myk68

Hi Lee Thank you for looking around for that. I'd not had a chance to do any searching yet. I knicked the image from the first article and it's these 3 white gears on mine that are the gremlins. Also, the inside of the gearing system was dry as a desert, which might be why it's worn loose. I've been looking for a project. I suppose a cycloidal drive to fit the gearbox could be 'fun'!!😵‍💫 I think I'll try to resin print the white gears first as that may be easier if it works lol. Just wonder how long resin gears might last. Mike

Hi Lee The advice I got was to try Rother Valley Optics for repair. looking to Sky-watcher for help led me on a goose chase that ended up saying to contact your local dealer. 😐 So, I took it apart further. In the casing that you highlighted the 4 screws on. There is a multiple-layered planetary gearing system, one layer has 3 small white gears that after testing seem to be the point of the problem. They literally are the only part that is loose even to wiggle on the pin they rotate around, everything else is nice and snug. I know need to see if spares are available anywhere, or if I can resin print my own. I may have a cheeky email to first light as they have always been helpful. Mike

Yes, I tried retightening as the first thought but that doesn't stop the movement you see when the gears are meshed. I got the mount July 2021 from Harrison Telescopes so I'll email them to see if they have heard of this. Hope opening it up and tightening things up doesn't invalidate the warranty. Mike

Sadly yes

Well, I got fed up with waiting for a clear night to try the mount again (lol) so have taken things apart to show what I mean. I think in the first video you can see that the gears are well-meshed with no separate movement, they move together and this is the issue. To me, there shouldn't be this movement if the motor is tight to the shaft. The second clip shows me holding the motor shaft still and you can see the motion before it catches the motor the movement. I may be wrong but I can't tighten anything more to remove this. 20240206_161337.mp4 20240206_161415.mp4

Hi Lee, Thanks for the reply. Sadly not this movement that I mean, I'll try to get a video tomorrow. It used to have a little bit of that the Cuiv video showed me how to remove that, so I thought it was all sorted. My gears are meshed nice and tight and slewing manually is smooth. Mine is more when I take the gears off the motor and the motor shaft is, for a better word, loose. I can turn it a fair but before I can feel it connect with the motor itself then I can tell I'm turning the motor. Then turning it the other way by the same amount until it connects with the motor once again. Mike

Hi all, Glad to see there is a thread for this portable wonder. Though I must say the last 3 trips abroad it nearly ended up off the balcony. So hope someone knows how to help. So the travel setup is:- ZWO Asiair Plus, ZWO 533MC main camera. ZWO 120MC guide cam, Askar ACL200 scope, AZ gti mount, wedge, wires. I have followed Cuiv the lazy geeks video to sort out backlash and thought all was good, I didn't give it much of a test run before we went off to Egypt. Once we got there and it was all setup, the goto was working fine, even if it was a little long to finally center, it seemed to overshoot as it centered. When imaging with tracking on, no guiding, with 30s shots I was getting a star streak in the declination as if the star was slipping. Polar alignment was done through the Asiair and was said to be good at 1 min or less for each axis. when calibrating the guiding east-west was fine but before starting the north-south, it would do a few clearing backlash moves that took it away from the center start point then the north movement seemed to work fine but the south didn't move so much and didn't return anywhere near the start point and as such guiding was 'bouncy' shall we say. Now while there I thought it was slipping so tried more counterweight but this did nothing. Once back I have stripped the unit down and have found that the motors themselves have movement on the pinion before the motor actually moves. I thought it was the gear slipping on the motor but I've had the motor out totally and it moves before you can feel the motor tension. I hope this is clear enough to understand what I mean, and hope someone knows of a fix. I've had the mount a while now and it's out of any warranty. Thank you for looking Mike

Thanks for the reply, Keith. I wondered about setting the DL folder somewhere else but there doesn't seem to be an option to select one other than the one it creates when it saves. Think I'll have to look at this Allskeye.

Hi All. I built myself an Allsky camera with a 120mc/s about 2 years ago and all has been fine. However, I'd noticed recently some oddities in the results and decided, against the adage 'if it ain't broke', to upgrade the software. Turns out the ASI120MC/S doesn't work well with the app now and after multiple searches and resolutions not working. I remembered I have an RPI NOIR camera and this is working fine. BUT again as I had played around with something working, it now had to break elsewhere and the memory card had failed. I can only assume that the amount of read/write over the last 2 years has gotten too high and the card gave up as they tend to. I had the same issue with the security cameras earlier this year. So I've changed the card and all is fine again, BUT I want to stop the Allsky app from saving anything to the micro SD so the card lasts longer. I don't look at the images from other nights, I don't use the nightly animations or the Keagrams or anything Does anyone know if I can stop the images from being saved to the card? The other things have been turned off but I can't find a way to not save images. I just want a current image on live view and nothing more. Thank you reading my ramblings and hope have clear skies. Mike

Thank you all for your points. Looks like I'm getting more storage. But only for the light subs, I agree, throw the processing files and keep the original subs and the 'fresh' stacked image. To be fair the processing files take most of the room anyway. Clear skies all Mike

Hi All So I have got to the position where I have light frames all over. Now other than sorting them out and re-foldering them to make sense. I thought 'Do I need to keep them'?? I am also running out of storage space that I can work them on. Now I am meaning after I have gone through the process in pixinsight of checking them. correcting them. debayering. aligning and finally stacking them. If I have an 'untouched' stacked image, Do I still need the original lights for if I take more and want to add to the stack?? can I just work the new images and add the new stacked image to the previous one and have say 2 45 minute stacks that now make 1 hour 30? Am I missing something that screams NO DONT DO IT. Or is there no real issue?? Cheers for any comments Mike

Hi Newbie I haven't had chance to try for planetary yet but the same scope with a ASI120 did well. This is more for Messier, should have been clearer. The mount is a HEQ5 pro but I also have cross bar with 80ED, Moonlite focuser, ASI533, guide scope and ASI120 on. It might be ok but thought id ask about the ASI178 with a Mak127 first to see if there were any best combo's Mike

Hi, I got myself the ASI178MC as a planetary imager with the possibility for Messier imaging due to the resolution/sensor size. This was in the hope I could get some high res close images to show the details. I have paired it up with a Mak 127 and currently have to say it doesn't seem to performing as I had hoped. Am I asking too much of the scope/camera? is there a better scope that I could match it to for this sort of imaging.? I have a C8 that I could try but weight on the mount then starts to become an issue. Alternatively is it just that I haven't found the sweet spot yet and this set up should produce some good images.? Thanks for looking Mike

Hi All managed to get 80 minutes on these two the other night and I am still loving this one shot colour ZWO ASI533. wish I'd had it years back. anyway 40 x 2 mins, 80ED, ASI533MC Pro. stacked and Processed in pixinsight Hope you enjoy Mike

Thank you all for the help Through clouds last night I found that the error was when PHD hasnt started, or had stopped guiding. so thats that one I have cut the dither to about 8-10 pixels and will see how that goes, but the clouds thickened Also found that the X2 barlow I have is Rubbish. so not a wasted night of clear sky to find all this out Thanks once again Mike

Hi Martin I thought it seemed a bit high but there was a site with a formula on for matching your guide scope and imaging scope so maybe it 30 in the guide scope. Ill try it next clear night HaHA

Hi All As far as I am aware I have set up both NINA and PHD2 correctly witht he right figures to dither about 20-30 pixels in the main image randomly. Everytime I try to set it on for a sequence I get a NINA error of PHD2 with error code 1 Anyone know that error as I cant find it in searches Clear skies all, except in the UK as Bonfire Night always buggers that up Mike

Olly and Vlaiv This image is the 2 sets of 30x2min side by side. directly as saved from the camera in fits. NO processing NO alignment. I use Pixinsight totally at the moment and there is a tool in there called blinked that just lets you look through your pictures to make sure they are ok and then saves the ones you select to a folder to then work further. These images are not even debayered yet. I can see no trailing or anything which to me means my tracking works really well.!! unless I am missing something the walking noise would surely only be if your stars move in position on the image frame, which doesn't seem to be happening due to my guiding. The only thing here I would think is that between the 2 sets of 30 there is a positional difference and in fact there is. So does this mean I cant use these two sets together or is there a way to sort out the noise first. do I clip the background down or run a denoise first on maybe 4 stacks of 15 then stack those.

Hi John That sounds fun to figure out(not). But if there a reason why it then wouldn't do it in 2 following exposures that night. Or is that because I moved the scope to look elsewhere and it settled better maybe. Hi Olly I cheated a little with this, just to try it. So stacked the final 1st 30 and 2nd 30 together, but as pixinsight needs more than 2 images to stack I doubled up but the result was the same as when I stack all 60 frames

Yup restacking the 2 together gets that strange aligned noise??

Hi Olly Sorry it was the diagonally aligned noise I was meaning. My fault I never am clear in my explanations. I have gone though the images again, looking closer and found a few that the guiding bumped on and I think that's the star artifact you have picked up on. Maybe the focus and temp moved too (electric focuser on order 😉, the boss doesn't know about that yet) For more info on the images. I did them in 2 sets of 30, one after the other. The above image is when all stacked together I have just stacked 1st 30 and the 2nd 30 separately and they look fine. Maybe a bit of cloud crept in the first going to see what happens when I stack these 2. Mike

Hi All So this is a zoomed image from my shot of the Cocoon nebula the other night and is from a ZWO ASI533 on a SW 80ED pro. I got about 60 2 minute images. pre-processed and stacked in Pixinsight. The stars are points so the guiding was fine. It seems to be background noise. However, 2 other objects imaged the same night dont have this issue and are fine. Thanks for looking Mike

Hi All So it cleared up last night and I got nearly 3 hours of useful data on M33. Most surprised for the UK weather at the moment just finished initial processing. might try tease a bit more out later, but I have other nights data on M3 that I want to incorporate as well. Any comments welcome as always. Thanks for looking

Nice image, what was the equipment to get that.

Thanks Olly, That means a lot to me., and yes the scripts make it a lot easier while I get to grips with Pixinsight.