mihaighita

Good thing I have this @home 60 meters from the telescopes :D. I knew the server will be useful one day...

There are 3 desiccant tablets in the camera. Just bake them @ 220C for 2 hours. Remember to put the screw back on the camera and keep the camera in a box, preferably with desiccant bags near it while you bake the tablets.

This answer saddens me... I was involved in World Science University project and I know for a fact that some of the brightest children in Africa have next to no internet access. There are children in this world that have no chance of getting a better job or escape their poor lives because they have no way of accessing resources. Also, slow internet is not 1st world caprice. It's a necessity when you have to work from home, upload a security camera stream in the cloud, or to make it closer to our hearts, have an observatory that is not in your backyard that needs security cameras, remote access, data transfer, etc. You see, none of the above and countless other scenarios involve any social media or Netflix binge watching. Nor will you ever see one. I'm just telling that this is going to be an annoyance that the science community will overcome. There will be some changes in the way we acquire data from the ground observatories, we will have to find solutions on the infrared (the only astronomy observation that will be affected in a real way), we will have to compromise a bit on the radio astronomy (not too much) but scientists are already working on solutions.

The benefits of Starlink are much bigger than the inconvenience to click another checkbox in an astronomy software. We tend to forget that 50% of the population of Earth does not have internet connection and 50-60% of those who have it are stuck with a high price / low bandwidth connection. I live near Pisa in Italy, by no means a 3rd world country, and my internet connection is 4-5Mb/sec down with 0.5-1 Mb/sec up. All of this at almost 50Euro/month so I can't wait to pay Musk whatever he wants for a decent internet connection I cannot have from my regular provider. If the price I have to pay for that connection is that I have to take my exposures and then process them the same way I would process the inevitable plane trails I would have anyhow, I will gladly pay it. Also, the impact of Starlink on professional astronomy is going to be more of an inconvenience than a show stopper. Spacex is most probably going to provide the orbital info for the constellation and from there is just going to be a matter planning to avoid them. No, is not going to be in any way more difficult than it is today or it was 10 years ago. The LSST median exposure is going to be 15 seconds. They will just need to change the algorithm of the mount slew pattern to be sure that the satellites are not being in the frames. Nothing will be impacted from this.

I tried a GSO 250 RC on it and I did not like the way it was guiding. And that was a 27kg payload... GM1000 is a marvel but you have play within it's limits and with a very very stiff payload. For peak performance it will need a sky model and without a stiff payload you will never, ever have a reliable model. But put a good refractor on it and it's not going to skip a beat. I am using it these days only when I travel to my parents house in a bortle 1-2 area and paired with my FSQ i've done 1 hour unguided on it without any problem.

Just opportunity. The scope was second hand at a fraction of it's original price. It was kind of a dream come true turned into nightmare (I am still strugling to have officina stellare re-coat the primary, reset the distance between the mirrors and send me an o-ring that keeps the corrector at the proper distance in the baffle tube in order to cover an aps-c sensor). But as I learned with the Mesu and basically every other piece of equipment I have for astrophotography, patience and calm is the key to success...

My Officina Stellare 320 CRC is 28 Kg with the focuser. With everything on it (camera, filterwheel, OAG, etc) is close to 32 Kg

While I don't know how MA handles this, I do know that my mount came in a sturdy wood crate. That did not prevent the dec motor encoder to have problems from the shipping. The mount is absolutely brilliant when it's working properly, but for me it took the best part of an year to arrive at that stage. While I have no way of knowing how your interaction with Lucas and MA has been, I can say that I had 2 incidents with the mount requiring repairs - one when the mount arrived and the dec motor encoder was faulty and one when the mount fall due to high wind and required some DEC plates to be replaced - and Lucas has been responsive and helpful. I have a thread of more than 150 emails exchanged between me and Lucas and the vast majority of times he responded within 24 hours. Sometimes I was a bit in doubt that the mount will ever be fully functional but now I am a happy duck guiding at lower than 0.4 arcsec @ 1680mm.

I use 2 NUC i3 8th gen with 16GB Ram and 256 m.2 ssd and they are very reliable, at least until now (oldest one is 2 years old). At the mount you don't need too much computing power to run an imaging session so any small, reliable computer will do. I would advice against mechanical drives since the movement of the mount will kill them pretty quickly.

Such a sad thing to have this happen. 5 years ago someone entered into my house when I was asleep and stole a bunch of valuables. I was lucky I had the dog at my parents at that time (190 pounds russian terrier), he could have killed the thief... From then, freaked out by the occurrence, I installed a full security system with loudspeakers, cameras, motion sensors, pressure pads and I have a 3 cameras, 5 pressure pads and infrared motion sensors at the telescopes. The whole thing is sending me notifications on my phone if anything happens. I suggest you start installing security cameras at least, nowadays they are extremely cheap and reliable and so easy to install even by a newbie as me.

The latest version is 0.95G. And they fixed something about meridian flip but it does not seem to be the same bug... You should try to update first imo... 0.95G is here: http://siderealtechnology.com/SiTechSetup095G.exe Version notes: * * * 0.95G Fixed Meridian Flip if looking west and tracking in the trackpast area, and performing a goto to the same location.

The simple answer is: Equilibrium and Symmetry. Spheres are formed when the dominant force resisting gravity is pressure. Pressure has a spherical symmetry and equilibrium is found in a sphere in this cases (planets, stars) Discs happen when orbital motion is resisting to gravity. This is a circularly symmetric effect and equilibrium is found in a disk shape (solar systems, galaxies, quesars) Long answer in the newtonian physics...

I regret buying mine... It gives larger FOV, but you will have live with a lot of drawbacks... 1. Corrected field is smaller than advertised. 2. If you are planing to use it with CAA you need to buy the adapter that will put the reducer into the CAA. 3. They are prone to tilt, you will need to constantly make sure that the screws are tight. 4. As @ollypenrice stated you are going to need a very good motorised focuser - the focus drift is much more significant with the reducer.

The biggest problem with constructing an observatory anywhere near a large structure is the turbulent air that will run around the observatory. You can reinforce the structure to support the weight of the observatory, you can make a pier that is isolated from the vibrations of the structure but it will be insanely difficult to isolate the whole structure from releasing the heat into the surrounding air. I did the following "experiment" and I invite you to do the same: On 3 nights with good seeing I moved my mount between the south facing balcony, 30 feet from the house on a concrete pad that was covered with a bath rubberized carpet and 400 feet from the house in the middle of the garden. I took my time and I did the polar align within 1 arcmin and I guided a short refractor for an hour at each location. I made sure that the mount was in all 3 locations at the same hour between the nights. The results were: On the balcony RMS between 0.7 and 1.2 arcsec RMS At 30 feet from the house between 0.5 and 1 arcsec RMS At 400 feet from the house between 0.3 and 0.7 RMS Also good to remember that I have a Class A energy efficient house that does not output a lot of its heat in the environment. The best thing to do is to find a solution to "shave" the trees.

Do you connect it to a USB3 port? I had problems with the connection with my Lodestar x2 with an Intel NUC gen8 that has only usb 3 connections. I tried to connect it via a USB2 hub, but I had problems even in this config. The problem solved itself the second I switched to a PC with USB 2 connector.