Kev M

My experience of the local council & MP is different, I may just have good ones. I would keep badgering them, in person at the offices sometimes helps, eventually they might do something just to get rid of you. Local press, waste of energy, not eco friendly, environtmental damage to wildlife etc etc. Try and be a bigger nuisance to them than the light is....if you get my meaning.

I would say that information is questionable, all the council sites I looked on show the same list---minus street lights. Contact your local councils ( start with the Parish one & work up )....then your MP if the councils cant be bothered ( probably about 50% ). A street light can still be classed as a nuisance, in many cases councils have fitted shields to prevent lights shining into bedrooms etc.

Sorry to abuse your picture..... I missed the first point you raised above, I was looking at the balance between the equipment & the counterweights, but forgot the equipment itself.... I am assuming that your equipment is balanced above and below the Blue line I have added..... Mine has the guidescope off to one side and it is this that is dragging it down. It will balance horizontal but when moved up or down will return there as the centre of gravity is no longer at the pivot point ( yes i googled that bit ). With the guidescope mounted directly above the Main scope it stays at what ever angle it is placed at ( RA only ....still need to balance it for Dec, may need a longer dovetail ) I had the guidescope there so I could fit a widefield camera the other side...when I do that I may have to rebalance it again. Thanks again...for helping a thicko 😳

Thanks for the wealth of advise, I will try this again, I might have missed something obvious.

That sounds ideal, I want to get mine balanced the same

So at an angle of 45 degrees if you let it go it stays there and doesnt return to the horizontal ?

Consider when you balance a scope.....when horizontal it is perfectly balanced....if you change the angle, it wants to come back to the horizontal position. Therefore when it is in use and not horizontal it is not balanced.....this would be pretty much all the time...unless you were observing the Horizon. Are we doing it wrong ! In my opinion the only way to get it to be balanced at any angle is for counter wieghts to be used that exactly match the wieght of the equipment and for these weights to be placed at the same distance as the centre of mass of the equipment. Actually the Horizontal method above would work fine.....the important bit is the counter weights matching the equipment. In an ideal world you would have a selection of counter weights to exactly match the equipment.

Try a simpler target, like M57

I have a 7mm SCT to T adapter on my SCT gets rid of the problem , you can use readily available T extension/packer rings to get the ideal length. I think it was the Baader one....others exists.

I wish I could afford one of these.... gonna sell the wife....might pay for the postage.

I use a 1300D....mainly because it was cheap at the time.....seems ok.

I would second the plate solving, revolutionised my sessions now, goto target, platesolve, synch to position, no problems.

Lets hope they make it through the clouds.......😭

I always feel that someone needs to develop a filter range ( maybe 2 different reds, a Green and several shades of Blue, sort of LRRGBBBB) )for these achros as some of them could be exceptionally good . My 6" F8 achro grabs an amazing amount of light from DSO's its just needs a mono sensor with the above filters to be almost as good as an APO costing 10 times more. The F5 version may need to be LRRRRGBBBBBBB to get the same effect.

All a focal reducer does if effectively change the focal length ( so we are into the focal ratio myth....do we want to go there ? ). All else being equal aperture wins....size does matter ! However all else is not equal....... There is a limit to aperture size, where atmospherics rule out any linear increase in benefit above a certain size. A shorter focal ratio ( for the same aperture ) will effectively place a larger area of sky onto a pixel so it will fill up quicker, this will be at the expense of resolution. This balances out exactly ( with ideal sensors ) so there is no benefit to be gained, other than the ability to get a wider field of view....this may be important ! Sensors however are not ideal....and there may be sweet spots where the maximum photons can be gathered at a required resolution for any sensor at a particular focal length/ratio/aperture combination. It is not as simple as it would first appear.....

If you smooth them out and then roll them up rather than coil them, most Cat5E cables will lie flat ! I work with these for a living.... Flat cat5E cables are also good..... Dont bother with cat6 absolute waste of money for your intended purpose.

Looking at the slight blip you have, I am not sure if it is even anything to worry about.... Others with more experience may be able to comment further.

I believe think the original worm gear ratio is 135:1 which would equate to about 10 minutes 40 seconds . So I would have said possibly broken/faulty tooth.... However I dont know if this applies the same ratio applies to the belt drive ?

Sorry misread the thread, thought this had worked on another machine. I have several usb mini cables that only have 2 wires connected instead of all 4, they are just used for charging. If you have a 2 wire cable it will never work, power only, no data.

Hi Tim, welcome. From just over the Trent..

My 450D works fine with win10, digic 3 same as the 40D. Have you tried installing the correct version of EOS utility for the 40D ? I think its version 2

I would highly advise anyone looking to use a wifi link from house to observatory to look into the Ubiquiti Nano range of wireless point to point devices ( other manufacturers exist ). These will allow you to plug a cable in from your house Lan into one unit and it effectively reappear at the other unit in the Obsy, transparent to your lan network. They can be easily setup to only talk to each other ( impossible for anyone else to connect to them wirelessly ). They offer a "true" throughput of 100Mps+ each way and are rock solid stable. ( used a lot for businesses that require reliability ) I have a pair that hes been running for over 4 years and has never even blipped in this time, to all intents and purposes it appears like a cable. They are capable of running kilometers if good line of sight. Not that expensive and usually appear regularly secondhand on fleabay etc. However a cheapo cat5e cable will always beat the best wifi.....only ever use wifi when a cable is not an option.

Eagle may be running a cut-down version of windows. Check with Primalucelab !

Is one of the Mods on here from Chesterfield.... MartinB ?

If its a sliding roof its likely to be well ventilated.....