Marke998

2 hours ago, michael8554 said:

Bizarre.

Like switching your car off, then finding that  pressing the accelerator crashes the car into the back wall of your garage.......... :-<

Michael

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

10 minutes ago, Carbon Brush said:

My SQ mount runs from AA usually, so I have not seen a problem.
I also remove cells after use to avoid risk of self discharge and leakage, so am doubly protected🙂
Thank you for posting.

When I get a bit of time to spare, I will experiment with different external supply voltages.
It may be a 'funny' that only happens at >12V?

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 🙂

10 panel mosaic created 10th June 2023 with SW 72ED, SolarQuest mount and Quark Chromo. Stacked in AS!3 and stitched, inverted and finished in Photoshop.

SW 72ED, Quark, ASI174MM and SolarQuest mount. Inverted image stacked in AS3 and coloured in Photoshop taken 3rd June 2023 .

On 06/06/2023 at 11:06, Michael Murphy said:

If you have Pixinsight you can run a linear fit on each of the frames to balance them. Perhaps Photoshop has a similar function?

Great image. I'm still trying to get the hang of my Quark.

 

Michael.

Hi Michael, PI couldn't crack it. I'm sure it's just part of the learning curve. I'm really enjoying the Quark. It's definitely a step up from my PST. I'm waiting for th opportunity to run through all the tuning settings to see which one is best. Apparently it differs from one Quark to the next.

2 hours ago, Michael Murphy said:

If you have Pixinsight you can run a linear fit on each of the frames to balance them. Perhaps Photoshop has a similar function?

Great image. I'm still trying to get the hang of my Quark.

 

Michael.

Thanks Michael, a friend of mine uses PI and has kindly offered to give your suggestion a go.

1 hour ago, Steve Ward said:

Could you save your image as a .png or .jpeg so that it's automatically shown on the post rather than having folk have to download it just to view it , thank you ... 😏

Will do!

Hello,

I recently bought a Quark and I've put my first solar mosaic together partly with Photoshop's help and partly manually because the camera I use (an ASI174MM) seems to have changed the contrast as I have moved around the disk. As you can see, I have ended up with sharp lines and varying contrast across the disk. Does anyone have any advice on how I could get rid of the lines? I've probably found a way to solve or at least marginalise the contrast issue without destroying the underlying data but any help in that area would also be very much appreciated.

Thanks,

Mark.

19 minutes ago, Dr_Ju_ju said:

If it's new, as you say, then get in touch with FLO & explain the issues you are having.... 

btw, my Solarquest, take a few minutes before running its internal start-up routine

Thanks Julian, I've just done another factory reset and it now levels on startup so that's a step in the right direction. I've seen comments that suggest the mount won't find the Sun below 30 degrees so maybe I need to wait until the spring to try it but I'll let FLO know now so that it doesn't cause problems later if there is a fault. On a couple of occasions it's rotated in the wrong direction suggesting it thinks I'm in Australia sometimes ha ha. Mark.

Hi Folks,

I've just bought a Solarquest from FLO and today has been the first really clear sky when I could give it a whirl.

When I switch it on it is supposed to automatically set itself to the horizontal position but it doesn't do this. I did a factory reset in case I'd done something daft but it made no difference. I carried on regardless and the mount just keeps rotating and never finds the Sun.

If anyone else has these issues I'd be very grateful for some advice on a resolution.

Many thanks,

Mark.