Stub Mandrel

Borth! Must be great for astro, I used to live in Talybont, a lifetime ago...

Unboxing... * I should be grateful; I urgently needed a 10A fuse so ordering yesterday afternoon and getting delivery before 8:00am is impressive. All for £1.62. But perhaps this would have been better sent in a small padded envelope? (Still not as impressive as Farnell, they once sent me a single microchip, about 15mm square, in pair of plastic waffles about 30x20cm, inside bubble wrap, inside a box, inside more wrap, inside an outer box about 60cm square - but I suspect this was someone in despatch who was a bit bored!)

Ah. In that case it's probably to help minimise electrical noise, it's not needed for safety with a 12V system. If you get glitching, add an earth wire.

Fuzzed out Skywatcher Logo, how very Blue Peter!

I think the cheapest route for you is to go back to your data, I think you have moved the black point across too aggressively and clipped some fainter nebulosity; but even so my stretch of a screen grab shows there's more data in there. Also worth looking for a gradient removal action/plugin for your imaging software. Sorry, can't resist doing a bit more, hope you don't mind and this inspires you to do more processing!

Can't be that important for two reasons: 1 On my HEQ5 Pro the handset sits in a holder on the tripod spreader with no such earth point and 2 The handset is designed to be use out of the holder and in your hand...

It's hard because we don't know the details of each other's setups or the exact amount of any imbalance but I have found what I would judge to be about a kg of imbalance works best for me. I do track past the meridian because of my situation and if I have too little imbalance the guiding degrades when the counterweight side is higher than the scope side.

Linking to that:

I received a large small pile of electronics components - resistors and voltage pump IC.

I did wonder whether it would be cheaper to use strimmer filament in a 3D printer or vice versa! 🙂

I had another go last night, with a different rig, but I only got four subs.

Luxury! We're having to grab a few frames as it dodges between the grass tussocks... 🙂

Sorry @FLO but I am not able to untangle the different IDAS filters you sell. Each one seems to claim to be better than all the others.... and not all of them have transmission graphs. I have Skyglow and 7nm Ha filters. What third filter would you recommend for use with a DSLR? Specifically to tease out more and fainter nebulosity under Bortle 5-ish skies. OIII? One of the IDAS nebula filters? One of the IDAS Light Pollution filters?

It has a big effect, but I always use a moon & skyglow or a Ha filter. When its up I only go for brighter objects. Tonight its RISES at 11:11 and will be up all night, it set at 10:59 this morning! So tonight I'm doing Andromeda which is fairly bright and sticking to two-minute subs. Not expecting earth-shattering results as it will have a fair gradient from LP and the moon, but at least its something. Earlier on I did M25 and Pluto, both low down and would be washed out by light pollution but open clusters (and star like planets) should be OK with shortish exposures

Very nice - great dynamic range in the first image, great detail in the second and lovely to see a great drawing as well!

Nice, how high in the sky is it from Malta?

Don't worry about it, my HEQ5 guides best when the left side is distinctly heavy, not just a few ounces. I get 0.65" RMS. You don't want to upset it by being too far out of balance, but if the mount slews without problems, it will guide OK. I suspect moving the counterweight out by six inches will improve your guiding more than a weightier guidescope. Also make sure you have minimised backlash in the gears.

There have been plenty of catastrophic floods as the result of the collapse of glacier dams impounding huge lakes within human pre-history and other causes. More than enough to explain flood legends across many cultures though probably not the same flood.

While white may reflect some UV, black pigment is more likely to stop it penetrating, limiting the depth to which the plastic can be degraded. https://www.directplastics.co.uk/about_plastics/post/how-uv-affects-engineering-plastics

A new tent! I don't suppose the clear sky is going to last for two week 😞

Even if it gets warm, it's only going to deform if you exceed its elastic limit.

As a botanist I can say with some confidence that having common AND scientific/systematic names is a GOOD THING even if they cause some ambiguities. At the absolute minimum it means you have two stabs at remembering a name, but they also help with associating the name with the object. IC1318 tells you absolutely nothing beyond the object is probably fainter/smaller than objects in the NGC... Butterfly Nebula tells you (a) it's a nebula and (b) it probably has a fairly well defined symmetrical shape and is likely to be an interesting target. Technical names are also a barrier to the less experienced.

I don't know, I've never used one, but the faster the scope the less the need for separate alignment.

True, but it makes me more tolerant of relatively new names. On the other hand many objects have several names and they can be ambiguous and confusing. A beginner might want to photograph the Eagle Nebula, but if the photo is titled M16 and they look it up in on the Messier list it's an open cluster... I generally rely on a combination of google and Stellarium both of which cope with synonyms quite well.

I find common names much easier to remember and a lot more robust to mistakes. Very easy to mistype catalogue numbers and as Olly says, Google finds anything quickly (notably foreign language versions of Wikipedia have far better information on more obscure targets than the English language one). I generally put basic equipment/exposure information in posts, always happy to share more detail if asked. @michael.h.f.wilkinson is right about astrometry.net the fastest way is to right click the image, 'copy image location' and put that into the site. Signatures can give away information to the wrong sort of person...