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. 

On 29/06/2020 at 20:47, Paul M said:

Nor a computer to connect or money for either and they'll be better off without their children being turned into dysfunctional social media adicts.

Slow internet is a 1st world problem and Musk's solution isn't really even about solving that problem. It's about corporate posturing and personal ego.

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. 
 

On 29/06/2020 at 16:57, cuivenion said:

I have not seen one news report of a professional astronomer saying this isn't going to be a problem for them.

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.

On 27/06/2020 at 15:38, cuivenion said:

I would argue it's more important to see the random piece of rock coming in the first place which Starlink in it's current form will make a lot more difficult.

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.

40 minutes ago, Gorr_77 said:

Mihaighita,

Out of curiosity - isn't  the AP SWL for GM1000 25kg?

I've seen someone on youtube with RASA 36 on it being very happy....?

ALso i've found new Gemini guiding:

 

mount is for sale right now - but only 30kg for AP - so no no for you

JTW - i thought that it will be all in one color  - who knows..:(

Greg

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. 

8 hours ago, Northernlight said:

Nice - expensive taste in gear

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...

15 hours ago, david_taurus83 said:

Out of curiosity, when is a payload of, say, 25kg not enough? For a single scope say. Surely 25kg would be enough for a 6 inch frac or a 12 inch newt?

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

15 hours ago, whipdry said:

Modern Astronomy are the sole UK importers & are collected in batches from Lucas by them, you have the choice of collection from Modern Astronomy or delivery in person by Bernard. 

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.

3 hours ago, Zakalwe said:

Its on here, but I'm not interested in mud-slinging. I will call it as I see it though.

I'm delighted that my problem has been solved as I believe that I was probably the first to experience the problem. I know of at least four other people that had the same problem, some of whom were invaluable in diagnosing and testing possible solutions. I also know of at another few people that have other problems that took a while to resolve (one took many months where the individual was without their mount).

Any man-made object can and will have problems. That's just a fact of life. I was unfortunate to experience a very difficult-to-resolve problem which was not unique to me. Given the work that was done by the makers of SiTech (kudos to Dan Gray, he was absolutely brilliant). Lucas Mesu took extreme exception to me posting my experience on here and his approach went from sporadic attempts to offer advice to "send it back and you'll get your money back". My counter offer was sure- arrange collection or pay for delivery from Lancashire to London after which there was no contact. Bern at MA was better, but had no resolution.

It's easy to swing when you are winning. The real measure is how you respond when things are not working. In this regard the Mesu experience was appalling.

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. 

15 hours ago, kirkster501 said:

I am on Sitech version 0.94N which is the latest version on the Sitech website

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...

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. 

On 31/08/2019 at 13:12, mihaighita said:

Mesu 200 MK2 solves that. With Mk1 there are ways to balance it perfectly. I use a system of pulleys attached to the center of the rotation axis and measure the force needed to pull in any direction. I also have another idea that I need to clear with Lucas first... The dec motor has a tension adjuster on the top that can be loosen and make the dec axis turn extremely easy. I was thinking to use that for balance and then tighten it again to operate the mount. But I need to see that this will not cause any damage to the motor axis. There is also the possibility to monitor the power needed when you are using the handpad to rotate the dec axis. Note that I am speaking only about the dec axis because the Ra axis is easy to balance due to the much bigger centripetal force. 

 

I had an email exchange with Lucas and he told me that the above tension adjuster method for balancing will surely damage the mount. So, please don't try this! 

4 hours ago, kirkster501 said:

😀IT WORKED!!!!!  IT WORKED!!!!!! Yay!!!! 😀

My PA was not bad anyway I was about 45 arc mins out.  It is precisely set now within a few minutes.  So that was not the issue.  The guide graph is like a pancake tonight.

Pretty sure it was balance that was not accurate enough!

Vlaiv, Steve, Dave and everyone else, have a virtual beer on me  🍻🍺🍷🍹

🥳. I'm glad it worked!

Lovely image. The second one is better, for my taste but both versions are really good. Congrats!

2 minutes ago, Davey-T said:

Hope you get it sorted soon Steve 

Also considering the Mesu to replace my obs'y mount and wondering about all these nitty gritty things that need setting for them to work properly, though once permanently setup and sorted I guess it should be fine ?

The fact that the software not being " in house " seems to cause most of the issues, given that all mount control software uses pretty much the same protocol surely it's not beyond the wit of the manufacturer to get a bespoke operating system written, it could then have a built in balancing routine ala 10Micron etal, that would take the guess work out of it as it only monitors the current drawn by the motors how hard can it be ?

Dave

 

 

10Micron mounts have absolute encoders that help them get the precise position of the axis when they are measuring the current drawn by the motors. It is much more difficult to do the calculation without knowing the axis position. 

11 minutes ago, vlaiv said:

This has me worried somewhat. I see myself owning a Mesu 200 in some (distant) future, and it looks like it's a bit fussy with regards to balancing.

How perfect does balance need to be for it to work properly?

Mesu 200 MK2 solves that. With Mk1 there are ways to balance it perfectly. I use a system of pulleys attached to the center of the rotation axis and measure the force needed to pull in any direction. I also have another idea that I need to clear with Lucas first... The dec motor has a tension adjuster on the top that can be loosen and make the dec axis turn extremely easy. I was thinking to use that for balance and then tighten it again to operate the mount. But I need to see that this will not cause any damage to the motor axis. There is also the possibility to monitor the power needed when you are using the handpad to rotate the dec axis. Note that I am speaking only about the dec axis because the Ra axis is easy to balance due to the much bigger centripetal force. 

6 minutes ago, JamesF said:

Ugh.  It looks like there's some tiny nylon planetary reduction gear set on the end of the shaft that I'd never be able to reassemble.  I can barely even see it!  It could even be the nylon that has failed due to age.  Unless Xagyl can supply the complete motor and worm unit I think this filter wheel is bereft of live, ceased to be, pushing up the daisies

James

Yeah, it looks like this will be the solution. 😟

That should be a 3v coreless motor. It can operate up to 5v. The biggest problem is that, without markings, there is no way to tell the speed of the motor, and it can vary widely, from 8000 RPM up to 80000 RPM... On the other hand they are so cheap ($2-$4), you can get a bunch of them and try to see what fits. 

You should be able to find a replacement motor pretty easy and cheap. The filter wheels are using mostly the cheap chinease motors. Take it out and look for markings on the housing. 

I had the same problem with my Mesu 200 MK1. You need to update software... Also, please remember to initialize mount first (do a offset init)

Computers normally, have an operating range between 10C and 50C but I doubt that it will not start at 9C. Check RAM and HDD for problems.