Yawning Angel

I have the Sesto Senso, and to me it feels like a really well engineered bit of kit. Very solid and mounting it was very simple. I get reliable and repeatable focus from my SW80ED's stock focuser If the ZWO has been released when I bought it, I think i'd have been on the fence as to the option of a hand controller, but I'm happy without - I don't do any visual.

After a reasonable success on the previous night, I was shocked to see another clear sky on the 13th! I think the law says I had to try and snag the Harvest moon? Not wanting to get into astro hot water, I gave it a shot I was out before the moon had cleared the surrounding houses, so contented myself with some Ha on the Heart Nebula, which was far enough way to behave well enough. About an hour or so later she cleared the last house, got briefly tangled in one of my trees like an actress tripping on her dress, composed herself and put on the show Zwo asi1600mm @ 40 gain, -15C / Sky-Watcher ED80 w 0.85 reducer. 25% stack of 1000 exposures each in RG and B, then inexpertly merged, so it might as well have been mono. More practice needed!

Friday evening, started with 45 x 1 min Ha on the Heart Nebula, filling time till the moon cleared the nearby houses. Then a slew to the Harvest moon. You can see the growing glow lighting up the high, thin cloud.

A little surprised last night when, at 11pm, I went to make a brew and spotted the garden was lit up like we'd gained a flood light! Oh, a pristine sky and a gloriously well placed moon! Well, I built an observatory to allow me to be up and running faster and catch these opportunities, so the roof was rolled and PC's booted Here's the result - 50% stack of 1000 x 4ms exposures, zwo asi1600mm @ 40 gain, -15C / red filter, Sky-Watcher ED80 w 0.85 reducer. Deep sky setup and not ideal for this job, but it was mounted and already aligned Captured in Sharpcap, then a run through PIPP. From there to AS!3 and finally wavelets in Registax. Loaded it in PS, decided it looked ok and not to fiddle 🙂

I'll happily second this. The stock focuser on my ED80 is holding the 0.85 reducer, mini 5 slot EFW and a 1600mm pro with no issue. Repeatable and consistent focuser positioning with a Sesto Sento motor.

I suspect you’d connected phd2 and apt to the same camera - that’d cause the download hang. Check the equipment page in phd2 and click the ‘road junction’ button next to the camera selection

3 nights running! Spent a bit of time over the last two messing with some pesky issues, as is the curse of imaging but also playing with a CCTV camera for a quick fix all-sky. Seems to be doing okay for £30 - It does a bit of on-camera stacking apparently

Cloud dodging on the Western Veil. So many wires and telltale leds! Clouds backlit by the rising moon

Unless the colour coding is off (the blue), that looks to have 4 x USB3 ports! Now that would be nice!

First try with a Sony starvis doing it's thing. No IR illumination, midnight last night. The flicker comes from the blinking light on the focuser / camera on auto Watching the live feed, it looks like it's doing some on camera stacking to get the sensitivity - there are trails anything fast moving, but then so would there be with an astro camera. Powered via poe and already in a dome. Just need to mount it now TimeLapse 07-02-2019.mp4

Worth every penny and every hour it took to design and build. After a long evening wrangling technology, I managed some test exposures - Eastern Veil Nebula, 35 x 1 min in Hydrogen Alpha / SWED80 / asi1600mm

Last night saw the first run of the whole setup. There was nothing pretty about the cables, and the scudding clouds made getting any sort of alignment 'challenging', but SharpCap managed very well. There are i's to dot and t's to cross but I'd call that functionally finished. Pretty much a year start to finish

I've had the carbon version both for photography, and the 190 has noticeably thinner tubes than the 055. The 055 was bomb proof, but not an easy thing to carry out and about and I ultimately moved it on. The 190 is much more luggable, but a little less sturdy. If you can accommodate the length, stick with the 3 section versions - less flex and they use the flip lock on the legs, which has a very positive 'locked / unlocked' state. The twist locks hold really well, but they are not obvious when undone 😞 Jessops stock a good range of Manfrotto - go poke them! As a side note, I've heard nothing bad about the 3-legged thing offerings, but never got my hands on one to try

Having a more determined try, I still can't find it...but I did find both James and myself commenting this earlier in this thread. Search 1, Gray matter 0. Sorry

I seem to recall, but can't find, a recent build using up-scaled drawer runners to take the roof. This gets away from the need to have a SHMBO approved removable support frame, and keeps all the rolling gear inside the Obs footprint. It's sure to be more expensive, but it's tidy and you don't need to store the rails when not in use Something like this: gsfslides.com

I'd love to use a cloud service, but sadly my broadband is the limiting factor. I need to handle the files locally for any usable speed. I'll have to settle for gigabit lan, external SSD's and a NAS I do have a wifi access point in the obs, at the end of a buried CAT6, but that's more for Echo devices, tablet & phone - with the added advantage of giving good coverage for the garden

Yep, it’s one of those👍🏻 The i3 with 8gig ram (maybe 16) and an SSD. Since it’s not doing any heavy lifting, its plenty spec. Most likely I’ll drop the capture files locally and sync the folder to a NAS It was a simple thing, but the VESA mount screws nicely lined up on the peg board, so I didn’t have to drill. Sometimes you get lucky 😀

I could have got away with smaller too, now I’ve relocated some kit. Still, it’s in and wired up now USB hub should also be in there, but I let it in the house 😔☔️ Scope side PC, monitor in the warm room, wireless keyboard / mouse. Rocking and rolling! Starting to tidy up now. Cables need clipping in, trunking closing up and the like.

The screw hides under the rubber hand grip, which needs some gentle prying up. I'll dig around for the guide I found a while back...

I was from eBay. They do them in various configurations. Mine is ABS with a transparent door. 400 x600mm - the seller of mine has no more, but these look the same I searched for "IP65 rated enclosure" Hope that helps!

The scope control box went in last night and the cables drawn up. Twin 240V socket and 2 x network ready to be terminated, along with the incoming 12V feed from a Nevada PSU in the warm room. The 12V will just pass straight through and up to the mount - I didn't see any need to add a join in the box space, but I'll coil some spare length in there just in case The wooden frame supports the PC's peg board, and is bolted in place using threaded wood inserts and M6 button head bolts. The whole thing is sitting on 44mm unistrut, and held in place with 3 x M10 stainless bolts The rear cavity is about 110mm deep, and the front about 100mm. The box might need some vents for heat buildup, but that needs testing before I chop more holes in it Out of the top comes a 25mm conduit carrying the 12V cable and a 3m USB3 up to the mount A bit of protection for the cables coming from the floor. 20mm in white with Twin and Earth, 12V and Network separate, the odd one out is a 25 which I only had in black, for the HDMI...molded plug was just too fat for the 20mm. The LED lighting plus red floor tiles gives everything a warm pinkish glow:-) Hopefully the PC etc can go in this weekend and I can get it tested. I'll be using a remote monitor in the warm room and a wireless keyboard / mouse for any 'live' work. Otherwise, Remote desktop for keeping an eye on it

There are also commercial 12V output UPS systems. Depends how deep your pockets are 🙂 https://www.simplypowersupply.com/DC-UPS/12Vdc-Output/default.aspx

Beautiful image with lovely composition. Especially like the careful alignment of the diffraction spikes

Rather than charge from the PSU, why not run the PSU from a UPS, smooth power and battery backup, designed for constant trickle? You can also hang your imaging PC off it, assuming it has the rating 😀