skybadger

Also, why are you using a x3 Barlow when the quark has its own x4 built in ?

On mine I can see prominences without it being turned on. Solar disk detail becomes available with a low setting and solar self heating takes it past the tuned point so an erf is becoming essential . This is used with a SV80 Refractor so it's within the aperture range. Turn your heater settings right down and work through the range.

To balance my dual rig I use an extra long hand clamp against one end of the dovetail on the scope and the other end on the far end of the dovetail clamp to slowly push the dovetails through their clamps, retighten, and iterate until it balanced with axis clamps undone. The hand clamp addresses the high friction and weight on each dovetail, even when released enough to move. Otherwise I can't move them easily and smoothly by hand anymore. Measurement is possible by comparing motor current either side of the axis of interest. I haven't tried that yet though.

I recently had to do something similar for a M54 to M48 rotator - they are made and available overseas but by the time they are posted here the price is ugly and the delay is too. In the end I settled for making a M48-t2 rotator - its a t2 adaptor with a M48 front thread and a t2 rear. Something I really thought I'd be able to get hold of. I'm lucky enough to be able to make my own but there needs to be a place to get this sort of kit.

Pm sent

Hi tooth_Dr can you tell me what the circular brass connector is for - is that the purging connector or something else ? Would you be prepared to sell without the filters- I already have a set id like to use. Mike

thanks for the info. thatll help

I tried this which is why I'll put the illuminating ir leds on a separate switch. It also occurred to me that I wasn;t using an IR cut filter on the camera at the time either.

I put a fish eye night cam in the dome for this sort of reason and the IR bouncing around from the monitoring camera flooded the long exposures on the CCD camera. The telescope was well shrouded too. So I am building a switch so I can turn on the IR illuminator when needed.

Sounds like mine. Using esp8266-01 wireless and node-red.

Really easy. Unscrew, pull apart the boards via the connectors, unsolder the existing battery, solder the new one and reassemble.

Cheers for that, have you a link to your normal supplier ?

Are they third-party demo CCD boards that you are hooking into ?

I ...think... so. You need something to cut the cone of returning light to measure the zones. I have two Foucault devices, one from the stone age with a separate slit source and blade and a moving source one on a tripod stage. The second is much easier to use .

Foucault designs started with two half slits, one for the source and one for the sensor., one fixed, one moving independently to cut the return cone to detect the focal point for each coude zone. Then a bright spark realised that the same slit blade could do both, if the two positions were side by side or on top of each other, removing alignment problems. This further simplifies if the source is small enough to not need a slit. This arrangement is the moving slit because the source and slit a re on the same stage, using the same blade. Check out the stellafane web pages for a much better description. The problem with ronchi is it's qualitative while with Foucault it's very much quantitative. Typically glass pushers might use simulated ronchi patterns as comparisons to grind towards. While Foucault and the bath interferometer will tell you exactly where you are. I'd recommend if you are starting out to take a look at the bath. It's easy to build , quantitative, has a support community and easy to use. On the other hand, Foucault and ronchi will give you lots of practice aligning optics.