pipnina

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.

I think it depends on the program used to view the image. Editing programs seem to prefer NN interpolation, like RawTherapee (image 1) and PixInsight (image 2). viewing programs like windows media player and chromium browser prefer bicubic or similar smooth interpolation algorithms.

So I went to bed at about 3am last night, and woke up to my dad coming into my room at about 11am saying it was raining. The telescope, laptop, etc were all dripping wet. I've taken everything besides my mount indoors, and the mount back into the shed. I've tried drying everything off as best I can but I don't want to risk testing it yet and give it more time to dry out, as I don't want to risk it being OK but getting damaged by power-on and shorting. I could have sworn the forecast last night said rain wouldn't start until some time in the mid afternoon, and with less than 40% probability. I suppose it served me right for not wanting to go back outside and spend 20 more minutes in -2 weather when I just wanted to go to sleep. Been saying for ages that I should buy a weather cover, should have done it I guess 😕

I just took a picture with a bahtinov mask on. Looks normal in the middle, but in the top right and bottom left corners, the diffraction spikes seem to CURVE!? In the top left and bottom right however, the diffraction spikes seem compressed on one side and stretched on the other? Is this indicative of a specific problem? I've also noticed that the focuser is shifting again, when pointing east... I need to look at my cables and grub screw tightness again I suppose...

The 5mm spacer arrived! I have it out now. But despite best efforts things still aren't right! I added two 1mm shims and there still seems to be astigmatism... and something else in the bottom left?double cluster test.fits I include the fits since the jpeg edit I made might not be the best for seeing the problem...

If your stacking program has an averaging mode called "sigma clipping" or similar, try that with a sigma of 2 or less, I found it very good at removing these hot pixel trails. Good luck!

Indeed I bought it from a fellow SGL user recently! I think you may have dodged a bullet however, I had to get a machinist involved to get the 3" focuser installed. The 2" crayford that came with it was absolutely not fit for purpose. It was wonky (more than 2mm deflection, produced poorly collimated stars and tilt as a result) and the grub screws that held it onto the circular dovetail flange were not sufficient either, and they also showed signs of a previous owner having frustrations, as the flat head cut in them were burred over and stretched as I tried to tighten them. I ended up spending about £500 on top of the cost of the scope, to get a working focuser, plus weeks of stress worrying that I was out £2k before I worked things out with a machinist at work. I may as well have bought an equivalent scope new...

I looked that model up just now, the only sad thing about most astro cams at affordable price ranges (i.e. below 1k) is the micro-sized sensors 😕 Someone used to an APS-C camera switching to that Atik 460 will have images with only 1/4 the "surface area". So in some ways it seems a bit wasteful, as 75% of the light being collected by the telescope isn't being recorded vs the APS-C DSLR. I can't argue about the quality of images it would produce though in comparison... But the loss of so much light and FOV is bound to make those gains a painful compromise.

Hi! It's a "SET Optics 130mm f6.6 APO" According to the previous owner the company went bust, I am the third owner of this scope so I am a bit distant from the original product page. I havent found anything about it online besides mentions of it being the same triplet lens cell as used in the now discontinued TS Photoline 130 f6.6. That said, without the corrector (unflattened/unreduced) platesolving claimed the scope only had about 800mm of focal length, which is closer to f6.1-6.2 than f6.6... I've done a check on the focuser, by adjusting the tilt plate again. This time I used the laser and the crosshairs-paper on the front of the telescope, but instead of just aiming for the center of the paper, I noticed the laser got a reflection back from the lens cell. No chance to test this but I did adjust the focuser tilt a little to get that back reflection from just off center to bang on. I also tried to tighten the grubscrews on it a little. The weird thing between the image where the focuser looks fine, and the second one where tilt is evident, is it was on the same night's imaging! I think a meridian flip had occurred... I realised why I was adding so many spacers trying to achieve backfocus too the other day when I was at work, it was because my previous newtonian scope also had a 55mm backfocus corrector, but had an m48 connection camera side. I hence used a 6.5mm thick M48-M42 step-down adapter, which is now missing as the corrector for this scope is already M42 like the rest of my camera end equipment. I found an M42 extension ring of 5mm on ebay, due to arrive in a week or so. Hopefully that lets me solve the issue as I have run out of threads to add spacer rings too for now! I hope to test it again when the bits arrive, thanks for your response!

I think a prime example of this effect is seen with the HST and JWST. They might take a half hour integration and have a nice clean result, while being f22! Meanwhile my f5 130mm telescope on the ground would take several hours to approach that level of SNR. Difference being that those scopes have 85mm square (not diagonal) sensors onboard, whereas I only have a 24mm width sensor. Maybe at that size aperture has something to do with it, and for sure they have the whole being in space advantage which probably works in their favour rather strongly, but I was shocked to discover that both of those space telescopes were above f20, which is often considered unusably slow for many normal photographers as that aperture reduction tends to soften the image and usually lets in too little light.

This is quite unfortunate to hear. I have two WEGA printed mounts for my ZWO EAF (for the TS 2" crayford, and the TS3" R&P) both of which cost more than 40 quid each! I have to say I had an easier time with them than you, though far from perfect In my case, the crayford bracket was a rather clever design using a friction fit, as the focuser has a gentle taper on it, so the circular smoothed-out plastic could grip the focuser quite snugly and the connection to the focusing shaft kept it in place. Even then however, I found I had to file the inside gently to get it to go over the focuser at all! Which wasn't great, and there was a useless little wing that was meant to go under the focus motor area, held on by a tiny little M2 or M3 sized screw, which promptly stripped the threads in the PLA material with barely any effort. Thankfully that wasn't a functional piece! The one for the TS3" R&P was better, although it was a single piece and didn't rely on friction anywhere. I feel like us amateur astronomers have more use cause than most people to own our own 3D printing equipment, a lot of us would probably save money on the 200 quid investment after a few months or years!

Just looking at youtube shorts and this pops up, I am not sure exactly what he was seeing but I have a hard time believing it's anything but a satellite of some sort. What do you think?

Wait, so should I have been flipping my newtonian's images horizontally? (assuming camera's sensor's wide length points to the front and back of the tube, if that makes sense?) I never considered that I was looking at everything backwards in only one direction!

Looks like a nice little instrument! As for the wega stuff, indeed it is metal-machined prices for 3D print quality- but I suppose 3D printing has allowed the product to simply exist on the market at all, which can only be a good thing. I'm getting my own 3D printer (in the post atm) so hopefully when I next get the need for something printed, I can just smash something out in a CAD program and make it myself. When I first got a wega adapter for my EAF and TS crayford, I over-did the little M3 bolt that held a little clip on and sheered the thread clean off. Thankfully it wasn't important but it let me know just how flimsy this PLA stuff is! Out of interest, would it be possible to remove the plate joining the guidescope's rings together, and then use the bolts holding the guidescope assembly to the lens rings, to hold the guide scope AND lens in one go? Might improve rigidity, make it a bit lighter/compact, and look a little tidier? I'm looking forward to the results!

I have a 130mm f6.6 triplet and so far have struggled with the current Photoline ED 0.79x corrector i'm using, as regardless of the spacing I use some astigmatism and curvature seems to remain. I have seen the riccardi m63 0.75x as one option as a flattener-reducer upgrade, but the explore scientific looks like it could be a good alternative at a similar price. The ES can screw directly into my TS 3" R&P focuser I think, as it has an m68 "zeiss" (?) thread. It also has a slightly stronger reduction which could be good for my setup as my guiding isn't great, the backfocus is also a bit longer than the riccardi, so I might be able to fit in an OAG and a backfocus-adjuster. Meanwhile, the riccardi looks good because it still has more backfocus than my current flattener, and also shows me the spot diagram and vignette I can expect (very tight stars even on full frame, and no vignette until the very corner of a full frame sensor, and even then it's only supposed to be 3%). If the ES is better, it sure doesn't, advertise it... Does anyone know which one might be better? At the moment I am leaning toward the riccardi. Cheers!

Having been able to test my 3" focuser upgrade, and using my laser to adjust the focuser tilt to be as square as possible (as best as I can get it! maybe in a tolerance of 1-2mm at the objective lens), I have found I still have some issues with the images produced by my frac. I think some of it might be sensor tilt, or possibly collimation (I had to cut the tube and re-install the flange, so some movement could be expected). I think in the images shown the spikes coming from the stars might be the heat packs I stuffed next to the lens cell to stop it dewing up (heater straps still WIP) but I can't tell until I next take the scope out 😕 I did notice that when adding and removing shims from my backfocus total, the astigmatism level didn't seem to change much. I'm finding the point at which it goes over from saggital to tangental tobe very hard to pin down. I am wondering if this corrector maybe isn't able to correct an APS-C sensor, as the previous owner used I believe a 1" format. I can't see any obvious coma in the center, so maybe the issues I have left are purely to do with the corrector and a little bit of sensor tilt? I did try and check the camera for tilt when I got it and couldn't SEE any movement of the central laser dot, but that doesn't mean it isn't there... On the other hand, maybe the tilt could come from the various threads joining the camera to the focuser, such as the thread from corrector to filter wheel, to tilt plate, to male-to-male, to camera?w I did notice that between the two images above, I had a meridian flip, and after the flip it seemed to make things worse, what do you think? Here's some whole images to go with it: Processes I should run through prior to and during the next session with the scope are greatly appreciated! I was hoping the world of fracs would be a bit easier to navigate but alas I am still struggling haha. EDIT: The flattener is a TS-Optics 2” Photoline ED 0.79x specifically.

Adaptive optics mirrors can intentionally create astigmatism, coma etc. So I imagine they could adapt to the prescription of an observer, or that filter thread lenses could be used as a more practical solution. But I think normal eyeglasses won't work due to, as you say, the shape of the light being an exit pupil instead of a cone. I think it would need some alternative shape to traditional prescription lenses.

I imagine any adaptive optics system that works for imaging will work for visual observing too. However the cost of such systems is still very high, far out of the reach of us mortals. I think I have seen telescopes with adaptive secondaries before, but they were "ask for quote" price!

I think it might work, but I also think when you put it before the EP you need a different shaped and stronger lens, plus spacing becomes important as with corrector lenses for fast visual and photographic scopes. It might be a bigger stress going that route sadly.

The Askar FMA180 is looking very tempting indeed... I need to see if I can find example images of it used on a FF sensor.

Despite being lucky enough to have easy access to a southern-sea overlooking B4 site, I've not done much observing for a few years and my dob genuinely had gotten to a point where I needed to remove the primary and carefully clean it! It had big tufty dustballs all over it. I always liked observing, but between the hassle and the 3.5 diopters of astigmatism, I found my views at the eyepiece a bit uncomfortable and I think it contributed to my equipment's lack of use. So with mars about, and me planning a higher power EP for planets following a revival of desire to observe after a session last month, I got to thinking about how my vision will impact my observing in the future. Naturally I'd heard of dioptrx but none of my EPs can have one mounted to them. However, I sold my Valve Index VR headset earlier this year to finance my astrophotography addiction hobby, and I had bought prescription lenses that sat over the lenses provided with the headset, a bit more than 1.5" diameter... They're thin and designed to be close to the eye... You can see where this is going? Turns out, after a quick experiment with my binoculars and my EPs (not attached to telescope), as long as I have long eye relief EPs (currently use 18mm and 20mm relief EPs) I can correct my astigmatism quite well AND maintain full field of view of the EP by repurposing my VR headset glasses! Of course it's loose, and I'll have to hold the lenses when I'm using them, but it's a step up from all the stars I see being long lines or ovals! An unexpected win!

Indeed stellarium's framing tools are quite nice in my experience. My equipment list (lenses contains the 0.79 reducer for my 130mm frac), and I use it for everything from curiosity to serious session planning. And I like the live coordinate framing and frame dimensions in degrees, as well as pixel scale given live on the red square. The only thing stellarium misses IMO is mosaic planning. Kstars can do this and auto-generate a capture sequence for you, however it is not a refined process (want to re-order the sequences it generates, or add your own custom one before/after it? Good luck!). Kstars also has a very basic planetarium by comparison to Stellarium. No pictures by default, and as far as I can see no surveys to use in place of the blank sky, so it isn't as useful for framing as stellarium. Still, stellarium is only good on that front for better-known objects anyway I suppose! It does have a pretty nice graphical representation of your expected field of view, lets you set grid overlap, and of course generates a whole automated program for capturing the mosaic, based on camera sequences you saved to file previously. However as I said before, if you use this feature, you have to commit to it all night because once this tool adds those operations, it will NOT allow you to add or move anything in that list! Sorry that's a bit of a tangent, but hopefully it lays out some of the capabilities of the free software for imagers?

My process for setting up my HEQ5 is as follows: Deadlift the mount & tripod to the spot where I will be imaging, and put it down with no payload where it is roughly pointing in the direction of polaris. What I like to do here, is make sure the mount is relatively well lined up with the tripod leg that faces north. If it's miles off it makes my next step a bit harder, but still possible. I stand back a bit, line up the mount with that north facing leg in my vision (so you look up from the ground, to the leg, to the mount). I then put both my hands together and point at the tripod leg, then almost lean back and raise my arms til I reach polaris altitude. If polaris is far to my left or right, I need to pick up the mount and turn it a bit! Then I put my body weight on the mount to get it to sink into the grass a bit (no hard ground sadly) and do that prayer-looking check again. If my hands run through polaris, I am relatively close and can 100% see polaris in the polar scope! (I have my altitude set for my location, I guess the first time you need your altitude set to relatively near your geographic laittiude) After I do this, it's just a bit of fine-tuning to put polaris in the right spot in the polar scope, or run a computer polar alignment check. Getting the hang of setting up and using an EQ mount is certainly one of the big hurdles we all struggle with at first. But once it clicks... You end up wondering what all the stress was about in the first place! I promise!