Rusted

After endless reading of online reviews I finally settled on a 27" AOC 2560x1440. [Q2790PQU/BT] Stunning PQ when driven via HDMI by the 4K laptop using the screen's native resolution settings. Ideal for focusing, capturing and processing on an easily visible, image scale. Thanks to all those who responded.

While I don't believe in any correlation between working hours and later sleep patterns. I do believe that an afternoon nap is essential to long term survival. Doing a whole day, without a break from me, is just too exhausting!

We were on a motoring & camping tour of Southern England after I passed my driving test. So I used that as an excuse to detour to Selsey and peer at PM's house. We did Wales the following week but that was back in the last century. I never approved of his telescope in a "greenhouse." Though it was certainly a very attractive building. It probably attracted a lot of sunshine too.

If it all worked perfectly from scratch you'd only get bored. Boredom leads to greater expenditure for more, instant gratification. The delivery boy/girl becomes a family friend. They move in and you move out to the observatory. Suddenly you need a much bigger observatory. Having a much bigger observatory means you have to fill it with bigger, more expensive stuff. Which means you absolutely must use it. Because it all cost you man years, a marriage and all your money. Besides, you have nowhere else to go and the bailiffs are just waiting for you to go out busking. Hope this helps?

The Berry Offset Counterbalanced Fork Mount is your refractor's sturdy friend provided you don't want an RA drive. You can buy an awful lot of pier pipe and welding to support some quality woodwork for the price of any undersized and wobbly GEM. Add an equatorial platform on top of your pier and you can equatorially drive anything short of an aerial telescope. Not "posh" enough for you? Not "real" enough to be taken seriously by your fellow enthusiasts? Well, there are some very tasty, big APOs, out there, all resting comfortably in their "sofa" trunnions. It's called "Plop and Go." Itching to fire up some real drives under your "yard cannon?" Then seek out an oversized, vintage, Eq. mounting. Paint it white and nobody will ever know it is 50 years old and 50 lbs heavier and a thousand pounds/dollars lighter than today's commercial offerings.

My only chance of a view of the sun here today would involve high speed photography and pure chance. Spicicles? At 72F? It's not that cold!

Hi Julian LG came top of several online, monitor comparison reviews. I'll definitely do more research on your LG suggestion. BTW: Your suggested LG monitors have a 3" VESA wall mounting fitting. I only need to fix it flat onto a 3/4" plywood panel. I don't have room for two. I could even make my own fixing plate with "keyhole" screw holes. Thanks.

I don't want to be dropping the belt. Which is often too high or too far away to reach on my 7" f/12 refractor while I'm at the monitor. A quick turn of the spare direct drive knob gives me an initial set-up. Then I move back to the screen and the motor focusing. Even then it often takes patience to find which way to find best focus on the limb or surface detail.

Hi Louise, Thanks. I need masses of focuser movement for all my various set-ups. The present belt drive ratio is perfect for fine focusing. I haven't had a chance to use the brand new HitecAstro V2 DC controller because it doesn't do 64 bit. [Yet?] It totally crashes SharpCap. Demanding a full Windows Restart every time. So I had to set SharpCap "Hardware" to ASCOM focuser simulation.

Thanks Dave, My 28" Samsung knocked the socks off all my previous 1080P monitors for picture quality and readability of fine text. The problem with 4k is that not all popular astro softwares can cope with 4k yet. That's okay if you can adjust screen resolution to match but then it's an absolute pain when you return to another software. FireCap is one I really struggled with on my 4k laptop. You need the on-screen instructions to know which sub-atomic symbol to press. Then you can't read any of the vital text without an electron microscope. And yes, I know the software is free but everybody kept telling me to use FireCap instead of [broken] SharpCap. But I couldn't. Not without days of experimentation and endless research.

I've just ordered an IKEA all metal drawer cabinet for my accessories. The cabinets come in various sizes and cost peanuts. I'll let you know how it goes. It can't be any worse than building with Meccano. Can it?

I tried the 10:1 slow-mo knob but even at maximum motor speed on 12V the focuser movement was glacial. Even now it takes 18 seconds per cm of travel flat out. Sitting in my observatory is necessary because I must constantly correct the AWR/ASCOM Gotos manually. It also avoids OTA collisions with the pier. Besides, I regular view as well as image. Constantly swapping the camera and EPs. between three OTAs means I have to be present anyway. One useful thing I discovered is that a timing belt will slip smoothly on the FT focuser knobs given enough effort on the opposite knob. This is important when I need a rapid four inches of drawtube travel after fitting/removing the Barlow, diagonal, prism, camera or binoviewer. I'm using a 14T pulley now because the 20T couldn't manage a vertical lift of the 3.5" focuser tube, 2" Lacerta solar prism and camera. It's all very manual and I really like that. While I could use the spacious ground floor as a warm room it make no real sense for me to do so. Sitting on the north side of the pier in a 10'/3m diameter dome my body heat probably rises straight up and out of the top of the open observation slit.

An unlikely subject for DIY obs. but bear with me and all with be revealed. I'm thinking of buying a 28" PC monitor to replace the 15.6" laptop screen for the obs. dome for Solar and Lunar imaging. I really can't cope with tiny text even with the 4k laptop set to 1080 and sitting on a 4" high riser. Constantly fitting and removing stronger reading glasses just for the laptop screen is wearing me thin. Grr? My indoor PC has a Samsung T28C570 1920 x 1080P x 125%. Which is perfect for sitting comfortably at arm's length all day long. My previous, pier mounted laptop shelf is to become a "proper" DIY, L-shaped desk. Wrapped around the pier, but isolated from it, with a nice drawer cabinet, all resting on the floor. I'll wall mount the monitor on my huge timber pier to gain some useful desk space and lift it to a heads-up position. Now I can have a proper white keyboard and room for my mouse mat and the essential AWR paddles and other junk. The laptop will return indoors overnight but I'm more concerned about the monitor: Dos anybody here have any direct, hands-on experience of the survival rates of observatory monitors? Any suggestions on choice for such a task? My W10 i7 2x SSD laptop can run a 4k screen and has all the right sockets. But do I really need 4k if some of the astro apps still aren't happy with 4k? Will paying more buy me greater reliability? Should I knit the monitor a woolly jumper? Or make it a smart polystyrene, evening jacket? Thanks for your infinite patience and [always constructive] thoughts.

The Mk1 human digits are an abomination above 200x when you have 4 meters of focal length grilling on yer laptop! Those little DC motors are excellent for fine honing yer focus. Sadly the control paddles are unworthy of further mention. RIP after a couple of hours. <sniff>

I watched every episode but hated his lack of interest in telescope making. <sniff> The observation side of things is just a hobby. Making telescopes is "a calling." I'll get my coat.

Congratulations! It's all coming together nicely! Enjoy the fruits of your labours. But, if you were responsible for today's cloud: Stop doing whatever it is you're doing. Guard dogs can be good. A new neighbour has one which lives outside. Barks briefly if you clear your throat at 50 yards. Sounds suitably big and fierce too! We're calling it NW, for short. Because it is. On both counts.

I'm shocked you were able to find that prom, let alone image it! Lots of thick cloud here today but I had a chance to take a look during brief clearances. Even tried the binoviewer. Nothing visible. Blank in WL too. <sniff> 🙄

Thanks for the suggestion! I'll definitely have to look into that option. I was wandering back and forth with the 500GB external SSD to bung the contents into the indoor 4K HDD. It was a laborious process despite USB 3s because the SSD was always full but needed to be given permission to unplug at "both ends." The 4TB HDD is also very much slower than SSD. Deciding which videos to keep is an endless problem too. I keep thinking I could do better with the processing next time. So I never throw anything away! Love the artwork. You've really made it yours! Or the dog's? Is that a wicked, Muttley grin!

Hello John, Thank you for that good news. The present HitecAstro software immediately crashed SharpCap on my 64 bit laptop. It refused to do anything including shutting down. I had to Restart a couple of times. So I had to set "Focuser" to "Simulated" under "File" & "Setup." Then I was back to pressing manual buttons on the little box. It has been far too hot to image so I hadn't updated this thread. I experimented with a 20T pulley driving the black focus knob but it made the motor labour. Though this was when the telescope was vertical along with its massive FT3545 focuser. I had the heavy Lacerta 2" Herschel prism fitted on a 4" extension as my heaviest possible load. So it's back to the 14T timing pulley for focusing reliability under all conditions.

You will have to be very disciplined and have a strict routine for cleaning out files from your SSD. I added a second 500GB T5 SSD to my onboard 256GB SSD on my laptop and still end up deep into the red on both. The little ZWO 120 produces massive files as fast as I can capture them on solar.

10% of 3k frames at 50 fps. ZWO120MC. 6" f/8 [120/10] 90mm D-ERF + PST. Crop inPhotoFiltre7. Lots of thermal image movement today.

I'm still waiting to hear how to catch one on its way down. Cut out the middle man, so to speak. What happens if you swallow one while you're looking up?

I haven't read the description but your excellent padlock hasp is only as strong as the smallest screwdriver which will remove the fixing screws. A padlock hasp must always cover/conceal its own fixing screws when closed. Anything less is wide open to drilling with a cheap, rechargeable drill. The screws must be the largest and longest possible and far more preferable, the largest bolts or machine screws which will fit. With lock nuts and load spreading washers and/or steel , load spreading plates inside the structure. A small and light crowbar will easily apply tons of localized pressure. The tools for burglary are readily available cost almost nothing these days. I speak as a victim who lost all his power tools to the scum from a [supposedly] padlocked shed/workshop.

Happy Birthday Gina. Don't stay up too late!

Yet another update: The first ASCOM driver must be chosen from the unlabelled HiTec software list. Otherwise ASCOM can't recognise the device. After a few more error notices I found a yellow "Telescope Control" bar right at the bottom of the camera control list on the right in SharpCap. Opening the menu allows a tiny focuser control panel to open amongst the other tiny, camera control panels. The 'Skywatcher' DC focus motor speed can then be adjusted and movements applied. I have attached a considerably enlarged image of the focuser control panel in SharpCap.