dobblob

Very nice bug. It's difficult to combine the the two and in spite of the grain it's a fine artistic shot.

I'm an expat from E. Sussex myself. Where are you from if it's not too personal a question ? Please ignore if it is.

1 hour ago, JeremyS said:

If it’s stressy it’s not worth doing in my book

 But I do know what you mean. I sometimes put myself under pressure before a session. In that case I have to have a strong word with myself.

To be honest it's not stressy for me. It's more like futility. You know, like discussing with UFO believers or flat earthers.

Under incessant clouds and nothing you can say will make them go away.....

My anxiety is more like fatigue.

I live on the second floor and had to tote all my AP gear up and down 15 ft of stairs out onto my back parking area.

1st carry---a fold out table and a chair.

2nd carry----heavy tripod.

3rd carry----AVX mount in box.

4th carry----2X 12 lb counterweights.

5th carry-----30 lbs of battery box of 3 batteries ( 2x 12 v--mount and camera supply/heater, 1x 6V autoguider)

6th carry---- all in one bag, camera, mask, intervalometer, headlight, cables, atlas, binoculars etc.

7th carry-----Scope 80 ED. In box.

8th carry----EP box.

9th carry-----beverages, nibbles, blankets.

10th carry-----everything else I forgot.

So that's about 10X15 ft X2 = 300 ft.

And the reverse to pack it all away again. = 600 ft. That's quite a hill to climb. Who needs to go to a gym? It can be summer sweaty heat or winter bone chill freeze.

Spend about 1/2 hour cabling up, 1/4 hr polar align, and finally acquiring target. Aligning guide scope. May be 3/4 hr before imaging can commence.

Start the imaging run. At this point it may become evident that there is something I have messed up. Often not.

And before this just a glance around to see how the sky is doing under the growing light pollution. Then the cloud arrives.

Then the wait for the will it/won't it clear, while the beverages are consumed rendering the packing away a little muddled.

Sometimes I am tempted to just go to bed and leave it all outside for someone to steal and I will never see it all again.

After my 72 laps around the sun you may assume that I have had enough. Good fun while it lasted.

My last hurrah will be April 8th when the eclipse path runs right through my front yard. Expect a yard sale after that.....

Never shop online for astronomical equipment after consuming a bottle of wine/six beers/ six double vodkas.

Always have a responsible adult near by......

Shredding? Don't get me started!

Wife has about 10 years of assorted "confidential" documents that are easily dealt with by just ripping off or redacting things like name or address.

Even Netflix envelope covers have to be shredded!  The postman knows our address, so do all the people in our apartment block

At one time she ordered a shredding company to visit to process just a few pounds of documents that she insisted watching through the window on the side of the shredding truck.

Cost a fortune and "honey, how do you know they were our documents that you saw reduced to tatters ?"

I volunteered to do it myself and in moments of idleness I sit, turn me off, switch on the shredder and spend an hour or two zoned out with shredding.

I entertain myself by occasionally looking at what I am asked to  shred. Bank statements or tax returns ? Fair enough.  But letters to Aunt Maude, Christmas/birthday cards, store catalogs, flyers, ten year old receipts on expired credit cards or even cash etc?

None of them have any info on them that could lead to identity theft. But she insists that every little bar code is a deep state attempt to monitor and manipulate us.

I am glad she believes that as 70 year old very uninteresting retirees with not a penny to our names that we are under intense scrutiny by the CIA, FBI, MI5, Mossad, KGB, and that our phone is tapped.

YEs, I am often asked about the clicks and buzzes she hears over the phone.

I'm done. Back to the shredding......

It's the Nexus!

One might well ask why anyone needs a finder, a Telrad or setting circles? A laser is just another tool that helps us navigate around the sky. 

Many of us are getting a little long in the tooth and don't enjoy the pain of trying to crank our necks to view a red dot or straight through finder or dealing with the field flip and narrow views of a right angled or RACI finder.

A laser pointer has definitely improved my star hopping experience. I gave up on my Telrad  and finder.

Of course I understand the dangers of LP's and those that use them stupidly or maliciously should be punished to the full extent of the law.

But let that not condemn all of us as pariahs.

We all own a knife or a hammer but we don't rampage through the neighborhood stabbing and bludgeoning people. We use them to eat or drive nails.......

I use my laser to aim my scope....

I saw the very first Starlink train in 2019. I was not expecting to see it as I didn't realise I was right under the trajectory but immediately it was clear what it was.

Since then they are a regular occurrence and cause me no more concern. Processing them takes them out my images.

Since Cov 19 normal commercial aircraft contrails are a rarer sight!

I saw something exactly like this some years ago around noon on a clear bright very windy day.  I only had a small cheap pair of binoculars in the car but they were good enough to reveal  what it was.

You have probably seen those used car dealerships with a fenced lot surrounded by the awful aluminum coated flag streamers flapping and twinkling in the breeze to attract our attention? And they do.

A whole stream of them had obviously been torn away by the wind and become air born to some altitude to produce exactly the effect you image, even disintegrating as I watched.

They would have looked the same even near darkness and without binos I would have been flummoxed ( and excited) as to what they were.

So for me, alas,  a potential UFO sighting seen to be an unusual but terrestrial used car phenomena. 

I want to believe!!!

Fear not William. Dust (unless it is REALLY BAD) will have no impact you will notice. 

It never hurts to blow off what dust is accessible on outer surfaces but do it with a "rocket" blower not with canned air or from a compressor.

Also, as is well known, NEVER inspect shining a torch down the OTA ! It will look horrible, even pristine surfaces will.

Yeah, M 42 is a jewel. I have been looking at it for 45 years on and off and it never tires. Back then with young eyes I could see the greens and resolve the trapezium.

Now I put a camera on it and discover the depth of the nebulosity, the colour and its surroundings. Yes it's "easy" but every session I take yields different results, all startlingly beautiful.

I often wonder that if it wasn't for M 42, M 31 or M 45 few of us would take up AP. 

Yep, latest ST version is missing the banding module. I used it often and it worked well.

I presume Ivo has something similar in there but you will have to ask him what and where it is. He is usually very responsive.

I was just on the phone to my sister in the UK in Lincoln. As we started the conversation discussing our current weather (mine in the NE  US) she remarked how fine it has been there and how Lincoln stays snow free. Within minutes she goes gaga and tells me there's a full scale blizzard starting!

I tell her about the winters here.....

Not sure I can help but I have the same symptoms. The AVX is not the best engineered mount on the shelves.

I wouldn't worry too much. I do astrophotography with mine. With good polar alignment the DEC axis guiding hardly has to do any work and when it does the scope (im)balance seems to ensure the drive is engaging in the same direction.

The slack is nothing to do with the clutches. In mine ,and I have checked it, it is the worm/ring gear spacing. It can be adjusted (many videos around on this) but unless you are doing AP and it is killing your images it is not worth the risk of over tightening.

Too tight can cause damage, too loose may be just an annoyance.

The only thing observing is teaching me is a tolerance for ultimate frustration.

Three weather fraudcasts said I was in for a good night except for an hour or so of cloud around 11 pm. I can live with that.

At 9 pm the cloud has moved in and shows no sign of leaving.

Now it looks like I'll be up til 3 am for a clearance. I can live with that too. Still will get another 3 hours of astro dark. But if it doesn't,  expect a storm of tossed scopes and eyepieces in the neighborhood.

Decided to take a different tack in my astrophotography. Normally I hit on DSO's with nebulosity but with my worsening local LP I thought I might do better with clusters.

So with an 89% moon to compound the problem I selected 60 sec exposures. Canon XS astro modded ISO 800 on an 80 ED f 7.5. Guiding on AVX mount. No filters.

NGC 663 Lawn Mower cluster. 93 minutes.

NGC 225 Sail Boat cluster 60 minutes.

M 45 30 minutes for fun...

None of these are wonderful but considering the conditions I was well chuffed.

Ah Ok ! You have both RA and DEC guide motors? Nexguide will not work on just RA alone.

Auto cal and auto lock automatically reduces the star brightness to an acceptable level by reducing the exp length. If it still remains too bright even at minimum exp I use a stop down mask.

I try fo find stars of mag 4 to 6, depending on guide scope aperture. The BRIghtness value can be anywhere between 25 and 250.  Are you using the 70 mm scope as a guide scope?

The guider for me in my configuration (so far!) in RA cal moves the star off to the left from center, no matter the orientation i.e left/right flip.  It can take say 15 secs to approach the screen edge and then moves back to center.

The DEC cal then commences to move from center to top for a maximum time of 30 secs or less if it detects good control. If good the guider switches automatically to guiding.

I use X1 for the guide speed. 

Since your cal only moves continuously in one direction you may want to check the 6 pin guide connector pins are clean and not bent. Try another cable if you have one.

The only problem I ever had with mine was a poorly seated connector which gave a similar fault. 

Good luck AstroG and welcome to the forum.

Feel free to ask more Qs.

I use the Nexguide very happily but only on my AVX with great results. 

The guider outputs ST 4 protocol. Are you sure the EQ 5 mount is compatible with this ?

Does it fail only when the intervalometer is plugged in, in BULB mode?

Battery fail may be due to a short in the intervalometer camera side connector or the intervalometer connector  itself. Do you have another intervalometer you can try?

Also are you sure the intervalometer is correct type for this camera?

Something is happening to cause the camera to detect low or no battery voltage if only briefly and it seems related to the BULB/ i'meter chain.

The baader solar filter is mainly for use when photographing the sun through a telescope. It cuts something like 99.99% of the light from burning your eyeball or destroying your camera.

Those beautiful images you attach are taken when the sun is very low to the horizon. The light has been heavily reduced by clouds and atmosphere. If your intention is to photograph tomorrow's annular eclipse a filter may not be needed, BUT as soon as the sun rises high enough , even a degree, it becomes a danger to your eyes and equipment.  Be very careful not to view the sun directly through a scope or even a camera .

As you note, the foreground using such a filter will indeed be completely dark. Can't have it both ways in a single shot using any filter.

There are ways in image processing to overlay the foreground taken without filter onto a filtered solar image.

And welcome to SGL !

I'm a 6ft 1 inch DOB user. I have a 8" f 6 DOB and have never experienced any discomfort using it.

The focuser sits at an angle of 45 degrees from vertical (or horizontal!) and is presented at a very comfortable angle to the eye. Of course it depends on the seat height. Too low and it can be a neck crane at the zenith, and too low turns it into a crouch near the horizon. An adjustable height seat is ideal, think drummer's stool.

No special eyepiece needed.

Well yes they do sell used/returned/repaired equipment but you find those under the "used " dept. I had good experiences here too.

My one and only  new purchase, out of dozens, and not just "small" items, that turned out to be used, in no way persuades me they "routinely" sell damaged goods.

I have bought three major OTA'S and mounts from them plus many EP's filters etc. All perfectly fine. Everyone makes mistakes.

And as someone has noted, if enough of your early purchases were unsatisfactory why did you continue buying from them?

For me what is important is the response of the seller to complaints and returns and willingness to put things right.

I have lived on four different astro forums for several years now and when the questions come up of of "Which is the Best Retailer to Use"  this NYC company usually rates up there with the best.

This is the first complaint I recall having read about them. 

Hopefully there will be more (routinely) unsatisfied customers out there to shoot me down.....

I too have bought from that NYC company and cannot recommend them highly enough. My first purchase was a "new" camera tripod which was obviously used but since I lived in NYC at the time I took it back via the subway and was immediately given a new item with much apology.

All my further purchases from them of astro equipment have been trouble free. Packaged well, very fast (sometimes next day!)  free delivery and the cherry on the cake is that I love their speedy, honest and informative website. They don't sell rubbish and prices are fair, even fairer than some dedicated astro retailers.

I was looking for a job at the time and they had a position on offer as a sales assistant in the store. I regret that I didn't get it....

I began my astronomical life with a Planisphere and it remains my "goto" when all else fails. If I need a quick reference to what's going on up there and not wait for my computer to boot up especially after several months of weather induced inactivity and I forget what the sky should look like , it's ready at hand!

It should be included in a "disaster kit" for when a Carrington event hits and we all loose power. The Planisphere needs no power or batteries.

Talking of widespread and enduring power failures, I am proof against that too. As long as I maintain a good charge in my batteries I can image all night long for several nights. My rig is computer free. Of course then comes the problem of processing. My old slide rule really won't do the job....

Good comparison Fedele. I was at this very moment considering going to IR pass and deciding if it was worth it. It seems to be.

Just for clarification: Were equal numbers of frames stacked with same best % in each case? Same fps and exposure? How much time between the two captures?

I just worry that the seeing may have improved for the IR pass before I spend $$$ !