Stub Mandrel

I never have problems with my HEQ5, but after a meridian flip all bets are off and a realign would be needed. In practice I can't image far enough past south to be worth flipping. Is your problem after a 'flip' or when crossing the meridian with flipping suppressed?

You are about 10-12 degrees south of where I am, so the need for an ADC isn't as pressing. I suspect that you would gain more by using a barlow. I use a 1200mm focal length scope with a x3 barlow element. If you were in the UK I would say definitely get an ADC, but in mid Ohio Jupiter should be getting up to about 27 degrees where the benefit will be marginal. Results are very dependent on the quality of seeing and can be very different on different nights. If you use Sharpcap it's worth spending a while carefully focusing using the focus assistant or a nearby star (Antares should be well placed for you) with a bahtinov mask.

150PL with a random x3 barlow from astroboot and an ADC.

Just as a contrast to my video made in poor conditions. Note that this has been chewed a bit by YouTube's compression. Bad seeing video for comparison:

Got this as well. Shame I didn't realise Europa was just off frame to the right until too late! Registax does a nicer job of colour balancing on this data too.

Did wonder about one of those.

Nothing wrong with that at all Bryan, it's so low down and much less detailed than Jupiter. Cassini division is clear and hints of the D ring which is tough to get at the moment. I've only ever managed to get a single storm on Saturn, otherwise no more than the sort of banding you have there.

But... At last, it started apparently normally. Rather than just go ahead and try and make an exposure, I updated the firmware (from 1.1.0 to 1.1.0) just in case! And now it appears to be working again. I'm leaving it overnight before I refit the cooler. I'm wondering if it was condensation, yesterday I 'improved' the insulation on the cold finger where it's outside the camera. It passes close to the USB socket and may have made it wet. I'll have a go at sealing the area a bit better with more foam. Thanks for all the ideas and suggestions folks. Damn. I'm waiting on an invoice to be settled, if it had happened I might have pressed fire on a mono cam...

Afraid that just gives me the updater like the UK and Canadian sites. The page about Eos Utility states: But the only version you can download is 3.X, you need 2.x for the older cameras.

It really is misery time here! My car overheated - turned out when I fitted a new thermostat the spring clip on a hose was the type that clips wide open. In queues of traffic today I gradually lost most of the water although the pipe didn't blow off and held some pressure. Managed to get another few hundred yards to the co-op and once it cooled a bit topped up with a litre of pre-mix and five-litre bottle of mineral water. Well to cheer myself up here's a couple of Jupiters from the first of the recent clear nights. I tried drizzling the best one 1.5 times and found it precessed better in registax wavelets than astra deconvolution. Not bad for such a low target and 6" scope.

Sadly the download link appears to be broken - must be a 'lost' page they never tidied away?

Well this is tough. Realistically I'm looking at two choices ASI174 or ASI 183 and cooled or not. I'm impressed at your results with an uncooled camera on such warm evenings. Makes me wonder how effective a peltier fitted on the back and some insulation would be... Darn it ... the 1600 with bigger sensor and in-between pixel size is clearly idea, but...

Nice blend of dark and light, FOV very close to what the 130P-DS would give.

I'll go and find your images!

My 450D appears to have bricked itself. It may be that this question is no longer academic for me...

I've emailed canon to see if they have a download link. I know my 2.7Mb connection will make this tedious!

I've visited that page many times. Alas no, the only root to a hard reset is leaving the battery out for a couple of weeks until the internal battery goes flat 😞 Can anyone find a download of the Eos utilities for the 450 - connecting to a computer might be what it thinks its doing so trying it might work. Thing is Canon only make the updater available for download and I haven't got the CD 😞

It's possible the camera has gone into 'boot mode' and is expecting a firmware update. Any ideas how to get it out of this? I've put teh latest firmware on a SD card but I am not getting a chance to look at the menu...

It may be the battery died at a bad time, but i've trire swapping teh SD card and using with and without it. Sometimes the blue light flashes when I put battery in (even though turned off), it then remains unresponsive. Sometimes a menu screen appears for a second, then it either goes blank screen or briefly shows the shooting info screen before going blank. Sometimes it goes straight to thr shooting info, then goes blank. Twice it stayed on the shooting screen for a few seconds and when blank when I touched the shutter button. The USB socket is clean, I removed the cooler and looked inside.. I did remove and reattach the cooler yesterday so MAY have prodded something when filddling the remote jack back in. But if so, why would it work fine for an hour or two then throw a wobbly? And why does my guide camera go funny AND my desktop forget my work password leaving me without email, all on the same night? Perhaps their was a giant EMP or a massive solar flare....?

I haven't used it with USB for over two years! But... I put a battery back in this morning and it dipalyed a menu. When I tried to get it into preview mode the blue 'pictbridge/computer connection' light started flashing feebly - I had to look at the manual to see what it was. Seems it thinks its connected to something 😞

Woe is me! My AS1 120MC won't guide for more than a few minutes without locking up. I've reinstalled the driver (again...) and not even sure this has helped. Plus... my 450D (on remote timer) suddenly made a series of very quick exposures the showed the 'saving images when switched off screen'. Now it won't turn on, at all. I've tried three different batteries. This may be the end :-(

@alan potts sometimes you need someone to say "that isn't quite good enough..." Here's another go, this time I got DSS to balance the background for me, let the blue-rich bits come out a bit better:

Yep, colour isn't very good and very noisy, but yes I never expected to get a recognisable image at all from this low! First sub it was at 18 degrees, last one at 10 degrees!

This is a target I really thought I would never get from my garden. I have tried M16 before, which is a little higher, but it has always been totally wiped out by light pollution. Normally, even with a light pollution filter, I wouldn't even think of going back down into the murk... Last night there was both excellent seeing and transparency, so I decided to have a go, even without a filter as a 15 second test shot actually showed up the Swan. Being so low, just above the roofs and shed, not a lot of time, I managed to squeeze 50 2-minute subs in, more than I expected! This is the result, 150PL, 450D cooled and modded.

I'd be very chuffed with that 🙂