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After being in the market for another skywatcher 130PDS to replace the one that got damaged, I instantly went to the FLO website to place the order. To my dismay the scope was showing a 7-10 day wait time. I emailed FLO who responded to a series of emails within a few hours. It transpired that there was none in the country but was expecting some in the next week or so. Follow up emails then got sent a week or so later to obtain up-to-date information regarding when they would be coming in and once again I had emails back within a few hours. The order was placed along with a few other items and today I had an update to say that my parcel had been dispatched and will be with me tomorrow.

This may sound excessive but I have just recently treated fungus on a lens (not that bad). I used an mild IPA solution and allowed it to sit for a few hours and then rinced off. This was followed by a mild peroxide solution to kill off any remaining fungus. I also wiped down the inside of the tube. This was followed by a further rinse with a combination of IPA and distilled water. There is now no signs of fungus on the lens and it did not effect the coatings either.

Hi everyone I have never done anything like this before and really was not something I was planning until I found it was even a possibility given my possible setup. I am in the process of replacing the 130PDS that was damaged in a storm some months back. As a side project I have also just purchased a SMC Takumar 200mm f4 Lens. The original idea was to use the 130PDS as my main imaging scope with a QHY8L and use the 200mm with my 600D as a more wide field lens to run piggy back or to fill in gaps when doing mosaics. Aside from this I had also been looking at getting a ASI 178M / MC for doing lunar / solar and some light EAA. At present I do not intend to use filters with this apart from maybe an IR pass for lunar work (which I already have). Now whilst working various things out using a fov calculator I found that the 178M /MC on the 200mm gives a near identical fov to what the 130PDS + QHY8L has and there is not much difference in the pixel scale either. This got my thinking about the possibility of using this combination as a third possible setup and combining the data. I cannot push to a cooled version of the 178 but would be willing to maybe build a small peltier for it if required. How well would this setup work in regards to combining say L data from the 178 and the OSC from the QHY8L? I am hoping I may be able to run the 200mm wide open using a mono sensor so would be able to collect L data quicker Any thoughts / help / advise on this would be great. Thanks in advance Mark

Thank you very much indeed, I will take a look and get that done. Thanks for the information and heads up, I will take a look into this as I think it maybe helpful with a few other projects that I have coming up.

Thanks very much

Good evening everyone. I have a Mak 102 coming this week as my grab and go scope for lunar / solar transits etc... There is solar transit that I am hoping to catch this week if the scope arrives in time but it may be pushing it and may not have time to make a filter once it arrives. Can anyone give me an idea of the outside measurements (circumference if possible) so I can create one whilst I am waiting for it to arrive. Thanks in advance. Mark

This i something I have only just started to attempt. I recently shot my first ISS Solar transit. We will not talk about the scope at present as it was somewhat of a mishmash put together as I dont have a mobile setup until this week. As far as imaging I shot mine using a fuji XT2 using the built in 4k video. The total transit time was something like 1.4 seconds so no time to fiddle, I just set the image in the right place to allow for drift and started the camera recording about 30s before It was supposed to pass. Using PIPP I then exported each frame as a TIFF and aligned the frames. The frames with the ISS in then got imported into photoshop and layered over each other. This is result of the first attempt using this setup As far as the mercury transit, I intend shooting this using a dslr and scope on a decent tracking mount (not required). I will set the camera to just take an image every X amount of minutes apart over the space of the transit and then layer them together in the same way.

Hi and thanks. Radio is very much new to me so learning on my feet so to speak. I did Basic and Visual basic back as a teenager in the 90's but had to give it up (got banned from learning it any further for a few instances at secondary school where it may of been used for not so positive uses) I will take a look and see if I can pipe the output from spectrum lab in a better way so that its easier.

Well a major milestone, all equipment is now in place and everything seems to be working. I had a small issue at 3:30am this morning when it started to clear. The roofline is too close and high to be able to see north with the polemaster (the air was blue). I will attempt to use the guide scope with sharpcap and see how that does being that little bit higher, either that or it will get drift aligned. The cabling needs to get sorted a bit better but did not want to do too much until I knew everything was working and I need to cover the pier again. Now all I need is a clear night to setup and test everything. I have also decided on a name, the Hawkings Observatory.

Thanks for the reply. I have sdr# piped to spectrum lab which is then monitoring for meteors, logging, screenshotting and recording the audio. It also outputs as csv file that I can then import into excel. Its filtering the data from the csv file that is the main issue.

Her name is Cassie, She is 7 years old. We have only had her for just over 12 months, she was a rescue and had been used for breeding Fantastic with people but hates anything with four legs

Good evening everyone I have recently setup a basic meteor detector and I am trying to process the data. I need to try and grab the total count (being the highest number in each hour) a little easier than doing it by hand. Can anyone help? An example of the data format is as follows, this is imported into excel as separate columns. 06:09:50,5 06:21:40,6 06:21:47,7 06:24:02,8 06:35:39,9 06:47:55,10 06:48:37,11 06:58:02,12 07:25:47,1 08:21:26,1 08:43:17,2 08:47:16,3 08:48:00,4 The end result that I am looking for would be to have something that could be then plotted into a graph over a 24 hour period or even longer such as this 00:00 - 01:00 3 01:00 - 02:00 8 02:00 - 03:00 10 Any help with this would be great

I was thinking about doing the same but wondered how hard it would be to take it a step further. Most ZWO cameras have a temperature read out. I am wondering how hard it would be to implement some kind of DIY ascom controlled cooler that could take the built in temperature for control.

I have had this issue over the last few days with Sharpcap (3.2 in my case). I am not sure if there was changes to the SDK for the native driver and indeed also the ascom driver. I have since found that 3.2.6020 works, this version finds and loads the native driver as far as I can see at present. It will not however load the ascom driver and crashes. Anything newer than this will not recognise the QHY native driver nor will it load the ascom driver (I had issues finding them) Can you get the ascom driver loaded on yours?

Its also worth checking how well the mirror fits into the primary holder. One of mine had a fair amount of movement which seemed to allow the mirror to move side to side etc... I added a thee extra bits of sticky back foam around the inside of the holder to take up some of the slack, this has solved the issue with the mirror slopping around in its holder.

Thank you. I am really happy with how it came out to be fair, if you do attempt it (which I would encourage) remember that texturing really will not be needed as you have the natural texture of the wood which makes the painting take on somewhat of a life of its own. I did think about bonding but at present I have only run a single feed to the obsy. I was thinking about the possibility of using 10GbE as the cost has really come down, this will have to wait for now due to needing to get other things. Having not long got home from work not had a chance to do much this evening. I have however started sorting the obsy pc out and getting everything installed.

For DSO that is exactly what I do, when doing planetary / lunar / solar however I save to the SSD to get higher frame rates.

I have a gigabit ethernet cable going to the obsy which connects to the rest of the network. This not only makes life easier to transfer files at the end of session but off-loading during a long session is also easier. Teamviewer works well for me over ethernet but be sure to enable direct connections. Pipp has a good feature to archiving videos, can use lossless compression to save a little space. The entire build process was checked and paw'd off at each stage by the dog.

Well a big update and milestone. Today I finished off painting with only a small number of touch ups needing to be done. I have found a long term solution to solve the issue with the rollers but I can live with it until then. The outside shell is now complete, electric and ethernet wires have been run as far as the obsy and just need connecting at both ends. The inside is still a little rough but I have put a single sheet of osb up for now to be able to mount the monitor, the rest will be done on my next days off. The next few days will be sorting the PC out after work as it will be too late to do anything further by the time I get home. I will get the tie downs sorted at some point before work over the next day or so however. I am hoping to have everything at least up and running by the end of my next set of says off (work 4 on 4 off)

Oh yes indeed. The Obsy PC stores data at the time of capture only, this is then transferred over the network to storage and then deleted from the SSD.

Well a quick update on the build. The shed arrived yesterday evening and I managed to get most of the larger panels painted. I also created something of an "Art Piece" on one of the side panels which is something I have never done before. Today I manged to get the base rolling and 90% of the obsy shell built. I had a small issue with the rollers due to not being as described and have gone with a less than ideal solution for now until it can be address down the road. Tomorrow will consist of some final painting, Strengthening / lining the inside, installing to tie downs and finish off the electrics. I am hoping to have 99% of it finished by the end of tomorrow to the point where the scope and mount can go back in. After looking at the Pi 3 and the current state of the Pi 4 I felt they just did not fit my requirements at present for the obsy. I do live stream sessions on occasion so decided to go with the most powerful pc I could get my hands on for a decent price. I should have a Dell 3020 tower coming tomorrow for the grand sum of £95 and already have a few bits to throw into the mix with it. PC specs (including upgrades): Dell 3020 Tower Intel i5 4590 8GB Ram 256GB SSD Radeon RX570 4GB (will be used for hardware based stream encoding) I also received my amazon order which including some active and powered 5M USB cable extensions along with USB hubs. This I am hoping will allow me to only have to run 3 cables from the mount back to the Obsy (2x USB cables and a mains power cable). One slight snag is the connectors do not fit into the flexible conduit that I intend running the power cables in, this will have to be looked into. Will post an update with photos tomorrow.

Thought I would post a quick update. I had confirmation that the donor shed will arrive on monday and over the last few days I have added most of the gravel to finish off the base. Tomorrow I will be dealing with electrics, painting the base and making a new pier top to remove the rats nest. I am still not sure how I intend to deal with the obsy pc but that will come together better I think once the obsy is in place and I can see everything easier.

That is actually how I originally had it when it was first built. I can use the original tripod mount and bolt it directly through the top of the block. The only reason I changed it originally was due to losing too much southern horizon and not being able to get Saturn etc... for a large portion of the night (something that will no longer be an issue with not having any walls). I am also trying to figure out as part of the electrics etc... if I should replace the obsy pc or go down the route of a rpi4. both have their pro's and cons but nothing is final yet.

No I had to raise it to be able to get the bolt out, it will be lowered right down again afterwards if I have not managed to replace the entire thing before then. Its normally about 1/5 of that hight.

Hi everyone The last two days have been spent getting the ground work and based sorted. I have stayed with the "Tod" pier that I originally had however this has now been sunk into the ground a fair amount for two reasons, extra stability and also to allow everything to easily fit through the doors. The rat cage will also either be replaced or complexly removed at some point I will be letting the muck harden over the next few days and then will be finishing with a top layer of gravel. One thing I am currently trying to work out is the best way to go about running power and ethernet. The fact that the obsy will be moving back and forth is something I have to take into account and currently thinking about running the main of the power directly to the pier and then using an extension to power the actual obsy when needed. If anyone has experience here and come up with a solution that would allow me to maintain power and ethernet to the obsy directly please let me know.