newbie alert

It may or may not be applicable to the ERF but with a moonlight within the ascom setting you have to have the focuser all the way in and set it to NULL.. Then it can be consistent with all its steps, otherwise it will have random inconsistent results as focus differs from night to night, don't ask me how I found out 😳 Patriot astro has many videos on anything Nina related

Looking much better, not perfect but that can be fine tuned at a later date, time to enjoy some hopefully ( fingers crossed) clear skies

You can see it's processed differently and on a different image scale... Put it on a level playing field and you can have a more accurate measure of things.. Both are great images btw

I see, even thou you're not doing a full blown autofocus run it still sounds like it needs a settle time, one for the filter to change and 2 for the autofocuser to move it's offset distance.. are you doing a full loop of filters? Nina is flexible enough to do say 10 exposures of red, 10x blue etc, or run a auto focus on temp change( if you have temperature reading) or if you're using the sequencer it can check to HFR in the background after every sub and if it changes do a autofocus Seems abit OTT to just use the offsets every sub to maximise capture but lose out on focus as the temp drops off, or am I reading that bit wrong Anyway, don't think there's much to gain from using a oag on a esprit 100, but if it works then great..if you do go for the finder as a guider the biggest hurdle would be the adapter but I'd think you would have the same situation as the filterwheel is still going to change and the focuser move unless you add a few secs delay between subs

What size esprit is it David? What program are you running for capture? If you dither then you can set a settle down time before it stars it's capture again, sure it shouldn't be starting a exposure and still running a focus run at the same time? Not sure that you would be able to use a 1.25 in the finder, seems thinner than that on my 80

While this is true for helping calibration with mounts that have lots of backlash the image shown is where PhD sends the mount sends guide pulses in one direction then reverse the direction to bring the star back to its original position, and measures the errors... The flat top and drift is where is floating , then catching back up on itself .. this is backlash and that box shows it on the Dec axis

This is Dec backlash, the flat ish area at the top is the Dec reversing with float between gear mesh.. I'd check the mesh of the worm, and check that the locking nut on the bottom of the shaft isn't too tight( classic on most synta mounts) Also, you have a 73mm scope on the top? I'd rethink this, can cause a few issues... Differential flexure , balance issues, issues that are native to SCT won't be solved by using a separate guider.. oag is the way for SCT in my opinion.. been there done that with a separate guidescope

Great first light image... Not sure if you noticed but your stars at the edge are pointing in towards the center.. either you need a flatener or abit more spacing...

Ok, thanks Adam , I try it when I'm home from work... If it works I buy you a imaginary 🍺 or 🍻

Ok thanks to Adam I now can see the camera...next problem is I can't move the circle down or to the right any further, center offset is max'd out on 20...

Ok, good idea, thanks

No I'd not enabled the circles as what are they going to match to? It's only showing the mirror and the secondary And yes I've change the unique serial number in the focus tab

Cheers Adam, maybe it was too dark inside my little obsey... I roll it back to let in some more light

I bought a Ocal maybe 9 months to a year ago for my sct and tried it for the first time the other day but on the screen I'm not seeing the camera, the camera is working as I can see my hand etc in the mirror .. I've tried both ends of focus on the scope and adjusted the sliders in the software.., any ideas??

Hi Derek, nothing scarry about guiding.. , try it on your cgem while you wait to decide on the ioptron.. those difficult 2 min unguided subs will turn into 10 mins quite comfortably, just need a rs232( same cable as the firmware update one) and probably a rs232 converter to usb cable.. simple...

I've got a cem 60 which has been awesome..assumed the 70 to be the same if not better... When I got mine the 70 had just been released but couldn't see where the extra £600 was for 10lb extra payload and in black...

Well you know the price direct from JTW

But your cem70 was easily capable of that..

You're not guiding for planetary imaging are you Mike? Really no need as stars move differently to planets ( planets are in the equatorial plane) hence why you have sidereal, lunar, solar tracking rates

Why not mod the PST using a bigger aperture and longer FL doner scope... A F10 scope is ideal, or make it F10 using a telecentric glass path.. would cost you much less than a quark If going down the quark route, the askar might not be suitable as it's a quad... The diagonal question , is it a blocking filter that you're talking about? Bf600, bf1200? I'm sure that it's not needed as the blocking filters are within the quark,but might be worth checking with other quark users.. I'm sure that a aperture smaller than 100mm a erf isn't needed but a UV/IR filter is there to protect the quark, think Daystar and others such as player one are now selling filters especially for use to protect against damage to the quark If you joined solar chat forum and ask your questions theres plenty of really experienced solar folk on there

I prefer the top one, more image like than picture like of the second... Topaz is a really powerful tool and easily overdone Regarding the 2 inch filters have you looked at Antlia,not in the same price bracket as chroma etc but have decent feedback, Flo are now selling them.. you may not need 2 inch as you will have some vignette due to the image circle, especially using reducers.. you may be able to get away with 36mm... Have a little research

Regarding the Barlow try what you have first, then if you feel that you want a better quality one then you can at a later date Not too sure if you're aware but in most capture softwares there will be a function where you can use ROI( region of interest) this enables you to capture just the target if that's you're interest and it has the added bonus of keeping the file size smaller and therefore increasing your FPS( frames per second)

Yeah never heard of the same issue with qhy, Altair or the risingcam version

Have you a qhy or Zwo version Adam?

Your one Adam?