Tomatobro

OK here is what to do. Find the two power input pins (second plug from the left?) put your multimeter onto Ohms and put the probes across the two pins. if the number is stable take a picture of the display and post it here. If the number is not stable but slowly climbs in value just post that is what it does. (This second condition shows that the multimeter test voltage is slowly charging up a capacitor)

It really depends on what interests you have today and where you think you will be in the future. Today's One shot colour cameras take great pictures and Software allows you to do live stacking so you can watch the image improve frame by frame. But for faint galaxies monochrome is the way to go. With Mono, collecting the images is only part of the story. You have a couple of hours processing time before the final image is available. I started with a OSC camera and have taken satisfactory images with it. Today, except for lunar and planetary, I am exclusively Mono. Atik Cameras do live YouTube videos demonstrating their infinity OSC cameras and I think there is a live broadcast next week. Check out their website for more info.

I set up and take down every session and use Sharpcap to polar align. It gives excellent results. The Polemaster can only be used for one purpose whereas the investment in the guide scope and camera has a dual purpose. The annual subscription to Sharpcap is around £10 which given what else Sharpcap can do is a real bargain

your comments re PHD are something I have seen. For about 2 years I used an Altair 60 mm with an ASI220 mono guide camera and never had any calibration or guiding issues. Recently I saw by how much off axis guiding improved the tracking so invested in a OAG setup. I pent a couple of hours trying to get PHD to calibrate with no success. The star would move initially during calibration and then after about 8 steps would stop moving and the return steps would not follow the usual 90 degree pattern. It would end up with the "star did not move enough" error message. I never got to the bottom of this but returned to my usual guide scope setup and since have had no problems with calibration and guiding. All the settings for PHD reflected the changes the OAG setup demanded but I could not get it to work. like you a dark library has been created via PHD so it cannot be that its trying to calibrate or track on a hot pixel. My imaging scope is a MN180 and I wondered if it was some kind of internal star reflection that was causing the problem. If i slewed the scope I could see the guide star move. Strange!

You go in the cage.......cage goes in the water......Sharks in the water

The EQ6R has the best payload so that would be my choice. I have one and it works well

I have no experience myself but spotted this on one of the forums "Press the MENU button, select Utilities, scroll to Scrolling Menu and press ENTER. Press the up/down scroll buttons to adjust the scroll speed and press ENTER to save the setting."

I can report that the Solar quest works very well. I got one for the Mercury transit and it tracked well for several hours, even with the regular passage of cloud. I used it with a Coronado PST but perhaps someone can help with the Lunt scope advice

And no 1202 alarms........

I searched amazon with Car Cigarette Lighter Socket DC 12V Converter Power Supply Charger Adapter It came up with both a 10 amp and 5 amp supply (5 amp is enough)

CAD? in my day that stood for Chalk Assisted Drawing.......

Opps I meant Cartes du Ciel.......

Having watched plate solving in action I want to give it a go but I have a question regarding connectivity. I use Charles Du Ciel and Sharpcap pro. My question is can I connect the mount via EQMOD to both Sharpcap and CDC at the same time if both software's are open and running on the same laptop? I am looking download an image from my ASI1600, plate solve using Astro Tortilla and have CDC update its position.

Re safety stops a good idea will add them.....

large backlash error . There are tutorials on the net on how to adjust.

To answer Daves question they are both Kaf8200 sensors (Moravian 8300 and an Atik 383) The height difference between the two scopes with the adjustable ADM makes joining the two scope ring sets together with top bars difficult but not impossible so I could see that mounting without has some advantages. I have not spoken to Tomato today but it might be worth mounting the two cameras and seeing just how far out the two images are with and without the ADM adjuster

We really appreciate the comments and advice on dual rig issues. We have discussed the possibility of DF between the scopes but we still have a lot to do on the dome automation first. I can see us ending up with a fabricated cradle if its an issue

I had a problem with my EFW2 where the orange drive ring would stretch and form a free loop on the slack side when indexing. If the wheel has off at an angle the free loop would drop out of the wheel grove so the wheel and motor would become disconnected. I fixed it by replacing the orange rubber ring with a new one and touch wood its not been a problem since. I can't recall the filter wheel showing an error when this failure occurred. At the start of this problem I could not figure out what was going on so I added a current sensing circuit to the filter wheel power supply that turned on a led so when the filter was about to change I could look at the mount and see if the led indicated that indexing was taking place. What I noticed was that when the motor was free (the drive ring out of its grove) no led indication took place (minimal drive current ) and this led (no pun intended) to extensive bench testing to identify the cause.

This might help http://www.astro-baby.com/HEQ5/HEQ5-3.htm And https://www.skyatnightmagazine.com/advice/how-to-master-setting-circles/

a laptop 12v to 220v inverter (300 watt) you are looking a 5.5 amps during boot up dropping to 4 amps once its up and running

Mrs Tomatoes new clothes line?

How about a Daystar Quark, Skywatcher 72 ED pro, Skywatcher Solar Quest, Baader 2 inch IR/UV filter, an Altair or other 2 inch diagonal and a ZWO mono camera as a possible setup? And a ZWO camera tilt adapter to remove the Newton rings.? Gives the option of going to a bigger refractor in the future but would need an ERF on the front end

But look for the dust on the mirror as it was put in the tube! I guess it was all staged for the camera though so the dust might have been removed before the final fitting.

You can take reasonable pictures with a long focal length refractor fitted with a mylar filter using a zwo colour camera But you do need some surface to photograph which is in short supply at the moment

Yes that's the one. I had used it a few times till Mrs Tomatobro pointed out that the stiff flap I used to rest the laptop on should be folded into the bottom to stiffen up the frame. The sides are stiff cardboard so I cut holes to suit the power and USB cables