SteveBz

Hi People, It seems to be going in the right direction. Neon calibration: 3D printed stay with embedded bullbs: Just moving the inner slots out a little. Steve.

Great advice. The lines at 639 are much narrower and I get nearer 9k. I bought 5 neon lights. I thought I'd 3d print a kind of ring round the rim to embed them in it.

Hi Robin, I just saw that. It's pretty much what I did. I found an old Philips low energy fluoscent bulb and got this: Which resulted in this: I calculated the R number. The half height width for Ha seems to be about 0.16 so R=656/0.16 or about 4000. Is that right? Now I need to improve the process with flats, darks and biases etc. I've also bought soem neon lights, so the calibration will get better. Tx Steve

The issue I'm having is matching up lines when the resolutions are different as close together spikes can become joined up and mislead the eye. I think I need an alternative source for calibration. I may try to calibrate with the Fraunhofer lines from the Sun, or maybe a luminescent bulb from Wickes. Stars don't come out until nearly midnight now, so that's a bit painful. Steve.

It's 1,800. Thanks for the Dubhe spectrum. I'm trying to calibrate now Steve

Hi Fellow Astronomers, I'm trying to get the hang of a LowSpec3.0 spectrometer. The other night, everything fell into place and guiding on the slit worked (after a bit of star-hopping). The slit is set to 20 um and I took 10 x 20 second exposures, stacking in Bass. Here is a spectrum of Alpha UMa in the H-alpha region: I hope the big dark line is the H-alpha line, but I don't know the names of any of the other lines so that I can calibrate it. Any ideas? Here is a rough chart from Bass, after removing hot pixels except one at about 540 px: Thanks for your thoughts. Kind regards, Steve.

Can I ask, how do you find ta specific star? Are you able to plate-solve in the guide-scope?

Did you take this with a colour camera, or add the colour afterwards?

Extremely nice.

Great. Yes that looks like the one I have too.

So, I think not. Is this H-alpha?

And I guess that line on the far right is the H-alpha line. I'll see if I can centre it a bit more.

So this is better?

Great, so mine is the same way round as yours. How did you take yours? And they are both Red on the left. I'll flip mine round, then. Thank you so much. Kind regards Steve.

Great job Malcom.

Hi Folks, I'm testing a LowSpec 3.0 here (lent to me by a friend). I've been playing around with different cameras. Here's a QHY5Liii-178m as the science camera. Are those the sodium lines in the middle? And it that green to the left? What do you think? Kind regards Steve.

If your beam width is a few degrees, you can probably polar align to within 1 degree anyway and then do 1-star alignment with the moon or sun's shadow of the central antenna on the dish.

I didn't see that version, but a previous or maybe the original, used an EQ6. I love their products. I just don't have that sort of money. 21k!!! The one in my profile picture used an EQ5, and star alignment was indeed a problem. That's why I switched. At one stage I thought about mounting a finder scope on it. I probably spent £100 on mine and then spent a month or two plotting the spiral arms of the milky way. Each observation is an entire project, for me at least. But if you are planning to buy one of these, it would be amazing. Good luck, and it doesn't even matter if it's cloudy. Kind regards Steve.

Hi, It depends on your design. On mine the Earth is my RA and I only change DEC. I can't track. The width of your beam is 1.22 * lambda/width - in radians, or about 10 degrees for my dish, which is 1.3 m wide. http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/phyopt/Raylei.html Then I use an inclinometer to track DEC: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Trend-DLB-Digital-Level-Black/dp/B01HF9FJJU/ref=asc_df_B01HF9FJJU/?tag=googshopuk-21&linkCode=df0&hvadid=232122755890&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=10905520700690284117&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=1006661&hvtargid=pla-421592053330&th=1 Because of my resolution I sky-scan and adjust by 10 degrees per 24 hours. In reality the inclination gives Altitude, so I need to adjust it. Overhead is my latitude so DEC = INCL - (90 -LAT). You can see it's right because if INCL = 90, then DEC = LAT, and that seems right. Post your design here and let's look. Kind regards Steve.

According to the RVO website, it's all the same cable. I've connected and it's working. PS Apparently, I could have used a USB cable if I'd set the Baud rate to 115200. I might try that later.

Oh, it looks like I need the RJ45 connection. Is it the same as the RJ45 connection for EQ5 EQmod cable, which I have?

Hello folks, My old Skywatcher board with the D9 plug just died (and seemed to take the SynScan handset with it) and I replaced it with a new motherboard from RVO with a USB port and USB cable and no EQmod cable. I'm using INDI/Kstars to connect to the EQ6 with the EQMOD driver. However, the EQmod driver can no longer see the new card and nor can the SynScan driver (although I imagine if I used the SynScan HC cable into the handset it could). Does anyone know what INDI driver I should use for the new EQ6 USB connected board please? Kind regards Steve.

HI Beka, Thanks for this. I need images that I can ask people about their production (eg is the image calibrated but not stretched). I'll have a look and see if they match some of the images I already have. If they do that's great. Kiund regards, Steve.

Hi Folks, In my on-going search for dark matter (nothing so far, sorry ). I'm trying to replicate the theoretical rotation curve lines for inclined spiral galaxies like m31 and m81 and I was wondering if anyone has some images of NGC7331 or M109 or similar. Ie not edge-on and not face-on. This is what I'd like, pretty please: single stacked mages of any spiral galaxies; 3/4 inclined, not face-on or edge-on; Calibrated frames with biases, darks and flats, and stacked luminescence ie not stretched, cropped or otherwise processed; .fits, .fit or .fts file; the larger the better; Nicely focused. Thanks so much. Kind regards, Steve.

Here's an thread from earlier on in the year talking about my experiences in Sussex. And uses exactly the cantena above. The final output was this small section of the milky way. It would have been more if it hadn't been for the trees and house Good luck. Steve.