Mr niall

Caldwell, melotte or Collinder catalogues. DSO featuring planets. double stars or systems 10 Sec exposures B+W mosaics evidence of trans lunar phenomenon (only kidding) pure analog (eg film) DIY based (scope, mount whatever)

No its 100 seconds at 100mm edit - yep ignore this its wrong its minutes so 1 minute at 100mm 30 secs at 200 and so on.

Hi Peter thanks for the link. My goal at the moment is 60 secs at 50mm, if I can get that to work then will think about 60 secs at 100 which I’m led to believe is plausible but perhaps pushing the envelope. Maybe 30 secs would be a more realistic target! I’m plagued with terrible LP to the south and west so 30 secs may be the max either way!

No I reckon at least 45 minute exposures. May have to step the ISO down from 800 to 400 ?

Its arrived.... Came via UPS in a box easily big enough for a HEQ5 head... And it was nicely packaged in a slightly smaller box inside that. Comes with a drinking straw (or polar finding sight tube, I cant decide) and a rather substantial piece of metal that serves only as an adaptor for swapping over the 1/4 or 3/8 head. Its a little bit bigger than I expected and feels really substantial and heavy in the hand. All nice metal construction and certainly looks the business. But doesn't really come with any literature or instructions - had to download these from the omegon website (although in fairness there is an excellent suite of supporting literature that is generally very engaging and useful) I still have absolutely no idea how the little tension spring thingies at the bottom work, despite the diagrams. Hopefully it'll be clearer in practise. And yes, the little timer really does sound exactly like an egg timer and yes it really really does have a little egg timer buzzer thing when it runs out. Cracking! (pun intented). Obviously with it being Britain, first light will no doubt be sometime around March.... But I am determined to catch 46p even if it means hiring a helicopter to get above the perma clouds. More to follow

Just pulled the trigger on one of these. Determined to get some shots of 46p, especially after the 21p debarcle... Details to follow. If my calculations are right should get at least 45mins unguided at 1200mm. Or something ??

What about N+1? As in the mathematical expression for the ideal number of telescopes a person should own? (Where n is the number of telescopes currently owned)

Sorry to jump on an old thread - have had this book marked for ages! Can I ask about the motor - did you have to do any electronic wizardry to get it to turn at the right speed or is I think just direct drive?

I hear that when the hour timing is up a cuckoo on a spring pops out and squawks in your face too. Nice feature.... ??

Which one did you buy Stu?

@jooli_ash you are a lifesaver these notes are brilliant!

Thx pal, no I don’t have the handset or dongle. Do you think it would make a difference?

Yeah I noticed that, I even never actually stacked without calibration frames I was shocked by the number of hot pixels floating about!

Quick go with the virtuoso mount last night - very very sketchy polar alignment but seems to manage 30secs at 55mm no problem. No darks or flats - was more a tracking test. Target was the coathanger - but got m27 and m71 too if you look very very very closely! 19x30 secs Eos 1300d with 18-55 kit lens at 55mm

There’s a few things it could be, to get 3 units in a row that do the same thing suggests you almost definitely have a conflict somewhere with your equipment.... if it were me I would 1; 1. Try connecting using a different device (check!) 2. Try resetting your phone WiFi eg put airplane mode on / off and check security connection settings on your devices. 3. Switch off your home WiFi and anything else that generates WiFi in case there’s an IP conflict. 4. And then make sure you are trying to connect to your device in a different place eg if you are trying it in the same place in your house every single time there could be a dead spot / faraday cage / conflicting network or anything, try taking it away from your house and connecting. remember to forget all settings each time.

I think I’m going to have to get one of these, been mulling it over for weeks just looks too cool to pass up. and there’s a painful dearth of steampunk related astronomy equipment out there anyway... Plus it looks almost identical to that weapon George Clooney uses in “the men who stare at goats” so it doubtless has numerous non Astro applications too!

Hello there! Sorry to hijack such an old post but I’ve had this exact problem twice in a row now with my virtuoso - did you manage to fix it?

Hello there! Sorry to hijack such an old post but I’ve had this exact problem twice in a row now with my virtuoso - did you manage to fix it?

Hello there! Sorry to hijack such an old post but I’ve had this exact problem twice in a row now with my virtuoso - did you manage to fix it?

Legend, good spot.

I’ve got the 1300d, it’s great but WiFi control through another device is only up to 30 secs. If you get an intervalometer (£10 from eBay) you can tell it how many exposures and the exposure length and just leave them. The 1300d is great cos it’s just been replaced so there’s great deals to be had on the high street. As for your other questions - nearly all DSLR have APS-C sized sensors so that’s all fine there. MP count isn’t really important. Pixel density and size is of more interest but ultimately nothing to worry about when starting. F-stop is a function of the lens not the camera so that isn’t an issue. Pretty much all DSLRs have 3200 ISO which is the max you’d use. In fact most of your work I should at 1600 or 800 iso. DSLRs are bad cos they’re not designed for Astro work but good cos they’re incredibly versatile and fully manual so they make excellent astronomy tools. Ultimately unless you spend a fortune it doesn’t matter - get the cheapest or most expensive one you fancy.

Hello all as there are more than a few of us with the Skywatcher Star Adventurer I thought I’d summarise my experience of going to the dark side (then coming back again!) of updating to the “advanced firmware” on the star adventurer. This doesn’t pretend to be a user guide of “how to” merely a summary of my experience for those that may be interested in going down this route. Unlike the very cool star adventurer mini (SAM) which has WiFi, it’s bigger brother relies on the user to make all their choices on a big spinny dial and a set of buttons on the back. Therefore the amount of options available to the user is, relatively limited. Now I would suggest that this matters more to wide field and short focal length time lapse photographers than traditional astrophotographers who just need a stable tracking mount of any kind(!) but what the both models do offer is direct DSLR control. It seems skywatcher have addressed what may or may not be the shortcomings in the SA mount be releasing a new firmware that allows much more user control over, particularly, DSLR control with user customisable options like shutter speed, exposure length, and number of exposures on offer - all controllable through the mount directly. additionally there are two new modes, the Astro time lapse and the long exposure time lapse which I won’t go into here but there’s loads of info online if you are interested. As someone keen to extract as much value from a piece of equipment as possible (and similarly a good Scot that would much rather not fork out for an intervalometer if they didn’t have to ?) the increased range of functionality seemed massively appealing. Upgrading is as simple as downloading the firmware - you do this through your PC via the skywatcher motor controller program (which is a bit of a pain to find) but it’s all simple enough. You also have to print, cut out and install a new control selector dial as all your options have now changed which is quite fun in a Blue Peter type of way... So... what’s it like to use? In a word.... stressful! Your SA is now a much more versatile beast, but my experience of trying both long exposures, time lapse and astrophotography with it was an absolute nightmare! You see - because the SA has no actual interface, controlling all inputs is done using the slew buttons on the back. Ingeniously they light up and flash to denote which selection you have chosen. And you use them in conjunction with the N/Timleapse/S toggle switch. To give an example - to set the length of an exposure for traditional Astro photography you turn the dial to EXP, then, slide your toggle to N on the back. Using the left and right slew buttons to adjust, you are now controlling the “hundreds of seconds” eg 100,200,300 seconds that your exposure length will be. And the way you know what you’ve selected is by looking at how many times the slew buttons lights flash, 3 for 300 seconds 7 for 700 seconds - you get the idea. you then switch the N/Timelapse/S selector to Timelapse - now you are controlling 10s of seconds on the same fashion, and by switching to S you are controlling seconds - so in this way you can set your exposure time from anything from 0 to 999 seconds. Once this is done you switch to star ⭐️ mode, plug in your camera and, in theory, away you go! And this effectively is how all user inputs are selected - it really is an ingenious solution and a clever way to extract a lot more Usability from the unit. But in my opinion, it’s pushed the envelope way too far. Because many of the user customisable options are in different formats, maybe degrees movement, or hours and minutes, some of them you have to switch on, some you have to switch off. Some delete themselves every time you switch the mount off, some conflict with each other or do nothing in certain modes and so on. If you are trying a Timelapse for example, where you have to customise several fields it gets very stressful very quickly, additionally when your camera doesn’t do what you want it to do, it can take quite a long time to figure out where you’ve gone wrong. You basically have to go through every setting and count the flashes or lack of flashes thereof. Because there’s no “ok” or “confirm” button I often find myself thinking “is that it? Has it done it? Is that right?” And a classic mistake I made was often leaving the selector on S when I’d finished my selections and the mount would then fac course spin the wrong way.... ? I found it difficult to set up a shoot without a very careful and close consultation with the instruction manual, which in fairness is better than most skywatcher stuff, but still rather confusing at times. The advanced firmware is so unbelievelably ingenious and clever that I wanted to love it, I really did. And I still marvel at how they managed to get it all together and working. But ultimately every time I used it I could feel the first twinges of annoyance and frustration setting in at the horrifically difficult to use interface and in the end gave up and went back to the original firmware. In my case I think the expression “the grass is greener” has never been more true - I was excited about the added functionality that the advanced firmware offered but in reality when I’d downloaded the standard firmware and reacquainted myself with it I found it was more than good enough. (But it does mean forking out a tenner for an intervalometer ?) Niall

Very nice, what a monster!

Looks a bit flimsy, maybe stick a couple of marshmallows on the counterweight bar to be on the safe side? I’d consider concreting those legs down too