badgerchap

Your welcome Marc

Doing the mod was interesting and fun to do but given the choice I would have gone for the HEQ5 if I could have afforded its a shame astrophotography gear is so expensive but where there is a will there is a frozen astrophotographer.

Hear, hear. I think we'd all happily spend many thousands or tens of thousands if we had it knocking around, but then I think threads like this make the struggle and heartache much more bearable! But seriously, I do enjoy the DIY and working out for myself.

Hmm...curious double post. Sorry

's alright. I just kinda use QM as a benchmark really - he did some great stuff in his EQ5 days so my thinking is if I can keep below the weight of a 200p like him then I'm alright!

Hand guiding is where you sit and watch through the guidescope / or on screen, and make adjustments to the mount yourself. Long and laborious if you ask me! Quite hardcore!

Can I ask either of you if you know the weight of your 200p's?

good to see that all this high tech and expensive equipment is being put to good use

Cheers QM, your knowledge and insight is as useful as ever. I will definitely have a look as your Photoshop videos, as I have CS6 but have never got my head around it for astro.

My GBPUSB and st4 conversion kit turned up this morning so I've soldered up and she's working like a dream so far. Currently using GPUSBcheck to track some ducks down the river.

Well I've been coming back to this thread ever since it was started and am finally about to take the EQ5 guiding plunge! Have ordered a smaller newt though - a TS 6", to cut down the weight, which I am then reallocating to a wo66 as a guidescope. I'm going to be well on the limits of weight, but from what I've seen, you guys have managed with the 200P and that's about 8kg without bits and bobs. The TS and WO with DSLR and rings etc will come to about 7.8kg, so I reckon I might just be alright.

Will be using the GPUSB and an as yet undecided camera. I'm actually thinking of returning the GPUSB and getting a QHY5, or trying the QHY5 with PHD and the GPUSB and comparing that with the QHY5 by itself. I like the idea of using PHD or wxAstroCapture, nice simple interfaces by the look of things, although I couldn't get PHD to work with the rubbish ASDA cam that I have. For anyone interested in the asda cam, I know there are a few out there, don't try to use it as a guide, it's rubbish. I could only get Sirius and Jupiter on it, anything else was too faint. Tried Aldebarran which was bright enough to see on screen but wx couldn't lock on to it.

Took the slack out of the worm gears last night - there's still a tiny bit of play, but nothing too severe. I can't help wondering QM if you'd known to take out the slack earlier, might this have helped with your LVI? You may have tried this, but after reading the first 17 or so pages of this thread this morning, I must say I skipped to the end .

Anyway, excellent thread QM, must say it's nice to see such a large thread that stays so well on topic and has so much useful info. Think I'd have suffered in silence until I could afford an EQ6 in the distant future if it wasn't for this. At least this way I can have some fun tinkering!

Joined! Much happier to be towelling my processor time in with the SGL team than my previous one - 'The Church of Lager'. Still a valuable cause, but just not the same

I'm already on SETI, would love to join the group, but the link is just taking me to the 'Create a group page'. D'ya have the name of the group, and I can just do it through BOINC Manager? Or am I being a dunce and merely looking for a group with a name on the theme of 'SGL' will do the trick?

Think of it as an 'open cluster' of astronomers rather than a 'globular cluster'.

SO that would make us the Cymrades, to follow nomenclature?

Lol we'll have to have a cull

I have a static van just outside Mach , spend a lot of time down there from March to September so count me in for the Dovey section

I have pipe dreams one day of modding a static or winnebago into a nice roomy obsy If it was mobile, could be like an Astro Road Show!

Three in the Mach / Aberdovey area??? And holidaymakers??? That's practically a society!

There seem to be another in Carmarthen too. He's posted in the 'Welcome' section. Praps I ought to give him a link to this thread?

Do it! We're few and far between, might as well get as many in as poss, even if Camarthen is a bit distant!

You're not alone! Another astronomer in Aberdovey...

Oh wow, well when I said Mach I was being general - for the benefit of the foreigners I'm 'dovey too!

Brilliant, thank you very much!

I'm just waiting on about £600 worth of my first imaging set up to arrive and, due to its modesty, I was getting quite nervous. "Have I done the right thing?" has entered my mind on a number of occasions in the last few days, but this old post has made me feel much better!

Bring on the arrival of my kit!

I'm North Powys / Gwynedd - Machynlleth.

Would be great if something happened - you do kind of feel like the only astronomer for hundreds of miles when you're out here! Having said that I also spend time in Stratford-upon-Avon on a regular basis and there the abundance of astronomers is counteracted by the abundance of streetlights :/

Ah, so the choices are lonely and dark or bright company