Demonperformer

Right, I followed your instructions and attach a screenprint of the result - doesn't look particularly hopeful! I note the following (not sure how relevant they are!): Yesterday, it didn't appear in the top part of the screen and the hatched area merely said "232.88GB". Today it has appeared in the top part of the screen and mor info is provided in the hatched area including "Healthy (Active Primary Partition) - this I found encouraging until I tried to access the drive in Powerdesk and it still said it could not read it. Despite it saying that it has 100% free, in the general tab on the properties window, it showed as being 100% used (0% free) I am inclined to just try for a clone and had a look at clonezilla. I will be using a windoze7 machine, so am thinking I might try an alternative that is listed - AOMEI Backupper, looks simpler - as long as doing so is not going to make things worse (not sure how much worse they could get, but ...) Have you any experience of this one? Do you think this would be ok to try? One good thing is that I have four spare 4TB drives, so I don't have to buy another drive to try ... Thanks.

Having completed my 5m darks with the colour camera, it appears that it has exactly the same amp glow as the monochrome. Don't know for sure, but I'm guessing they are exactly the same camera, just with the bayer matrix added to the colour one? But that would make it strange that the colour one (with the additional bit) is actually £100 cheaper.

Hi, Mike, and welcome to SGL. Unless you are very lucky, the answer is which ever has clear skies. It is an illusion. Enjoy the journey.

Hi, Kenneth, and welcome to SGL. This webpage states the Meade 4000 eyepieces were originally provided with the scope when new, so any 1.25" eyepiece will fit. As to precisely which ones to get, you would probably get as many answers as there are people on SGL, but this might be a reasonable place to start. Enjoy the journey.

Hi, Marvin, and welcome to SGL. Enjoy the journey.

Hence my final sentence.

Thanks for the detailed routine. I will give it a try when I have a bit more time ... don't want to rush it. I would guess the drive is closer to 10 years old than 3 ... certainly over 8 as it contains all my tax records going back to 2011/12 ...

Yes, one of my favourite clusters as well. My thought when I read the Cas list was that it should be there. But what caught my eye was when I got to UMa and thought ... the owl nebula isn't ngc457! Really should learn to read what is actually there rather than what I think is there.

If the default start position in 1970 I would guess that it assumes the date you enter must be after that, giving it 100 years of use.

Could well be. 20+ years ago I knew someone who wrote computer games. I asked him about software protection and his reply surprised me. "Never bother. It costs a lot and any protection you put on the disks is merely an invitation to every hacker out there to find and publish ways of circumventing it. Anyway, 90% of my sales are to people who have tried a pirated copy. Why would I want to stop that?" OK, things have moved on a bit from posting 3.5" floppies, but I guess the principle is still the same. Similar to the way APT works.

Don't worry, Julian, I have no intention of doing anything that destructive! Attached is a screenprint of Disk Management ... not sure how much it is going to tell you ... it is the drive that does not appear in the top part and is labelled "Disk 3" in the bottom part. Thanks.

Not silly at all but yes I did that.

Set up the scope with a wall to the west and wait for Sirius to go behind it? Should give you thirty see ones or so.

Thanks for that, Carole. Clearly you have had a good example peri enceladus with them and I have NO reason to believe that is also true of every other user. However, the licence agreement states that additional keys may be provided, but they "reserve the right to deny requests for additional licence keys".

I tend to avoid renting anything that I can buy, so I would not pay £120 pa to photoshop for the amount that I would use it. I got given a copy of CS2 a while back and have explored it a little, so it is interesting to see that others are using CS2 & 3. Based on the results Olly gets, there's would appear to be no need for me to go looking for anything more "advanced".