Tomatobro

I found that my Hotec laser collimator had a M42 internal thread so rather than using the expanding rubber rings to position the laser I screwed it onto the scope in place of the camera. This gave me a very rigid and repeatable laser spot position. This was on my 10 inch RC. I then moved the scope around on the mount to see what happened to the laser spot to see if anything moved in the optical train. The same test using the expanding rings to locate the collimator suggested that internally things were moving but this was due the the small amount of sag the collimator suffered as its orientation changed.

Re the vibration.....It has no affect whatsoever. There are many comments made re the base and pillar and they have been repeated so often they have taken on the status of fact.

For really great results join UKMON and install one of there cameras. About £180 plus a 2 gb Pi. They give lots of help to get it set up and running

Take a look at Meteotux. The standard version is free but the pro version is not too expensive

Despite taking extra care to get the floor flat I had two areas where rain would creep under the edge of the dome. Fixed by using an angle grinder with a stone disc to cut groves to take away the water, Look closely and there is a grove right next to the green RTV. Making the groove next to the dome wall was straight forward but had to use one of those oscillating stone cutters to cut the radial groove from the inner to the outer ring Also I screwed batons to the inside and covered with waterproof chipboard flooring. Gives lots of gaps to run wiring.

Yes it is. Both those objects are quoted as visual in a 4 inch refractor. The guide and atlas were bargain priced on Amazon for a while.

My Interstellarium guide would suggest that NGC 6946 or 2403 would be favourite.

There is a big performance difference between a dew heater strap and a dew shield (heated or not) I find

The 110 v AC output put me off until I checked my laptop power supply's and they all state that they run on 110/230 volts so I am looking again at getting one. Will come in handy when we go onto rolling power outages this winter

I have three NUCs two in the observatory and one in the office. All brought second hand, all with Win10 pro and have really good wifi range when using remote desktop. The two in the observatory run on 12 volts dc.

When you have friends round and they know you have a telescope (and its clear) you want to show it off so first it HAS to look like a telescope. Second, when you have Saturn or whatever you can move away and folks can go to the eyepiece and see what you just saw. You cannot do that with Bins.....

Finding out how to get two independent systems to operate together is the first step. Closing a roof with a rain sensor is straight forward and parking a scope at the end of an imaging session can be done in Sharpcap and NINA software. What you need to establish is that a rain sensor signal can close the imaging session, park the mount and then (and only when) parked close the roof. Light beam sensors can be added to detect a potential collision between the scope and roof. I am sure this has been done and hopefully somebody will post a method that works. For me though I would need to be absolutely sure that I know how to do this and its within my capabilities before going any further

I would also get a Magnetic Digital Inclinometer with backlight for about £15 or so. This will allow you to set the altitude of the scope. By using some planetarium software you can set the angle of the scope of the object of interest so its then a matter of slewing in azimuth in roughly the right bit of the sky to find the object. Yes you can use the red dot finder that comes with the scope but the illuminated angle finder is better

With that budget I would go for a Sky-Watcher Heritage-150P Flextube Dobsonian Telescope. Flo have stock so you would not have to wait for it. These scopes have very good reviews, are lightweight and when collapsed are easy to store and transport. And at 150mm give better views.

Only the folks that have worked with Cryogenic fluids will know how difficult they are to handle. NASA share everything and long may it continue.

Just an additional comment. I found that the pier, mount and scope are slow to warm up in the mornings and the cold surface would flash over with condensation. I found a polymer based resistor sensor which underwent a significant output change during the transition from dry to wet. I linked this signal into an alarm which warned me that the pier was wet so go turn on the dehumidifier. If this is of interest I will see if I can locate the supplier and post here.

I The Lascar EL2 temperature and Humidity data logger is a excellent unit and they come up often on Ebay for around £25 (ish) It can be programmed to give visual alarms if whatever limits you choose and the battery life is around 2 years. Lascar EL-USB-2-LCD Relative Humidity and Temperature Data Logger

Its easy to take all this for granted..........What a difference from imaging in the 1980's!

We only had one night available to have a go and we learned a lot that night. Lack of ISS pass overs since then put us on hold. Will try again when its favourable to do so

Having had a go at capturing the ISS I know just how hard it is so well done

There were a number of factors at play. When the shuttle engines start they bend the booster tube over as they are still held by the ground restraints. When the boosters light and the restraints are released the bending moment is released into the booster tubes and they flex back and forth during the early stages of lift off. The sealing rings, being stiffened by the cold allowed hot gasses to blow by the joint. The flex was around 0.3 htz as I recall and was confirmed by film which showed the puffs of smoke emerging at this frequency. All this was known and small breaches of the joints were reported on earlier flights. Mr Feynman at the time of the hearings was very ill with bowl cancer and had not long to live I guess there was a political element at play somewhere. Like all accidents there are many factors which come together and remove just one and they become near misses instead of tragedies I see now that where solid boosters are used they are always in line with the liquid fuel engines so the flex in the tubes is avoided

The contact fingers on USB cables tend to relax over time so my guess is that a new cable might fix it. The lower screen shot reminds me of a cable snag I had while doing a meridian flip which resulted in one of the USB 3.0 connections at the cable connector end being broken.

The polar scope cover has two forward pegs that go into slots in the battery holders. Remove the polar scope cover first then take the top cover screw out. Lift the cover up from the rear rotating it as you lift to release the cover locating pegs. When the batteries are installed in the holders reverse the process.

Money in itself has no real value. The value is in the things you buy. Now who was it that said that?

For me it depends on what you are looking at. Seeing Saturn for the first time through an eyepiece and trying to compare that experience to a galaxy which is a faint grey smudge in the eyepiece to having lots of detail on a screen is difficult. Both are good. I would say though taking everything into account the Laptop screen wins.