alacant

Just before you do, there maybe an easy fix. The guide speed defaults to 0.1 sidereal. What do you have set? Always a good idea though to dismantle, clean, re-grease and set tolerances;) Cheers

Hi Looks good. The first image looks as if it has not had the flat frame processing. It shows dust on the sensor and vignette. The second image has been processed with the flat frames and so the dust circles and vignette have been calibrated? HTH

Hi I agree with @david_taurus83 that focus looks off, but remember you'll need really good seeing and clear skies to be able to guide the rc; I think you're aiming at below 0.5" pixel. Maybe you could bin the pixels and/or use an OAG? The tilt; you could probably just put a small piece of paper either left or right before tightening the camera to the focuser. Elegant? No, but may help diagnose. However, if you can get steady enough seeing and get the necessary guiding accuracy, my guess is that you'd hardly notice. Any which remains visible should be easily corrected in processing. Cheers and HTH. ---

Assuming everything is square and tight in the focuser and camera, it looks like it to me. If you shake -separately- the ff/camera/telescope, can you hear anything loose?

Hi Do you mean that your images are unsatisfactory and you have (accidentally?) deleted the logs? What is the problem with the images? A few thoughts if your images are not what you are expecting. Guess: RA wobble is the gear mesh period and DEC excursions are backlash, but without the logs, it's just that. Dither hits the mount hard and suddenly. Even a well adjusted mount will need time to recover. Cheers

Ah, ok. But last night was full moon. Try again in a week or so and you'll be fine.

Hi It doesn't need to be. To save loadsa time whilst collimating, be sure to read the collimation myths. Cheers

It's not an arm7 driver. It is software which runs under arm (or amd or intel or WHY) to update the camers's firmware. It doesn't matter which version you use, you end up with a camera with the new firmware. If you don't know how, your local astro club (or anyone running Linux) will be able to do the upgrade for you in a matter of minutes. Cheers.

Hi everyone Sahara dust and a full moon with which it could be illuminated, so not the most ideal conditions and with EKOS' sky parameter near on 30, maybe time to do some terrestrial moonlit stuff? But no. With a fast 208mm f3.9, and as far away from the moon as reasonable but still below the celestial equator, the fits histogram was central at 90s. We managed around an hour of them, never expecting to get anything like. Hats off to StarTools for rescuing something from the gradient. Thanks for looking. Anyone else? 700d on ES pn208. ISO800

Your stellarmate runs Linux!

It runs on Linux. Use your stellarmate;)

Download the firmware. There's a readme file in the same folder: drive.google.com/file/d/17SuwrJaj9T1uEG_...S-h/view?usp=sharing On a pi, choose the arm version. On your laptop, the x86 version. Don't forget to have your camera plugged into a usb2 port. Cheers

Hi The firmware update is easy to do, takes only a minute or so and gives you a sensitive camera which works over both usb2 and usb3. Recommended. Cheers

Hi What did the log indicate as to what went wrong? There are so many things which have to be in place for successful guiding that it''s usually best to start with a concrete idea of the issue. Otherwise we're left guessing forever! Cheers

Hi We don't have the Quattro, but I beileve our ES f3.9 is the same idea. Center the secondary in both the tube -using the spider vanes- and the focuser -using the adjusting screws on the secondary support-. Due to the position that the secondary is attached to the support, the offset is then set correctly. Fine tune to perfection using a Cheshire sight tube. One with cross hairs, even better. Cheers

Hi Are you certain you are not confusing Aim, GoTo and GoTo++? Cheers

Here are some fat bloated blue stars taken with a €6000 refractor and a €eye-watering camera. Compared with our 72eds, there's not much in it.

Hi everyone My gf entitles this The Pterodactyl Cluster because it looks like a erm.... She also likes it sparkly. Especially for Christmas. OK. So here it is, The Sparkly Xmas Pterodactyl Cluster. Taken through the intense calima over Alicante last night with the moon on hand to light up the calima and provide today's processing challenge par excellence. Gradient city. I know. The blue is wrong. Looking at the blue layer, I'm not surprised. Thanks for looking and do post your m44s. 700d on nt150s @ ISO800

Hi. Looks good. Just a pity that the image drifted so much; not much of it contained all the frames. Maybe the camera moved/tripod displaced? This can be happen on paved surfaces or soft ground by walking too near the setup. Tighten everything and tread carefully! Cheers

Hi It's one of @jager945's (I'm sure he'd do better than I at explaining!) algorithms in StarTools. The most realistic modelling I've found of what your image looks like without an atmosphere to blur it. Other methods add noise, artefacts around stars and look unnatural. This one just works. HTH

Hi. Yeah, try it. I've the cheepo 75-300 ef which apart from being difficult to focus manually, is a no go for ap at anything much above 75mm. The 70-300 is much better quality so you maybe pleasantly surprised but bear in mind that at 300mm, it still gives you a 300mm lens, not 480mm. Cheers and good luck.

Yeah, same here. M82 seems much brighter. That should be enough to record the 'fire' emanating from m82. With a DSLR, I think I'll have to resort to filters to get the same.

Hi I think perhaps the only true apochromatic telescopes are reflectors, where all wavelengths are brought to focus at the same point. Anything where light passes through glass is gonna be a compromise, athough I'm sure you can get close. Cheers

Hi Lovely shot. Strange about the halos. We find it one of the few colour free old lenses. Maybe it drifted out of focus a little? This is the same lens around f5. With a UHC, it should really pop. If you want to get closer, here's another example of the same region with a 200mm Takumar. Closer still, there's the Russian Tair-3 at 300mm. A 72mm triplet for €60. Choose a bright star. In the Zeiss, mean rgb focus is a tiny turn away from the physical infinity. You'll see the halos around the star change colour. Bear in mind however that old lenses give nowhere near the definition of their modern counterparts or telescopes designed specifically for astrophotography. They are however cheap and more importantly, available now. Cheers and HTH

Hi everyone Another dose of Saharan dust from the southerlies cut this one shorter than we would have liked but still able to add an all importent 60 minutes to the two hours collected on Thursday, the latter also being curtailed, on that occasion by fog. You can't win. With almost zero star colour, it was down to StarTools' entropy module to bring forward a bit of the hydrogen of the cigar. May try a UHC layer. It seems to isolate the Ha quite well. Thanks for looking and do please post if you've had a go at this or WHY. 700d on gso203 @ ISO800 *EDIT Managed another 8 frames. A bit cleaner maybe? Or -more likely- a bit worse...