dobblob

No asteroid I'm afraid. Asteroids move very slowly and it may take many nights to detect the change in position.

It was likely a satellite. Programs such as Stellarium or sites like Heavens Above can show what satellite was passing at the time and position you saw it.

These days it is difficult NOT to see a satellite scooting through the field of view...

I was hoping someone would come in ahead of me on offering industrial slag. (Don't like to be the first to be slapped down if wrong!).

As a kid me and my mates thought we had found wonderful meteorites on a road building project before it all got tarmacked over. Looked just like the samples pictured.

Those opposed screws are the azimuth adjustment. They bear on the post on the top of the tripod to move the mount left or right. Looks like you may need to release the cap head screw in the slot to allow this.

What sort of fool would believe ZERO negative feedback out of 1700? 

Psst! I have a nice bridge for sale and plenty of snake oil.... any offers?

Now starting to see long queues at the wash basins in public toilets and a lack of paper in the stalls. Wonder why......

OK that's the problem. The finder scope has nowhere near enough magnification for you to keep the star as accurately as required on the cross hairs.

Not sure how that can be improved except to fit a much longer focal length finder and/or higher mag eyepiece.

Not a satisfactory solution as it effectively means another scope attached!

Perhaps fitting a drive motor should be the way to go.

Which Skywatcher EQ 5 mount are we talking of here? Which brand? The EQ 5's I see out there are the costly goto's and do not have a manual cable.

If yours has a manual cable to turn RA then it is certainly a mount unsuitable for astrophotography on nebulae. Also you say it is not motorised ?

Best post a photo so we are sure what you have.

Edit: Sorry, I see which one you have now-indeed a manual EQ. So yes it is very difficult to track manually no matter how smooth and steady you feel your control is. Also as soon as you touch the cable handle it will impart movement and vibration into the scope. Those cables are really only intended for manual steering.

How are you looking at the star/image to perform the manual tracking? Usually the camera will not show a live view so I can only guess you have a second scope attached or using  a finder.

I am sorry but for me this news is no news re 17 Ah power tank. It tanked irretrievably.

The battery is pretty weak and in spite of conforming to the charge/discharge instructions it failed me after some months.

The charge/discharge/ charged  LED's meant nothing. In contradiction with each other.

Yes I could have fitted a better battery and if I had I nevertheless discovered that the USB ports were not beefy enough to supply my camera  I still would not have  been happy.

And who wants the flashing red light option ?

My tank sits in my cupboard as a standby for power cuts for it's LED flood light and nothing more if it holds charge which I doubt.

Just get a discrete battery, ANY battery  and a charger and connect it to your  scope.

This is a well known problem with power tanks. Don't bother with them any more. Do yourself a favor.

Very nice Kirkster! 

I had a shot on this some years ago and managed an hour and no surprise that it's not a patch on yours.

Gives me the incentive to try again.

1 parsec = 3.2 light years

1 Mparsec = 3.2 million light years

3000 Mparsec= 3000 x 3.2 million light years........

Sorry, I should have used the Mega not the mili, hence your confusion.

S 200129 m event was only detected on 2020-1-29 and as yet is not confirmed. If confirmed it is 3000 million light years distant so I see no reason for alarm.

It would be reasonable to suppose that black hole mergers have occurred much closer to us ( even in our own galaxy ?) with no life threatening results to us since the birth of the solar system.

Just pull your armchair closer to the fire, sip brandy, read a good book on astrophysics and relax...

Definitely an artifact. It would be large and very noticeable if real , no matter how much Betelgeuse has dimmed.

It COULD of course be real but with all the attention BG is garnering I can't believe the community is missing it.

I have seen some hi-res Hubble (I think) images showing a bow shock wave ahead of BG but far too small to be seen in our wimpy scopes.

It was the 1999  eclipse for me too . With my 15 yr old son ( on sufferance from my ex)  I took a long and convoluted train trip from E. Sussex across to the West Country and ended up at a pre-booked camp site near Redruth.

The journey itself was memorable in the days when trains ran (almost if at all!) on time. 

We taxied to the camp site and set up and then I introduced him to the delights of the local hostelries and great fish and chips.

Back at the site we lay with our heads poking out of the tent in our sleeping bags and watching the Perseid's falling. It was hopeful for the following day. Not a cloud in the sky.

Then came dawn. Wall to wall cloud!

We sat at the cliff edge as the sky darkened and totality approached. As noted in previous posts the seagulls went absolutely crazy but the campers were less impressed. As gloomy as the sky.

When it was all over I did my parental best to tempt my son into a shower before we hit the delights of Redruth. No chance!  I guess we all know about this....

Teens and water are like oil and water. 

Seeking entertainment we headed into Redruth. My son was overjoyed to find that perhaps the only cinema in Redruth was showing a Mike Meyers movie. I sat through this wishing the fire alarm would go off to spare me. But no.... I just had to take pleasure at my son laughing! Certainly the highlight of the whole trip.

The following day we hiked around the coastal path in glorious sunshine but still no shower in the offing...

Finally the train back home to present an odorous son back to his unappreciative mother. Of course I was to blame for the good time we had....

Looks like your power tank may have "tanked" already.

 I have/had one and for a few months from new things seemed normal but very soon the status LEDs began to contradict each other, just as yours are .

The indicators were meaningless. Then I discovered that the battery would not hold charge and anyway was not sufficient for more than a few hours running my AVX mount.

Consigned it to the bottom of a cupboard just in case there is a short power cut...

Replaced it with a much cheaper, greater capacity battery.

Can't see exactly what you have and it may be the newer Li type in which case you may have more luck but already it is off to a bad start.

LENR should not be used anyway as the result is not in RAW. RAW format (as unadulterated data as the camera can produce)  is what you need for stacking.

LENR corrupts the data even before you start stacking. 

Absolute final answer, yes turn it off. Waste of time with it on. And correct use darks and flats.

Registax is usually a program used for stacking video (lucky frame) image capture, of thousands of individual frames commonly of the moon or planets.

It is not intended for use in deep sky image capture and has no use in this so indeed we need to know what type of images and targets you are working from.

If you are taking deep sky shots  of nebulae and galaxies then programs such as DSS (Deep Sky Stacker free!) and StarTools or PI and many others are the way to go.

These are two completely different astrophotography  strategies requiring different techniques and equipment.

If you can at least let us know what your equipment is in your profile or directly it would help.

Absolutely wonderful !

So sharp I almost cut my eyeballs looking at it.

Flying over the half moon frame was breath taking.

Excellent! Much better. Looks like a good candidate for the No EQ DSO challenge now.

I once needed to remove for the first time a dew shield with a felt band.

Big strong guy as I am there was no way it would shift by hand.

I tried a strap wrench. No dice.

Wooden mallet? Yep that worked.

After that the shield was as sloppy as something that is very sloppy and would fall off at the drop of a hat, (or dew shield.)

I put a few crumples in the felt and it works fine now....

Software testing was once part of my job, one of the most frustrating experiences of my career.

After weeks or even months of testing a bug would show up requiring a fix in just one line of code.

So I ask the S/W guy "So I only need to check the function of that piece of code?"

"Yes, just that. Nothing else was changed" he declares.

So I check it out. I notice there is a new dialog window in the GUI display. It concerned the operation of a 300mm butterfly valve with high vacuum on one side and full atmosphere on the other.

Nothing to do with the original bug.

The new dialog asks "Do you really want to open this valve?"

Definitely NOT!!!

I hit the NO tick box....

BOOM!! The valve opens ! Crikey! The whole factory shook as full atmosphere slammed into several cubic meters of vacuum chamber.

Heads turned with accusing looks. Honest guv, it wasn't me!

A further full SW debug was required over the next few weeks....We found many more newly installed bugs.

I realised that there is no such thing possible as fully bug free code no matter how long it is tested.

Don't be afraid of AI ! Human I is far more dangerous....

Dithering will help but that is a tough proposition with an ALT/AZ without some software which I don't think can connect easily to an I optron AZ goto via a laptop.

Others will know if this is possible.

I agree the noise looks like a typical result from a DSLR. Perhaps the high ISO of 3200 does not help. Try ISO 800.

An ALT/AZ when operating near the meridian and the celestial equator is at it's optimal position to minimise field rotation.

Fortunately Orion's Belt is perfectly positioned.

If the  ALT axis is at 90 degrees,( E_W) to the meridian (altitude swings due N-S in the rocker box) the need for large adjustments in ALT is reduced as the field rotates little as it passes across the meridian.

Looks like a bad case of field rotation. This is an effect of using an ALT/AZ mount with long exposures. 3 minutes is far too long.

The star Alnitak is kept central in the field by the goto tracking but you can see the field rotating around it.

Typically most recommend not to go much above 15 sec exposures.

I would use shorter exposures and more of them.

Yes, I saw the string of  the first of the series launched way back in  summer 2019. 

Fascinated but appalled.

Then I took some comfort from it realising that when the UFO nuts start reporting them (or anything else) that we can debunk them instantly. 

No need to call on Venus refracted by swamp gas.

Hang on there!....Where are the nutter reports ? Aren't they looking up? Does this mean they now know a satellite from a FTL mother ship?

Remember those wonderful toys we had as kids? "Kaleidoscopes" I think they were called.

I'll just trade in my scopes for a couple of those and won't notice the difference as I turn them to the skies...