the troubles of achieving proper backfocus spacing, and having my own issues with the topic myself, I have begun wondering if equipment manufacturers, as well as ourselves, are thinking about the business of corrector spacing all backwards. It seems pretty expected that we buy a corrector, and then add things between it and the camera, be they female-male spacers, shims, off axis guiders, tilt adapters etc etc. But because of how accurate we need to be for most correctors to the ideal spacing, we end up outside in the cold constantly unscrewing our cameras or opening our filter wheels to add and remove and change our camera train to get that spacing just right, needing an autofocus routine every time we make any changes. It's slow, tedious, and exposes our kit to the elements and increases the risk of dropping things. My filters were nearly pristine when I first sealed them in the filter wheel, but I have had to spend so much time fiddling with backfocus this year they are starting to get a bit coated with the sticky kind of dust that doesn't just blow off! I am not keen to try and clean them but the dirt I see in my subs does annoy me. And so I wonder, why don't we move the corrector instead? If correctors were fitted with a kind of helical focuser, that could move the lenses inside up/down the barrel, we could add our bits together in the camera train to achieve a rough spacing from the corrector lenses to the camera, but when it comes to fine-tuning it in the field, we'd just need to undo the locking knob on the corrector and shift the corrector lenses up-down a bit until we get to perfect spacing that way. No finnicky disassembly, no dirty filters or camera sensor windows, no ice cold fingers trying to handle and tell apart 0.5mm shims from 0.8mm shins. Just turn the helical focuser of the corrector by 1/8th a turn and take another photo... How has this not been done yet?! Do we suffer all of this because of the upfront cost of building the correctors into their own mini-focuser, only to spend that cost on shims and spacing rings (and our sanity) instead?

I tested most of the kit last night: So far everything is still working. Pleasantly surprised! Laptop, cam, Guide cam, Filter wheel, focuser etc all seem to be working. Only haven't tested the mount yet, as it is in the shed. Hopefully when I run some power down there that turns up all clear as well. Feeling somewhat relieved.

Some laptops support creating their own WiFi acces point. A Google might help you work out if you can do this and get the NUC to connect to the laptop that way. After that, VNC is a good suggestion as mentioned above.

My dad has a few bags of that stuff for the car. Seems to work ok but sadly I don't have an airing cupboard or similar to put things, and the house tends to be rather damp as previous owners made very dodgy building choices. My room is a garage for example, and the back room is a patio that they put two extra walls and a ceiling on top of... Not exactly "to code". I'm going my best to dry everything out at the moment. Telescope itself seems fine, no sign of water between the triplet lenses and it all looks very clean. Just a matter of if the ZWO EAF+EFW + 120MM mini, and the laptop and camera are ok... Fingers crossed... Thanks to those who recommended removing the laptop battery, thankfully it was easy on mine (only 2 screws and it pops out by hand). And the laptop is now sat half open near a radiator for its second night.