souls33k3r

Slight update. Spoken to FLO and the brilliant folks already know of the issue and will be arranging suitable ring felts over to me.

Meh! You’re right. Knowing my skills with the right tools, I’ll end up knocking up a solution which I don’t think even I would’ve ever envisioned ... or required ... or figure out the use for it

I guess the beauty of a scope being under warranty is that you can let the dealer (OVL in this case) worry about that bit The good folks at FLO are great. They’re always on your side as long as the case is genuine

Yeah possibly. Yours is from the older batch isn't it? Yeah mine are as tight as a 36 year old man can possibly have

It really is a shame mate. FLO are just amazing with their customer service. I have nothing but good things to say about them.

Right so came home just a few minutes ago and can confirm that the nylon washers are not sandwiched between the tube rings. Will speak to FLO tomorrow.

Nice one, have a go and see how the image improves With regards to the filter, you'll need to find the thickness of your filter. It's almost always stated on the manufacturers or suppliers website. Some are 1mm, some are 2mm. But yes add 1mm but i've also been told to go with 1/3rd of the filter width. Good spot. It's not only that but the scope rotates as well which was annoying but sliding for me way the bigger issue here. I'll be checking the nylon washers and make sure of their placement.

So camera sensor to the fw it's 6.5mm (assuming you took the black spacer off the ZWO camera that it came with otherwise it's 11mm if i remember correctly)

yikes! Cheers for adding the valueable info. Well i guess i'll still go back home and check and if the nylon washers are where they're supposed to be then i'll be emailing FLO in the morning. Beautiful scope, just not happy about the sliding bit.

Now the pixel peeper in me had awoken. If you take this image (which is fantastic) and view it from a distance, you don't see much wrong but as soon as you zoom in to the corners, you find the stars only in the corners seems "wooshing" (I promise this is not a technical term) away. +1 Dave. Like he said above said, at the moment you have 65mm spacing, you need to come down to 55mm (+/- 0.5mm) and you will immediately see the difference in the corner stars. Good shout on the felt. I'll go home and check my scope as well and then might get in touch with FLO because it's no good if the scope slides within the tube rings. I take it yours is the first scope and not the second? (The give away is the writing)

Roger that! cheers for that mate. I'll take a look tonight and will report back

Anyone able to comment on this bit? Any tips such as cut the margarine lid text messages at 10:30? ?

Precisely mate.

Cheers steppenwolf, precisely why i raised this point. It might be a good starting point but that's there is to it. If i hadn't run in to this issue last night, i would've blindly been following the diagram myself and suggesting. And then there is that Of course ... in the grand scheme of things CCD Inspector is the way to go forward but nothing beats the good old fashioned eye

Cheer Alan. The blame lies entirely with me. Nonetheless if this scope is brilliant in AP, i'm sure it will be equally good for visual observations as well Cheers LightBucket. It's a fantastic equipment, really nicely made. You won't regret it. Only issue with the scope is that it's not on the lighter side of things so you have to be super careful when lifting it especially with all the other gear that goes on. Did not get any test report but i did buy it off FLO and went with the ES Reid check. I still would like to see a before and after report from ES Reid. Pixel peeking would never stop ? I did zoom in to 400% to be doubly sure Hahahahaha I did wonder if my Mrs would find out and ask the question but so far she hasn't so i guess she will blame it on the kids ... i must admit, i've hid the custom made delrin away from her eyes Cheers Gav. Couldn't agree more mate. Hopefully will start a new project on a next clear night You're absolutely spot on, i was indeed running the focus routine by clicking the "Run" button. Makes complete sense. Cheers Singlin and AbsolutelyN, i guess i can answer both of your questions in one go. No software used, was using my eyes to begin with. You could clearly see the stars in the corners going around or away just like in the above images. Then i remembered what RayD said about the 55mm backfocus rather than 63mm written in the manual so used a caliper to measure it. I only needed 27.5mm after the ASI1600, FW & Filter and i guess i ended up with 28mm which is close enough and was good enough to show the stars perfectly round in every corner. More than happy to explain further if needed. Oh and one issue that i did find with the scope was that it kept on slipping in the tube rings even when the tube rings were super tight. Seems like the felt in the tube rings isn't good enough to hold the weight. The scope would come to a halt when it would slide and pressed against the dew shield. Any suggestions? And would love to find out why i was seeing stars in one direction and the other even when i was massively over back focus.

Hi All, So last night was "THE" night when i was going to give the new Esprit 100 it's first light. Been battling some personal issues so had to give AP a bit of a rest. Took the scope out and the things that i had to work out were 1) Brave the cold 2) Find the right balance 3) Confirm if the spacing was all ok 4) Sort out step sizes for the Lakeside focuser 5) Take a test image So here's how it went: 1) Brave the cold: When i got home after work last night, surprisingly it wasn't that cold and the skies looked beautiful. I went out in my Pj's and started to set up. Took me slightly longer than usual to set up my entire kit as it was scattered all over the house. Something that would usually take me 20 minutes from start to finish took about an hour. This is what happens when you don't use your kit that often. There's always something you've missed. For me i spent 5 minutes wondering why my EQMOD said "Connection Error", only to realise i hadn't powered on my mount ... doh! 2) Find the right balance: Because it was the first time for me with the new scope, i decided on balancing the RA axis first and then worry about the Dec. RA got balanced fairly quickly. DEC was a bit of a struggle. I was so used to either the handle on EdgeHD 8 or the light weight WO Star 71, that i had to really make sure my hands were on the dovetail when moving the scope and and down the saddle plate. Felt bruised in the end but a small price to pay 3) Confirm if the spacing was all ok: Once the dec was balanced (was going to find the correct balance points later when i know where my initial focus sits), i went straight in with my first 5 seconds sub to confirm the spacing. As soon as the results came back in, immediately knew i needed more spacing as the stars looked like Took the camera off, put in a 1.2mm delrin and came back and now it showed took the camera off and put a smaller delrin and still the sub looked like the above image, slightly smaller size delrin and still the same but less, a bit more smaller and again the same. Now if i go one delrin size smaller, i am back with the first image. Started to experiment with various delrin sizes and the sweet spot was a 0.1mm off which by the love of GOD i couldn't figure out how to fix. Was talking to our brilliant @RayD who suggested a margarine lid cut out. BRILLIANT idea! never could i have thought of that. Tried that and still i was too far. Took me 3 hours, took the camera off and came back in. Got the caliper out and started to measure the spacers from the beginning. I remember RayD mentioned that in the Esprit 100 manual, the distance from the end of the flattener to the chip is listed as 63mm but in reality it's 55mm. So what was my mistake i wondered? I knew exactly where i made a massive boo boo! I measure the spacers to be at 55mm forgetting about the BF of the CMOS, FW and adding 1mm of the filter ... so basically i was adding 27.5mm more to the BF than what it was required. Another DOH! moment. Changed that and now i have perfect round stars corner to corner. I do wonder (and would most certainly like to understand), why were my star shapes one or the other before and after i started to add and remove delrins? 4) Sort out step sizes for the Lakeside focuser: Again, @RayD and his brilliant YouTube channel was to the rescue. The whole process went smoothly. Found the steps size required and focusing was a breeze. Ran a few test focusing runs and noticed that after the focus routine was run, on the bottom left in SGP, it kept saying "Image Preview Opened" and it would not go away and also the "Auto Focus" window would not close after 10 seconds that i defined. I had to close it manually. Has anyone ever come across that? 5) Take a test image: So here we are, after all that, it's now 1:30am and i took a single 5 minute sub to see what the image looks like. I'm sorry i did not save the sub to share but i'm happy to report that it looks really good. Really pleased with the quality of the sub, the field of view and above all my stars looked just right

Yeah but knowing Celestron, the body will be plastic. I've heard $199 in US

I'm sure by now the news is out but if you haven't heard, Celestron has made a motorised focuser for it's SCT & EdgeHD (RASA included) range. https://www.celestron.com/products/focus-motor-for-sct-and-edgehd Images take from Celestron website Let the debate begin

A brown man wearing a Kilt is exactly what you all want to see.

Eek! For a premium priced product, you shouldn't have to worry about such things. That's just ludicrous. Thanks for showing us the way matey.

I bought one of these (case and enclosures lot i presume?) a few weeks ago. My Esprit 100 with the camera and FW is just the right fit. I bought the optional cubed foam which was easy for me to pluck it out. The only thing i don't like about this is that the case feels very flimsy. I hope it doesn't fall apart.

Going through it right now. I'm very picky about my read and that's because i do not want to lose interest by being bored with jargons and whatnot but you sir have a knack for writing. #Captivated. I'd happily proof read your "drafts"

You've made some really good points about both and i will agree to that but what you said is exactly the reason what makes me want to learn PS even more which is PS is very intuitive and everything happens in real time. PI does have the preview option but most of the times you work on small previews which can be a little time consuming but the whole mathematics piece most of the times goes above my head.

I seriously need to learn PS

The process workflow is for PI not PS ?