Pete Presland

Hi welcome to SGL from Pete in Bedfordshire 🙂

Very nicely captured.

Hi welcome to SGL from Pete in Bedfordshire 🙂

Hi welcome to SGL from Pete in Bedfordshire 🙂

Hi welcome to SGL from Pete in Bedfordshire 🙂

Hi welcome to SGL from Pete in Bedfordshire 🙂

Hi welcome to SGL from Pete in Bedfordshire 🙂

Time goes so quickly 🙂

Looks excellent!

Hi welcome to SGL from Pete in Bedfordshire 🙂

Hi welcome to SGL from Pete in Bedfordshire 🙂

welcome to SGL Marc, you writing is fine. I have seperate folders for all my images, planets, lunar, Solar, DSO's, comets, meteors, widefield..... Then sub folders for different planets, solar white light, H/A. I always name with date and time EG. 2021.01.05 18.57, then name of object imaged. hopefully they store in chronological order then. 🙂

A thread here that may interest you This user manage to source a replacement, i googled the model he mentioned and found some available. https://www.omc-stepperonline.com/nema-14-stepper-motor/ Might be worth a look.

I think much is made of the increases in aperture and I can only speak from personal experiences. I didn't think there is much difference imaging wise, maybe the highly rated schott glass in the Mak makes up for the slightly smaller aperture.

I swapped my Mak180 for a SCT C9.25, because i wanted a bit more versatility with my scope. The slightly shorter focal length and abilty to use a reducer have certainly given me this. Planetary imaging wise, which is what i do most, i am not sure there is a huge difference in the two scopes. The collimation of my C9.25 has been pretty solid, maybe this down to its hardly ever transported anywhere. The mirror slop was much worse on my Mak180, than the C9.25. That said, my Crayford has pretty much removed the issue.

That response has made me laugh, PPPUT 🙂 the close view also made see how noisy the image is.

I don't see any reason why you could not get a decent image with a manually tracked Alt/Az mount. These images were only 120 seconds in length, so i cant imaging there would be too many rotations issues. As for how i tracked the A/R, its very simple. When i am Solar imaging/observing, i always make sure the mount is pointing north as accurately as i can, hopefully then any adjustments will mostly be in R/A. Open Firecapture, get the A/R centered on the screen and watch the direction of drift. Try adjusting the slow motion knobs to correct the drift before capturing, once familiar with the direction of the correction needed, hit record and do your best 😀 These images were at 3000mm Focal length, so the drift was quite quick. I used the reticle on the Firecapture screen to keep the A/R centered. There is significant loss of detail in both images around the edges due to difficulty i had tracking at this focal length. As @Luke has said you can image at a lower power and let it drift across the field of view and achieve a similar result. Albeit with less resolution, i have done this with my Lunt 50 scope.

1st opportunity to do some Solar imaging, in what seems like an eternity. Due to the time of the year, the Sun is barely visible from my garden, so a quick trip to the countryside. As soon as i powered the mount up, i realised the battery was flat! Such a shame because the seeing looked pretty good at 11am. Anyway decide to grab what i could manually guiding the mount via the two very unsuitable home made Knobs on my EQ5. The images are a bit of a let down for the conditions, but a bonus considering the flat battery. I could see some nice granulation on the preview screen, but my clumsy tracking has pretty made it invisible. That said some nice detail in the Penumbra in AR2794. Evostar120mm, Asi290mm, Lunt Wedge.

Hi welcome to SGL from Pete in Bedfordshire 🙂

Hi welcome to SGL from Pete in Bedfordshire 🙂

Hi welcome to SGL from Pete in Bedfordshire 🙂

Hi welcome to SGL from Pete in Bedfordshire 🙂

Hi welcome to SGL from Pete in Bedfordshire 🙂

Hi welcome to SGL from Pete in Bedfordshire 🙂

Hi welcome to SGL from Pete in Bedfordshire 🙂