gorann

"Can anybody suggest some targets": M31 of course, you can get the core as well as the "hook" in the faint dust that @ollypenrice always gets excited about😅

Brave man! What is that tiny counter weight bar doing on a Mesu? Cheers Göran

That is a lovely run Robin of beautiful dark nebulosity, which the RASAs characteristically make to shine! The last two were new to me and now on my list, but I still have to wait a week or two before I can start my RASA season.

Amazing result of what must be regarded as heroic astrophotography!

I am now running several scopes in a night so I have a bunch of cameras. I had an ASI071 and when the ASI2600MC came out I bought one. I found it more sensitive and less noisy, so I soon sold the 071. A main issue I had with the 071 was dew/frost on the sensor itself. I repeatedly had to take it apart to dry the desiccant pucks inside, which inevitably added some dust to the sensor. I never had any such dew/frost issues with the three ASI2600MC I now have. A month ago I bought the Omegon variant of the IMX571 (discussed above) from astroshop.de. I am now waiting for astrodarkness to come back so I can test it but I have no worries since there are several examples of images from the Omegon camera on Astrobin and I contacted two of the imagers who both said they were very happy with it. So I would chose the Omegon 571 any day over the ASI071, and it is even cheaper, at least on Astroshop: https://www.astroshop.eu/astronomical-cameras/omegon-camera-vetec-571-c-color/p,67320

The the area of the sensor on this new camera is actually only 40 % bigger than the ASI6200 but costs nearly 4 times more. Other than size the sensors appear to have identical properties. I think this is a good argument for making 2-panel mosaics with the smaller sensor, with most likely better star shapes in the corners😆

My two RASA8 looks just like yours Steve and I have made no cleaning attempt yet - from what I have read dust like that will have no impact whatsoever on image quality. But I guess it could not hurt. Maybe I should do it to celebrate the return of astrodarkness next week. I have a bottle of Baader fluid somewhere.

I do not think you need to put any more effort into diagnosing the illness. The conclusion is that Celestron / your dealer has to replace your scope. I hope this new disease will not strike many more before it is cured!

Would be a nice match for this scope:

When you ask for it I realize, like @ollypenrice that I have not aimed my RASAs at any object s with very bright stars, but in any case, like Olly, I have not seen anything like the star anomalies you have so something must be very wrong with the scope, and apparently Celestron admits it. I hope you get it sorted in one way or another because a well-functioning RASA8 is just a worm hole into deep imaging!

Yes it is a shame. Must be a bad batch of mirrors, I have not seen this on my two RASA 8, but they are a 2-3 years old. Maybe it is getting too popular and QC is slipping.

Not even that Hasselblad camera they keep showing next to the scope would be up to the task. As far as I can tell their biggest sensor is 43.8 × 32.9 mm. No 60 x 60 any more.

Hopefully you can talk Astrodon or Baader to make an ultra-ultra fast filter set for your scope🤣

Just stumbled on this. The German seller has now removed it from ebay since he apparently did not get what he asked for. Apparently it is the scope that followed NASA space flights up through the clouds. https://petapixel.com/2015/04/27/massive-2540mm-f8-nasa-lens-shows-up-on-ebay/

Nice Carole, but be careful not falling backwards while pole adjusting!🥴

I was always sad about the summer coming to an end, until I got into astrophotography😁 Here is an alternative if you cannot fit in a tilt plate: https://astrodymium.com/collections/frontpage/products/rotating-tilt-adjusters

Yes, it made it quite wind-proof😁

This is what I brought to a south Pacific Island, just before COVID happened. A Canon 300 mm f/4 with an ASI071, sitting on a star adventurer. The whole kit with tripod weighed 8 kg. The lens is only 1.2 kg (not much for what is a flat field Apo with 75 mm aperture). I made a thread about the trip:

As far as I know all the less expensive ones (Altair, Omegon and Risingcam) are made by Touptek so there would probably be not much of a difference there unless the western importers (Altair and Omegon) have higher QC standards.

Sorry to hear this! It is worrying and a hassle to have to ship it to China. For others that are thinking about a Touptek made IMX571 camera but do not want to buy it from China, I think Omegon veTEC 571C is a safer alternative as it is sold by several European companies that would also have to handle service or replacement of a broken camera. It is almost half price of the ZWO or QHY versions and I just bought one. Now I am just waiting for astrodarkness to return to Sweden. https://www.astroshop.eu/astronomical-cameras/omegon-camera-vetec-571-c-color/p,67320

He he, I think I also spent a bit longer on the road, but since I did not keep much track of time I just posted the estimated time by Google maps.😉

That is an amazing amount of dust that the RASA8 captured! Great image Olly! But I think you forgot to flip it so it is a mirror image (I do it all the time with the RASA and it messes up attempts to annotate the image). Göran

Monday this week I visited Lucas Mesu's workshop to pick up a refurbished mount that I bought from @ollypenrice this spring. Here is a post I made about the visit:

This spring I bought a used Mesu 200 Mk-I (of the first black edition) from @ollypenrice in southern France, who sent it on to Lucas Mesu in Holland for an upgrade, involving fitting a Sitech II controller to it and give it a general check-up. I went for the Sitech II since that is what I have on my current Mesu 200 Mk-I, and having identical systems would reduce the risk of midnight confusion. When he told me the mount was ready to be delivered, he asked if I wanted to pick it up. From my house in central Sweden that would be a 15 hour (1400 km) drive, so my fist thought was to have it shipped here. But then I realized that my wife had planned a trip for us to Denmark in July to see her relatives, and that would bring us half way to Lucas' workshop. So I said yes, and thought that this would be the safest way to get the mount to its new home. Lucas and his wife provided us with a very nice lunch, and we had a pleasant chat about life in general and mounts in particular. There were very few Mesu 200 to be seen in the workshop as he had recently delivered the latest batch. He works alone in the workshop and said he produces about 40 mounts in a year. However, I got to see a Mesu 300, one of only two he ever made. The other one had been bought by a university and the one he has kept is used for calibrations. Lucas was currently testing out using stepper motors as an alternative to the servo motors on the Mesu 200 Mk-II (image below). He is using Nema 17 stepper motors and a gear reduction of 1050 to 1. The Servo Motors have 2800 to 1 because of the higher dynamic range of the motors. According the Lucas' calculations the stepper motors can provide a slew speed of 3 degrees/sec or more and with micro stepping still smooth guiding, but that has to be tested with a suitable controller and controller board. He says that the Maxon servo motors with encoder and Sitech I controller will still be the standard configuration. An advantage with the stepper motors is that they can easily be controlled by various open source systems and some customers have expressed interest in such an option. Cheers, Göran

This is good news. However, it is interesting to note that Orion US has taken over Meade. It was Orion US that filed the lawsuit that brought Meade to bankruptcy in 2019, and gave Orion $16.8 million in damages. I love my 14" Meade SCT. It is a deforked LX200R, so it is the original "ACF" that Meade first called "R", as they claimed it was a Ritchey–Chrétien design. That was not entirely correct so they got sued for that too and had to rename it "ACF". I hope they now stay out of trouble👍