Rusted

Cats are great! We shall expect a YT video! 4K of course. You could even go <cough> viral!

Wrap some marine ply around the edges of the timber framework to exclude the wildlife and provide a neat skirting board?

Off at a complete tangent, as usual, but how difficult would it be to widen the slit and fit bi-parting shutters? You could flog kits to owners of Pulsar domes. Two, curved strips of ply will provide the stiffening on either side of the wider slit. Cut the dome back for the extra slit width and zenith reach and then glass and resin over the ply to seal. Split the up-and-over shutter down the middle and apply drawer slides at top and bottom. Add a wider weather strip to one shutter to seal them when closed and overlapped. Job done! Shall I get my coat?

Rats, mice and rot will soon move in. It is wide open to wildlife at present. The stone ring doesn't seem to have a DPM. Nor does the timber framework. Pressure treated timber might last a year or two longer than plain timber. I've never had much luck with pressure treated on the ground so went over to oak. If more height was wanted then a second ring of stone or bricks, with a DPM would have been better. It would probably have been cheaper, quicker and easier too!

Thanks Olly. Interesting bloke! A real all-rounder. I could imagine him lifting an obsy foundation slab like a doormat. He has some nice kit as well as producing some excellent images! Using a corrected 12" Orion Newt. That NJP Tak mounting is a beast!

Let's do the maths: Pi x 2.2 = 6.9124/4 =1.728 Can't be done with four people at 2m safe separation around the circumference. Option A. Use 2x4s to extend the radius of operator participation. NO hugs of congratulation! Option B. Do the lift at night. Then kill and bury all participants in the garden to avoid discovery. 😱 Option C. Buy a 2.7m dome and bribe one more lifter? Three rugby players and/or weight lifters might do it for the price of a few beers/sweaty sweety bag of steroids. It's a shame that Pulsar does not publish weights for individual panels nor for a complete dome. This would be valuable information for typical amateur owners gathering mugs volunteers for dome lifting. Hope this helps?

There are plenty of GRP cars still going strong from the 1960s. They are stressed far more than any dome at habitable UK altitudes.

I was going to make a joke about dark <cough> mat[ter] but decided against it.

Thanks. It is becoming the norm for rain when there's anything to see on the disk. I'm presently doing my Sorcerer's Apprentice impression carrying buckets of water down the ladder from my leaky dome.

Some good points made and precisely why I won't burn the plastic at the focus of one. Why does the Sale of Goods Act not apply? As in: "Not of merchantable quality..." Or has consumer law been diluted to cope with the massive influx of cheap, Chinese imports?

I own a 7" f/12. I know my place.

That's very generous of you! Form an orderly queue people. I was here first!

Heads up chaps! I just caught the last gasp of the sun and there's a vast disturbed area just came around the corner! It do be proper humongous! Here be dragons, I tell thee! Sorry about all the technical terms.

You teaser! And not even a 'snap?'

Hi, Incredibly complex spot through teasing cloud and incredibly mushy seeing conditions.

11 o' clock high. NE. Wind and cloud stopped play.

Absolutely amazing! How does Ewan do it? Which parts of Hastings are higher than Mauna Loa? NSO/GONG: Site - Mauna Loa

Really? I tried to use the TS GPCs with my TS binoviewer but they were undersized for 1.25" Presumably to allow them to be inserted deeper and more easily into assorted eyepiece sockets. As such it was impossible to safely support the binoviewers in the standard PST. So I drilled, tapped and added further thumbscrews to the PST socket without enjoying much greater success. Having soon modified my PST I had no further need of the PST body and its inadequate eyepiece socket. The TS star diagonals have compression bands and are thus quite capable of supporting a binoviewer.

Experiment to your heart's content. Failure is the quickest route to personal progress. Ask me how I know? There are as many opinions on what works as there are imagers. Endless practice is 90% of learning any new skill. The child prodigy rarely became sensationally good at anything after only a week of practice. Particularly in sky diving. Remember that there are no rules set in stone. But: Go easy on the sharpening in processing. I'd considerably reduce your percentage of stacked frames. Try 25%, or any other lower figure, just to see how it works for you. Generally speaking: The more frames you try to capture the greater the risk of movement and the tracking being off. Thermal agitation, clouds, wind on the telescope and even the sun itself all combine to cause sleepless nights. It greatly depends on the speed of your camera. The longer your capture takes the greater the risk of movement. The more frames you stack the more diluted your results are likely to be from poor to average frames. After trying everything in the way of different numbers I have settled on 75 stacked from 500 frames in AS!3. Followed by the gentlest massage in ImPPG. I quite often just Open in ImPPG and then Save the image using the default settings.

Nice! Lots of detail. It was just like being there.

Trying to hang a binoviewer off a standard PST eyepiece receptacle might lead to an expletive laden outburst. [Or words to that effect.] 😱 Let's be safe out there.

I use a steel rule as a screwdriver. Or any other piece of metal stiff enough for the job which can bridge between the slots. A coin would be too curved and might scratch the filter glass.

But if you want two refractors side by side you get this. I use a 4x3, yachting, block and tackle, attached to the zenith board, to lift the 7". The 7" is presently "resting" while I concentrate on H-alpha close-ups. Do not underestimate the difficulty of supporting so much weight and moment.

My 6" f/10 for H-a looks like this in my 10' dome.

Thanks Stu. With respect, I don't think you'll need a conventional focuser because the PST etalon is in a fixed position. A helical focuser will provide the necessary focusing beyond the etalon. I am assuming you are doing a PST mod?