spillage

Might be worth running some subs through ccd inspector or maxpilote. This should help show any tilt.

I'm certainly not an expert but I would say it needs to increase just a little.

cheers

I have the V11 version and this came with a screw in canister that takes two desiccant tablets. This screws into the side of the camera once you remove that screw behind the black bung.

Maybe they have. Sat there laughing whilst fracking my tracking. I'll have to stop trying to be quiet when I am in the garden a 3am.

I thought the three bulb garden light that appears to have come from a airport landing strip was bad enough.

Think I am going start calling them J.R and Sue Ellen.

So 55 minutes into a 1 hour sub and it all went wrong. Who decided we should have an earthquake at this time of night?

Okay so maybe with my gear the 1 hour sub is a bit of an exaggeration and maybe the fact that the  sky was clear enough for imaging was just wishful thinking. 

BUT we did have and feel the earthquake last night. Apparently the epicenter was between Taunton and Bridgwater and I am nearly in between both.  

When using APT I always ran off a single frame from the home position and solved and synced this. Then moved on to my target. Could it be that the time on stellarium is out? have you tried to use CdC? I am sure I only used platesolve2 with APT.

46 minutes ago, martin_h said:

A very good reason for automation happened to me last night

I can only dream of getting to this point. 

what if you put a half a dozen sheets of plain paper on the end of the scope and point it skywards in daylight.

If you are able to remove the old hard drive then its really not that bad and will save you a small sum.

You can download windows 10 from here. Includes instructions on the page.

Once this has been done its just a case of change the existing hard drive for a new empty one and installing you new copy of windows 10 onto it. 

It will ask you to register you new copy of windows and your existing computer will have the old windows key sticker attached. If its a laptop it either on the bottom or remove the battery and it can normally be found there.

Windows 10 will be installed and you can keep the old hard drive with windows 7 on just in case you really hate 10.

Or download win 10 onto a pen drive purchase another hard drive and install win 10 on the new hard drive using your win 7 key. At least then you can go back to win 7 in minutes if needed.

I think sgp will continue to work and install but any issues from future updates will not be supported and updates will be aimed towards win 10.

On 19/11/2019 at 01:25, dyfiastro said:

I had 3D printed a rear cap to prevent stray light

Do you have any images of this as I think mine suffer from this.

I have also found it larger than expected. Are you using the baader cc? I would be interested to see how much difference the skywater cc makes at x 0.9.

+1 The res version is well worth a look and I would be proud to capture such an image.

Thank @michael8554

I think I made these changes out of frustration. 

Last night I went back to hyteresis in RA and resist in DEC but I may give the predictive PEC a go on the next clear night.

I guess with so few clear nights you rush things just to be up and running so I gave up a few hours last night fettling the settings and using some left over roof lead to assist with getting the balance as best I could and finally saw guiding back down to around .8-.7 so moving in the right direction. 

I waste some time as earlier on in the day I tighten up the motors only to find that the RA was too tight and binding so a quick adjustment put this right.

I do not have much knowledge on your mount. But I run guiding software on my mount through a laptop or pc with a cable that controls the mount.

19 minutes ago, Miko_Skye said:

use SharpCap to polar align and then ExplorerStars to find objects and have the mount track them

Yep that's correct.

Don't forget if you strip down your gear every night and remove the guide cam from its finder scope to run calibration and a darks library in PHD (if this is what you are using).

I think the confusion here is that polar alignment aligns the mount to the earth rotation and the explorer start aligns the mounts pointing system to the sky for pointing and location accuracy.

Run polar alignment first as this will only need you to point to NCP and will use any stars available then run your star alignment.

Hope this makes sense and helps.

We have a fairly clear night last night and luckily I have change to remove and reinstall the scope and leads. I also check that the motors had not become loose and checked the backlash which all seemed okay. Still having odd issues with tracking so have attached the phd2 file from last night.

The only thing I noticed is that RA is not as free moving a DEC but this has always been the case with this mount.

Any ideas are more than welcome.

PHD2_GuideLog_2019-12-01_013559.txt

49 minutes ago, Burt8 said:

I’ve just been offered a straight swap

I would take this if your wanting to do AP. Your dob may be worth 300 second hand and the second hand eq6 would be more like 700 so this would be a great way of getting in AP an saving you a bucket full of money.

If you budget is low then a 130pds with cc would be a good option. I would even consider selling the 6" in the deal as this is probably not an apo so not much use for AP.

I'm sure once you have it all up and running you dad will be chuffed to bits to watch it in action. One of the best bits of advice I can give is that if possible set it up an a permanent mount as this would remove the headache of having to set up and strip down every time its used.

I sure its just a balancing game so try 50  unity and 200 gain but you will have to try different exposures on each maybe 30s, 60s and 120 (using broadband filters) . Don't bother doing any calibration frames and just throw the subs together and see how they look.

Just from memory I think higher gain means you expose for longer but you need to be aware how dark you skies are. If you have poor skies then a lower gain with low exposure time should be used.

With narrow band you should use a higher gain. But do not take my  word on any of this but over at cloudy nights there are some monster threads about it.

Or you just set it to unity and adjust exposure times and ignore all the maths and equations.

For some reason I think I am using 200 gain and exposure time with L is about 120s but I still think this is too long.

If you still have the original rings for the st80 then you just use a metal bar. Drill and bolt this to the guide scope and drill two more hole to bolt it down to the top rings of your imaging scopes rings.

That is a gift though. looks like a qhy5 guide cam which I find is bullet proof and possibly a 314 imaging camera?

If you have the ability and cash I would suggest belt modding the neq6 as this really will change the mount for the better. Not sure if you have one but a eqdirect cable to control the mount via a computer without the need for the handset.

Have a look here if you have never used eqmod before and here for the lead. 

Image capture software:

N.I.N.A

APT

Guiding:

PHD2

Sorry cannot provide links to recovering time wasted and lost hair after pulling it all out...or for that a fix to stop usb leads constantly failing.

5 hours ago, skybadger said:

Current contenders are Nina, voyager , ccdciel  and another from Moravian.

Although I am only partially automated (not roof control) I do have mention that N.I.N.A is really worth a look. Its free and works very much like sgpro in lots of ways but also better in others. 

I think when you consider the opportunity to have your gear up and running in minutes makes up for the time lost trying to fix issues.  I like the fact that I can be set up running if there is a gap in the clouds and back under cover in minutes if the clouds come back.

Allot of the software out there if free but has great support to get you through the rough patches. I guess you have to be happy to fiddle about with stuff in the first place. I would rather build something or at least have a go before going out spending the money on a pre-built working solution.