cotak

Isn't it here listed? https://www.teleskop-express.de/shop/index.php/language/en/cat/c189_Replacement-Kits.html/filter_id/21 Why are you worried about the steppers failing? They don't have brushes and are likely to last longer then you'll keep the mount.

If only he lets us puts scopes on the space side of those sats eh?

Thanks, I personally really enjoy seeing the blue stragglers.

Started it during the full moon, finished just today due to clouds etc. https://www.astrobin.com/407619/0/

Encoder, where RA meets DEC RMS:

Well I just think Toronto teams have receive so much cheering and support from their fans that we really deserves something rather than "it'll better next season". I am not old enough to have seen the leafs won last time. As my predecessor at work was very uncomfortable to hear, he worked at the company for almost as long as I have been alive, by that I mean he started in 82 and I was born the year before. His only reply's been "someone will say that same to you one day buddy". The incremental material cost is not that large going from what I made to a 9x9, wood's relatively cheap. If you use similar steel roofing material as I used but forgo the plywood you'll save some costs and weight. One thing to note is the roof truss needs additional bracing to deal with the horizontal forces coming in from all the pushing and shoving to open and close. I'd recommend buying the trusses pre-fab if you can as it would save some times and actually be engineered for a specific load. Mine are engineered as "I put my 160 lb on it and it doesn't fold, so 6 of them should hold up that small roof". Extension cord gets old after a while and I do worry about leaving it out in case of rain etc. And I am pretty sure it's not to code if you leave it out all the time which you might be tempted to at some point :). So if AC is possible I'd do that. You'll definitely be happier. At a minimum you can leave a webcam to keep an eye on conditions inside which I can't. The solar setup can't come soon enough in my opinion for ease of use.

Raptors better not disappoint this year, but then again the Leafs did it for decades and still sell out their games. I still remember when people switch from lets go Raptors to lets go Pizza once they realize we were going to lose and just wanted the free pizza next day with your ticket if they go above 100. The head's fine. Heads bleed a lot even with minor scratch, but what I did took some doing to fix. The glue the ER doc used took something like 6 weeks to come out and was itchy. The size is 6 foot by 6 foot exterior. I only image so the scale of it was not really a concern when I started, and the wife didn't want something that big cause she was concerned I'd use up all the yard space. In hindsight a bit more negotiation or taking the apologize after the fact track, and getting a bigger building might have been a good idea. As now I realize future OTA size is now going to be observatory limited. And this is also one of the reasons why I ended up with a CEM60EC instead of a CEM120EC, at some point while drooling over the 120EC I realize that I wasn't going to be able to really load it up. The other side of this is that the slide I used are rated for 400lb per pair. While I suspect a 8x8 size roof would still be within spec it doesn't leave much room and I'd question performance under snow loads with roof closed. The estimated limit to OTA length + imaging train now is about 1 to 1.2 meters depending on balance point. If the building was north oriented I could get a much bigger length so if that's possible for you it might be a good way to minimize the scale of the building while still being able to fit larger kit. Another thing to consider is your own scale, I am not a slim guy even though I am Chinese, but I am not fat either. So I can move around the setup without too many issues, but someone bigger around the middle might find it much more challenging. In all though if I do it again I'd aim for single section roof to ease automation and likely do a 8x8 instead to gain that extra space for flexibility. This summer's addition would be to finish painting it/trimming, add the automation and potentially solar power the whole lot so I don't have to extension cord it everytime I want to image. The lack of AC power was to reduce the costs and disturbance as I don't think the whole yard dug up to fit AC power was something my wife would have been too happy with. However, again it would be nice to be able to have power on all the time.

I can see someone waving it around in their backyards, saying the names of the constellation, star or nebula and making their neighbor think they are some sort of Harry Potter enthusiasts...

Mine's pretty rough in appearance as my day job doesn't involves a tool belt.. but you can see it here: The major consideration for you is pier or not? A pier is more stable so I would suggest it, but in Ottawa the depth of the concrete pier will need to be more than the relatively easy 4 feet in Toronto to get under the frost. My design ended up with a split roof to help avoid over loading the heavy duty sliders. And in the end I am happy with it as the roof sections are aligned with prevailing winds and I find the two sections together tends to stop wind from getting into the obs when the roof's open. However, a single section roof is better for easy of use and automation. I have plans to automate but am not there yet due to needing a way to open and close the two safety flaps on the top. Feel free to ask me any question, since I am in similar climate my experience will likely be similar to yours once you finish.

I for one am glad there's little nationalistic politics here. I found that stuff on the other forum unpalatable. It is a good thing that more manufacturers are at a state where quality can be produced at reasonable price. IMHO the quality gap was always more about perception than performance...

That CQ350 looks interesting. Got any detailed specs? Looks like it's a spring loaded worm now? I think the gap will prove to provide a way to do through the mount cabling easier. The mount market is heating up it seems.

Best to get used to the idea of doing mechanical work. These aren't complicated machines basically just a worm and a gear wheel. With EQ from sky watcher you need to understand the mating between worm and wheel is fixed and if temperature changes it can become non optimal. If the ASI device has PhD guide logs and debug logs it would help a lot to provide them.

What you are showing is all kinds of strange and you aren't giving enough info for anyone to really help. Personally, I don't think these all in one devices are suitable for beginners because they tend to work or don't and getting logs and reading them are at times challenging. With the bog standard computer with PHD2 and something like SGP on the surface is harder to setup but getting logs is a lot easier too. Your DEC is essentially doing it's own thing. Your RA is hovering around -2" when it should be around 0". I'd almost guess that your DEC and RA are switched around. What guide settings did you use and did you calibrate the guide camera? Did you calibrate then move the guide camera position?

Getting refurbished laptops off Amazon is usually really quick. Maybe keep your laptops under some rain protection?

Glad to help

Let me check my old emails.. it says: V1441+ So you should be able to find V1441+ printed on the board if it supports the balancing. If I recall correctly my original boards that came with the mount and doesn't allow balancing has V1441 without the plus.

There is a certain model number of RA board. Ask ioptron the version you need for the balancing and check if it's the right one. The revision is printed on the board. Maybe the wrong one was sent.

It worked well for me. Not sure why other people have issues. Make sure you have the latest firmware.

Really quite good and shows that my local seeing is typically bad. Sigh, as I like to try some smaller targets and was considering maybe a edge 11 at some point.

No he's not wrong, but maybe more details would help. It's why you have the crazy 1/2 and 2/3 rule that's outdated but keeps being repeated. All the rule does is helps beginners avoid being overly ambitious and end up discouraged. Now I am no fan of Astro-physics for various reasons but even they have admitted their payload rating isn't the simple old dogma of "it's premium so it's imaging payload" by publishing a diagram for the mach2 showing what the limits are based on OTA dimensions. Go check it out if you want but basically longer the tube the less it can hold, and the wider the tube the less it can hold. So even though the mount claims 75lb of payloads it only can achieve it if the diameter of the OTA is around 8 inch. Sobering news actually for anyone considering a so called premium mount. Btw please never use the word premium again here, it's uniquely useless in providing any useful information. All it does is divided people by implying some is more equatorial than others (if you are confused about this joke, go read up on animal farm ). The reason why dimensions and moment matter is this: http://web.mit.edu/4.441/1_lectures/1_lecture5/1_lecture5.html Boil it down and it's basically about leverage, longer arm the more force applied at the other end. One thing to also note is that longer the OTA the more the ends of the OTA move in an arc for a given rotation at the pivot. It's actually the related physics for moment arm/leverage but it also means that for a given tacking error the impact is greater for a larger OTA. And if you think about it this is spelled out also in image scale calculations, with different implications depending in relation to moment arm forces and the mount ability to resist the force.

Auto focus for me is necessary as the temps can change by a fair bit even in an hour, with my edge 8 that means a detectable change in star size even with just 1C change. The other thing is I image whatever the weather which means I have done sessions more than a few times in sub -20C weather. One's not so interested in fiddling with focus manually when it's that cold. With mono many people find that focus changes with different filters so if you want to tightest stars and no need to manually intervene overnight, it's a nice to have.

Questions are scattered a bit there but I'll take a crack at answering. Here's my stuff: http://www.astrobin.com/users/gotak/ all with OSC cameras. I image from the edge of a subburb of Toronto and I use a IDAS D1 filter to help cut down on LP. I keep to OSC for the simplicity of setup and processing. You can play around with more processing option with mono but you'll pay the price in the additional complexity. For mono work you'll really want an auto focusing solution. Actually for OSC you might want that as well. Calibration frames can be taken anytime. Once you done it once you don't have to do it again that often except for flats. Even then you can sometime just reuse and clean up the one or two motes that moved. If this is your first cooled cmos I don't see why you have to go mono.

Best to email ioptron support with that question as reports suggest that the cem40 has its own mounting setup.

Cost is always going to be an issue unless you are independently wealthy, which I wish I was as then I don't have to work to do astronomy! I ended up getting a CEM60EC in the end over the CEM120EC due to my ROR being too small to meaningfully use the capacity of the CEM120EC. And during that time I was tempted to save some money with various copies of used EQ8 being available locally. In the end though the times the EQ8 has mentioned in the same breath as backlash made me go with the CEM, which measures out to 25ms of backlash. Again as said before the cable management is a good thing without much downside.

With QHY my experience has been that it's not the technology, it's their drivers and how they don't test them before sending it out. Recently they put out drivers that totally ruin the ability to get a correct exposure for the 163, and it wasn't fix properly, you had to download a new DLL from their forum. I would look to see if they have a new driver with the fix included but at this stage unless there's a new issue that I need fixing I am not changing to a different version of their driver again.