Stub Mandrel

Flo 's website is quoting delivery in 2-3 weeks for the OTA: https://www.firstlightoptics.com/reflectors/skywatcher-explorer-130p-ds-ota.html

I assume the trunnions are plain bearings? Try moly grease or teflon grease, you need something that will create a persistent layer between the two metals. Also are the bearings steel in steel? If you can find a way to put in bronze bushes that will help.

The problem I have is that there are loads of different articles, each appearing as scholarly and well-worked out as the next, and they all end up giving different advice!

First issue! That driver is saying it wants ascom installed. To me this says I should not need to use ASCOM to use the camera with PHD, but when I click the 'mount icon' I get a message ''Fail:OnCamera Connection" I have the ST4 lead plugged in but as I understand it this is only wired to relays inside the camera and has no direct electrical connection to the mount. I'm taking the earlier advice and trying PHD2 but it's busy generating a dark library.

My deluxe (in)version* :-) *The body is made from one of the down tubes of a Halson 'Inversion' mountain bike fork.

I understand teh mount won't be guided, but PHD should be able to connect to the camera without the ST4 actually plugged in... Thanks, I think that's exactly what i was looking for!

I tried out the ZWO as a guide camera last night. I didn't have the ST4 cable connected, as I just wanted to have a 'dry run' at using the camera and PHD. I have read the long and excellent FAQ on guiding with PHD. Sharpcap worked fine (and I captured some trial images of M3). PHD found the camera using the 'windows' driver and I could adjust exposure etc. and it could either auto-find a star or let me select one, but when I clicked the 'mount' icon it said it could not connect to the camera (I had 'on camera' guiding selected), even though it was getting the images from it, so no target icon and nothing to look at for my pains. I must use the ST4 connection as it's a home brew box and not yet ascom compatible (if it ever will be). Can anyone tell me where I'm going wrong?

I got a pair of these last year, they seem to be an ideal size for 'all round use'. but I haven';t had much chance to use them!

That's really good Mikey! Next time someone says you need a minimum of a HEQ5 for imaging I'll post a link to that!

Not in my landscape, I can just about see ESE over the top of the house but that's on the edge of the local LP hot spot. My main 'window' is SSE to SW. W to NW is my darkest sky but also tall trees :-((

Hmm... I was able to edit out the blurry reflection of alnitak in a fraction of the time it took for users of other CCs to figure out how to attach them to their scopes...

There will be lots of photos of M13 entered!

My reading is (and I may be reading far too much into this) that they have chosen this especially to encourage Alt-Az and EQ3 imagers - or maybe to get us to Put Up or Shut Up! Of course, I have only gone and ordered a guide camera off FLO ...

Looks great, but it must be a pain having to carry the table everywhere...

I think your influence has spread to Staffordshire...

I remember stargazing (and trying to get some basic astro-pics with my bridge camera) - this was before I discovered SGL. It was very freaky being in the dark and hearing seals making rude noises not very far away at all!

Twenty seconds to comply...

Almost as much fun as an ED209

Might be worth: Trying the altair driver Trying Sharpcap Asking robin in the sharpcap thread.

Excellent, I may go for one of those after all and save my £££ foir a Ha filter.. What's the longest exposure you can get? Just a thought - have you tried using the Altair drivers with it?

Jings! Is that the ne off ali baba?

I agree with Wim, yes you are right but I wouldn't use it instead of darks unless I had a bad pixel map, because the better and cleaner the image before it goes through kappa sigma, the better the result..

Imagine you are calculating the average height of a class of kids, but your tape measure sometimes 'glitches'. If you ignore three or four 'way out' measurements the average you get will still be pretty close to the actual average if all the measurements were OK, and much better than if you had included the random giants! kappa Sigma basically spots the height measurements that are outside the expected range and ignores them - it works out the standard deviation of the data and dsicrads any points atht are more than a certain amount away from the mean. It then recalculates the mean. Your plane trails just give one 'high' reading (or more where trails cross) to a series of points on the image, which kappa sigma ignores.

Why spend 189 on a used 130mm Newt when you could have a virtually identical brand new 130P-DS with ther benfit of a crayford focuser for £179 from FLO?

MN51 is fairly bright, up under the tail of the great bear so away from LP but I find it hard not to get trailing when pointed straight up.