Marke998

...and then you tell the car maker who says 'Yeah, we expected that to happen so it's not a fault!'. Lol.

I thnk you are right. I have tried it with three different external sources all of which are 12v. Thanks for your reply; it will be interesting to know how you get on. 😊

I've had three SQ's so far. The first was returned because the GPS misbehaved from the outset, the second began making a grinding noise after a few months and the third, well it has a problem but not one that Skywatcher is willing to do anyithing about because they say it is an expected behaviour (although it is not one mentioned in the manual 😉). The behaviour they are referring to is this - if the mount is running via AA batteries it will switch on and off exactly as expected but if it is running on external power it will not switch off properly. The light goes out but the movement buttons still work. Further, it will not switch back on again and I have to disconnect the mount from the power source and reconnect to get it working again. It seems very odd to me. However, Skywatcher have looked into it and concluded that all SQ's do this and as such there's nothing wrong. It's not a big deal; I advised FLO about it only because of my concerns that it could be the start of a greater problem that might not emerge until after the warranty has expired so could turn out to be expensive to deal with. Does anyone else have an SQ that behaves like this and more importantly does anyone have one that actually switches off properly when on external power? Thanks, Mark.

A great competiton thanks, Martin. Some fab pictures all round. Minhlead's animation is a worthy winner. It's hypnotic to watch!

The Sun 10th August 2023 SW 72ED SolarQuest mount Quark Chromo ASI174MM Ably assisted by an ASIAir & EAF Processed an AS!3 and PS

The Sun 10th August 2023 SW 72ED SolarQuest mount Quark Chromo ASI174MM Ably assisted by an ASIAir & EAF Processed an AS!3 and PS

The Sun 14th June 2023 SW 72ED SolarQuest mount Quark Chromo ASI174MM Ably assisted by an ASIAir & EAF Processed in AS!3, IMPPG and PS

The Sun 10th June 2023 SW 72ED SolarQuest mount Quark Chromo ASI174MM Ably assisted by an ASIAir & EAF Processed an AS!3 and PS

Full disk image of the Sun 7th July 2023 SW 72ED SolarQuest mount Quark Chromo ASI174MM Ably assisted by an ASIAir & AEF Processed an AS!3 and PS

The Sun 7th July 2023 SW 72ED SolarQuest mount Quark Chromo ASI174MM Ably assisted by an ASIAir & EAF Processed an AS!3 and PS Processed at 50% so the best 2500 frames taken from 5000. The recording time of the video was approximately 10 minutes providing 24 gig of data to play with. I was surprised that it came out well considering I'm using an alt-az.

The Sun 13th June 2023 SW 72ED SolarQuest mount Quark Chromo ASI174MM Ably assisted by an ASIAir & AEF Processed an AS!3 and PS 3 image mosaic processed at 65% so the best 1950 frames taken from 3000.

Great work! Shame the seeing wasn't better but it's a terrific animation anyway.

I decided to test my Quark out at different setting and the results were dramatically different at different positions., Much to my surprise, turning the tuner as far as I could counterclockwise gave me the best results. All images wre processed and sharpened in AS3 but no other edits have been done. I've annotated the positon in each image from full on (fully clockwise) to full off (counterclockwise).

Proms captured 14th June with ASI174MM, Quark and SW 72ed.

Taken 14th June 2023. Equipment: SW 72ED SolarQuest mount Quark Chromo ASI174MM Ably assisted by an ASIAir & AEF Processed an AS!3, PS and Topaz Denoise 15 image mosaic processed at 30% so the best 4500 frames taken from 15000. Time taken from start to finish: Too long 🙂