Tomatobro

Wow can't wait to show it to the club...... Just shown it to the Financial Director and she said its as fast as a spider running across the floor

The second observatory is always better than the first.....lots of good advice

Tomato's specification is somewhat influenced by my own observatory experience. !2 volt supply comes from the fact that I once had a "tickle" from a wet extension lead and from that day on I have only ever had external power via a warm room located linear power supply. The is a secondary reason. I have noticed that when using my meteor detection kit the USB cable can pick up noise from the laptop power supply if the two are close together. This noise is seen as a increase in background noise level in the Spectrum Lab display. The linear power supply has Voltage and Current indicators and the patterns of Current usage gives one confidence of system integrity. There is a device on the scope which measures voltage at the mount end and signals back to the warm room the voltage. A monitor on the wall shows a graph of the voltage so I can see filter wheel changes etc are taking place. If say 4 amps is missing then I have forgot to switch the camera cooler on. The long supply cable from the warm room and induces a volt drop depending upon the load applied so that is why the voltage is remotely monitored. It also gives you something to do while waiting for the pictures to download.......

I cannot help with my first cover but I did a bit of digging and found my receipt for the chair cover. I got it from Outdoor Value, Morton Peto road, Great Yarmouth and its their stock number OX14-G Oxbridge Green Stacking chair cover £14.99 Knowing what I do now this is the cover I would buy and use not the £70 one I got a while ago. Picture attached

I have had mine a while and for the life of me I cannot recall who made it but I recently purchased a cover to protect my stack of four plastic chairs from that well known online auction site and I thought it would make an excellent budget scope cover. It was not one of the cheapo ones but as I recall it cost about £30. The problem seems to be that as soon as the word "telescope" is attached to something it invites a premium.

As far as I know tilt able focus supports are to stop multiple reflections between the sensor cover and filters when imaging at certain wavelengths. For normal use the tubes should be square and parallel .

so far from the hole we have a piece of coconut shell, A stone that looks like it could be a meteorite and a stem from a clay tobacco pipe. Time Team eat your heart out

Tomato is following Pulsars recommendations.....for the pier support (if some is good then more is better and too much is just about right)

I saw just this the other night on my EQ6-R where it did just as you describe. I then realised that I had the scope pointing too high so moved it back towards the mid point. It then calibrated as normal. I don't normally calibrate PHD each session but I had removed the guide camera from the scope. It was replaced at a different position so PHD could not move the scope correctly. I then went straight into calibration and that is when I had the situation you describe. I lowered the scope and it calibrated ok

polysilicon supply shortages impacting on glass production?

I am surprised that retailers held out for so long given the currency movements of late. Adequate margins are needed to survive coupled with the ability to keep writing on new business so I am sure Flo are aware of the trade off's.

Type in shellexecuteex failed: code-1073740791 into your web browser there is quite a lot of help available including some youtube how to vids. worth a try. (copy and paste just as I have type in)

Have you considered a RC Servo? They are very easy (if you know how..) to control with a processor and are quire powerful in the larger sizes. Sometime ago I made a rotator using just such a device. Pics attached

On a more serious note its for our Club nights to show newcomers how to navigate using Stellarium with an Azimuth protractor and an angle finder for Altitude. The camera is so the views can be shared around without queues for the eyepiece. It looks like it will do the job quite well.

Recently I was given a 4 inch skywatcher Newt for which I made a table mount. I thought I would see what you could do imagining wise using this scope and a mono ASI220. 200 frames at full resolution, stacked in Autostakert, processed in Registax6 and given a final polish in Windows Photo. Conditions far from ideal with thin high cloud. I guess the previous owner will ask for it back...…..

Just to confirm that cheapo SDR's DO NOT work as well as the higher spec versions. I have two that that have been given to me by club members that switched to the Funcube after poor results with the cheapo's.

Its not too expensive to build a basic setup. My first yagi antenna was built using copper water pipe and a wooden frame. For a receiver I would strongly recommend a decent SDR (Software Defined Receiver) such as the Funcube Dongle Pro Plus. The cheapo versions of SDR's just don't work. The Funcubes sometimes come up for sale on the auction websites.

Oh ok. I was not sure where to pitch it. Can't help with the csv file I'm afraid

In the early days I used some software called Bandicam to record the screen in half hour chunks. This produced 20 half hour videos over a 10 hour period. I then fast forward through each video looking for meteor traces and made notes on a form which I then analysed. In my view this was the most accurate method as you could eliminate non meteor events such as lightning strikes, space junk, ISS passover, interferance etc from the data. There is a small charge for Bandicam. You can also download HROFFT or RMOB software which does the analysis for you but I have found that its not as good as the Bandican recording method . The software is free. I now use a fully automated setup which does it all for me but I often set Bandicam running as well as there is nothing like seeing the event as it happens. Be aware though that at high screen resolutions you will need 15GB of free disc space for each session. I just remembered that sometimes unattended Laptops do unexpected actions so I always disable the internet connection and activate a piece of software called "Caffeine". This is free software and what it does is simulate a (no longer used) regular timed keypress to fool the laptop into thinking it is being used by a Human.

No point in taking Darks then?

I have seen the right angle track marks on the main imaging camera on my setup from old. PHD does not know anything about the main scope and camera only the guide scope and camera. If there is ANY possibility of movement between the camera and focuser, focuser and guide scope body or the guide scope and main imaging train then PHD will alter the tracking to suit the movement. Even the tug of a cold USB cable is enough. Its not until you download the DSO image do you see that something is wrong. But the circular image tracks I have no idea. If its a setting issue I would expect a degree of repeatability but that does not seem to be the case here. Hopefully from the flow of ideas here a cause and solution will be found.

Take a look at http://www.livemeteors.com/ This is a live meteor detection website. Based in (I think) North America/Canada. It gives you an idea of what meteor detection is like when using the GRAVES transmitter in France

with the way the Pound/Euro is going this may no longer be a hypothetical question..........

>>> Print ("Hello Tomatobro") I am still to decide what the best editor to use in Ubuntu, any suggestions?

My guess is that they have just used a Skywatcher EQ6 tripod for testing purposes. With the Pound getting close to parity with the Euro it will be interesting to see what the price is when it becomes available