LightBucket

20 minutes ago, Andyb90 said:

I got the rings the other day. They are slightly too big out of the box so I got a piece of felt, cut some strips to size and put them in the rings. Now they fit fine and OTA doesn't budge.

The other thing is that the Esprit dew shield is slightly wider than the rings. So I've ordered some Primalucelab spacers for mounting them on my Losmandy plate and also for mounting stuff on top of the rings.

Andy.

What is the spacing on the scope dovetail, between the mounting holes, is it 60mm, as mine are and the Primalucelab ones are only 55mm or do you only use one bolt in the centre..? i use two bolts but need some spacers with a 60mm spacing... 

46 minutes ago, Aidan said:

I’m wondering if it’s designed to work out of the box with the standard bolt that comes with the mount and not with others without modifications.  The bolt I have is the one with the black lever and push button to release it so you can change the handle position.

Ill keep an eye on mine, burn it seemed to work ok last night.

Yes, that’s the same bolts I have black handle with red knob....

3 hours ago, Aidan said:

If I’m honest,  to start with I just left it pushing against the barrel, reassembled and tested it.  Seemed to work all Ok, so left it at that!  I’ll see how it goes and if need be drill it out a bit so it’s a better fit.

Hmmmm, that’s how mine was, and I left it too, but while testing and under load it slipped into the hole and got jammed, and broke off the two notches on the bottom that hold it in place...now it just works like the early version of this rail before the notched version was introduced...

3 hours ago, Aidan said:

Just fitted mine.  I have a replacement bolt on my mount which does not have as much of a ball head, so getting it to sit in the hole on the sliding block was a bit of a job.   But, all installed and the movement is so much better.

Proof will be in the pudding... but i dont anticipate any problems... going by todays weather,thats not going to be anytime soon!

Yes I had a problem with that too....how did you solve...

Mine bolt was about 3mm too low for the hole, had to drill it out a bit..

44 minutes ago, Gerry Casa Christiana said:

Yes I think I was lucky with the nut  I managed to get the bolt back into it and tightened it up. Yes I'm sure yours will be fine. The best way is to put your gear on it before the final assembly try to move it side to side then adjust until you have no play then put the sides back on. That's what I did. 

Gerry

You do realise that the bolt does not tighten in that nut...it tightens in the mount base itself, which is threaded...that nut is supposed to be fitted afterwards as a lock nut, as when moving the mount up and down the main bolt can work loose without that nut in place...

it would be impossible to tighten that bolt in the base as well as get that nut back on and tight, as you have said... and there is no way you could do this without removing the decal on that side..

1 hour ago, Gerry Casa Christiana said:

I did it fairly tight. I think it is just the balance so the disks can work freely. I also used a plastic grease for those discs. In fact I used the lithium grease too and smothered the actual Eq6 rail too. The packet they give will work but I think for longer protection it's better. Also the other thing I didn't do is take off the facia on nut side but just the bolt itself. Don't do it up mega tight I would suggest. 

Gerry

Did you still have some play in the mount after tightening up the bolt, (about 1mm side to side) and then take that out with the three grub screws....as that’s what I did..but not sure if correct...

1 hour ago, Gerry Casa Christiana said:

I did it fairly tight. I think it is just the balance so the disks can work freely. I also used a plastic grease for those discs. In fact I used the lithium grease too and smothered the actual Eq6 rail too. The packet they give will work but I think for longer protection it's better. Also the other thing I didn't do is take off the facia on nut side but just the bolt itself. Don't do it up mega tight I would suggest. 

Gerry

So how can you do it without taking the lock nut off the other side....I can’t see how, as you would never get it back on tight...if at all...

1 hour ago, Gerry Casa Christiana said:

I have had this mod for the last 3 months. My mount is a absolute dream with this Eq6 rail. Never been so easy to do drift aligning. I got mine from modern astronomy and they are very good. Took 2 days to arrive to Italy. I would have got it from FLO if they stocked it  

Gerry

 

So when you fitted, how tight did you do the large centre bolt up...as it seems that if it is tight it distorts the casting...??

Well I bit the bullet and bought the new Rail kit and fitted today, it all went ok but I do have a question for the guys who,have already fitted one...

how tight should the main centre bolt be..I ask because when I took Mine apart it seems quite loose...so today when I re assembled I nipped it up until I thought anymore would push the cast out of shape, and then used the three grub screws to take out the slack, and it is firm but smooth to move by hand...

here is a few pictures I took, also mine is the newer slotted version so if you take the bolts out for storage the rail will stay intact, as the push bar is slotted on to the rail before it’s fitted...see the 4th image below...

Side caps removed

Prepared ready for rail fitting

Kit ready

showing the new slotted design, you need to fit together before fitting into mount

All fitted in place

All ready to be bolted back together, note the metal washer on the top, and the large nylon one on the bottom...

Well that’s not the best design I have ever seen for fastening a scope foot mount... good luck

what do you do about the holes once removed, as stray light would enter...??

10 minutes ago, mikeonnet said:

Hi all,

I'm looking for some advice on the 'curved banana' shaped spikes I have. Having used a DSLR connected to a 0.85 focal reducer & Skywatcher 80 refractor, the bahtinov diffraction spikes were perfecly straight including the diaganal lines. However, I am now using a ZWO mono 290 and a filter wheel with the adapters (55mm from the sensor to reducer) but now the lines are curved - see image. I know it's a noisy image but this was just a quick snapshot but my main concern is what is causing the curvature of the spikes.

Is this an issue of the camera not being the correct distance to the reducer? I have only had a quick imaging session of M27 the other day and too be honest, it seemed OK but I just wonder if this 'wobble' will be impacted on all the light frames I will be taking. Any advice please...

I

How long was the exposure as it looks like bad PA alignment....?

10 hours ago, mog3768 said:

Yes light bucket  I do wish I had taken photos when I fitted mine as they would explain a lot anyway after the tapered base unit is in place a cylinder shape piece with grooves lays on the tray which you grease this cylinder has a hole for the bolt to fit into it then pushes against the South side of the wedge  because of our latitude this is the side that bares most of the weight the north bolt then locks everything down the idea is that the direction of push is straight thereby stoppng the bolt from bending. Don't know if I have explaned it well do know I have not put any comers or full stops. I have just spent a while outside it is far to light here to test the drift align but looking through the eye piece onto a just visable star I could move the star around with ease using the bolts.

So when locking the north bolt down, won’t that bolt still score the original tab on the mount head and cause issues..?.as that one has no modification done to it....

So the bolt that still pushes directly against the tab on the mount head, does this still not score the tab and cause issues...as on the new rail only one bolt fits the new rail assembly....so do t see how this helps, as it only affects one bolt...!!!

I think I will wait for the new upgraded wedge to come out in the Autumn...looks good..

52 minutes ago, Craney said:

I suppose at least two of the pads will be to affix the new engraved caps to the sides of the mount. 

To fit the older EQ6wedge I think you had to prise the old plastic caps off the mount to access some fixing bolt/screws, which usually ended in some form of damage to them...

Maybe, but the block is held in place with adhesive pads, but agree, I am not convinced by the whole thing to be honest, the more I look at it the more I think not...

For instance what happens when the bolts are loosened and comes away from the hole in the slider block, you have to dismantle it all again to get it back in, as it is not fixed for obvious reasons...you would have to make sure even when storing the mount head that there was pressure on the mount adjuster tab at all times...or maybe I am missing something...

42 minutes ago, Craney said:

Yes,  and how it attaches to the mount. There seems to be no locating screw holes.    Does it stay put by being 'wedged' in  (  no polar axis pun intended !!)  and the applied force of the  tightening bolt ??

 

It comes with adhesive pads apparently... ?

Yes, I saw that too, and am looking at getting one, but wanted to see some feedback first, it’s looks a simple fix, just not exactly,ty sure what stops the block coming away from the end of the bolt, as I pack my mount away in the summer with bolts removed, don’t think you can with this.. :(

Stunning....love it..

1 hour ago, jusasi said:

Basically, yes.

If your control laptop is a Windows laptop, you could now install the Astrometry-api-lite to the control laptop, go set the Kstars/Ekos solver settings to use http://localhost:3000 instead of http://nova.astrometry.net and that's it. And yes, you wouldn't need an internet connection - that's the idea .

In fact, this is how I roll, I run Windows 10 with Kstars on my control machine while my INDI slave is a Raspberry Pi, and run the Astrometry-api-lite as my solver on the Windows machine.

Yes that’s exaclty how I used to do it with my rpi3, but I now use a Linux Ubuntu laptop, with it..  so even though I have no need for this ATM, I can see it will be very useful for many people...

so how does yours differ from this one, as I used in a similar way to yours on windows..it tricked the PC in thinking it was searching online, it says its for SGPro but will work with Kstars / Ekos.

http://adgsoftware.com/ansvr/

20 minutes ago, jusasi said:

Well if you're already running your Kstars on Linux, you'd just be adding an extra layer with this API - just download the astrometry.net solver (if running Ubuntu or similar, sudo apt-get install astrometry.net) and configure it to use your catalogue files (/etc/astrometry.cfg, add_path) and you're good to go. You can set up Kstars to use the solver directly, you don't need Nova or Astrometry-api-lite at all.

 

Edit: to clarify, if on the other hand you were running Kstars/Ekos in Windows, this is what you would need. On Linux however Ekos can use the solver directly. Also if you wanted to solve from another computer that does not have the solver or the index files, then using the API would make sense.

Ah, got you now, yes I used to use a windows laptop to control my system and had to use the online solver then, or the one that mimics the online one provided with INDI, so this new one would mean that on windows it will now work like it does with Linux and can be installed in the same way, so as not to need the Internet at all..correct....?

forgive me I am a bit slow...

So, I have a Linux laptop with Kstars and EKos, and have downloaded all the Astrometry catalogue files I need for my FOV’s onto my PC so I don’t need to use the online solver, so works faster for me, wil this be of use to me or not..?

50 minutes ago, KemalOz said:

I also use the autosave files, they are easier to process in PS. A friend recommended it to me though I have never bothered to investigate why

Because they are a raw untouched stacked image, which is what you need when moving to another programme, you don’t want any changes that DSS makes applied to the image, you want all the data to work with, like I said before DSS is excellent at stacking, but not much good at anything else..

22 minutes ago, Stub Mandrel said:

If you stack 64 14-bit frames in DSS, it will generate a 20-bit file.

Import that into PS and you lose 4 bits of detail off the end.

If you can stretch faint areas without clipping the blacks, a lot more of that faint detail can make it into photoshop for further stretching.

You can either linear stretch in DSS as much as you can without clipping (usually DSS wastes about a third of the histogram at left) or you can apply a non-linear S-shaped stretch to get as much faint detail out as possible, still without clipping if you are careful.

I saw a marked improvement in the smoothness of faint nebulosity when I started doing this.

Why would you loose 4 bits, my DSS outputs a 32bit autosave file that I use in PS, then save as 16bit...then nothing at all is lost during the transfer...but I use a 16bit camera

you can do all the stretching and linear curves you like in PS, on the full data set, don’t understand why you wouldn’t want to do that...DSS is superb at stacking, but then I output the finished autosave stack untouched to PS and do all the work there...works for me..  

1 hour ago, Stub Mandrel said:

May I respectfully disagree - this is the common view, but an initial channel balance and stretch in 32-bit mode can keep more detail when saved as 16 bit for photoshop

You are welcome to disagree as long as I can too...

you need all the data there for moving into PS, so there is no need to do any changes in DSS as they will be gone when you embed the changes but do not apply them, if you so apply, you will clip the data...

1 hour ago, william_swe1 said:

All of the images look fine when viewing outside DSS. But then they look like black and white in deep sky stacker. I have tried stacking them anyway but the stacked image look the same. At first i thought they where imported as mono but there definitely is colour in them. What should i do? (I have attached pictures)

Make sure the box is checked that says “embed changes but do not apply them” as this will clip all the data, you want all the info there to take to PS or similar for further processing, but don’t do anything with DSS other than stacking, as it’s useless for anything else.. HTH,