sonnymoon

Hello, I have an Uno not a linear, but just wanted to say that Avalon's customer support is excellent and so it may be worth emailing to see what they say. I did notice on their website that they have a new Mzero designed for low latitude, although whether that's suitable will depend on your payload.....

Ah, I've only ever owned an ED80, but I was under the impression that longer focal lengths do better with an OAG. Thats good news if all is well with a regular guide scope.

Hi Tony, can I ask if you use an off axis guider to guide the esprit? Being largely marooned in London without much sky visible I tend to image objects that are near the zenith early in the evening when even my ED80 only just makes it without bumping into the mount (If I have started tracking before the meridian crossing). But I imagine even with the Esprit if you are imaging nearer the horizon e.g m20 in the summer, then it should track across the meridian without a flip and without hitting the mount. Is that your experience? I do love the Uno I have to say..... Chris

Thanks Adam, I hadn't thought of it like that, but yes more in terms of what I can get for 2K or so.

It's the old scope upgrade question again. I want more focal length than my ed80, although the Esprit 120 isn't really that much more (840 compared to 510 with the reducer) but it should make some difference. I'm drawn to another refractor due to the relative simplicity and lack of collimation etc. It'll be used with a Zwo 1600 and an Avalon Uno. Deep sky astrophotography is what I'll be using it for; no visual. Any thoughts? Cheers

Hi Jose, If you have flips sorted then probably no need for the Uno! Like the Linear it is superbly made, no backlash, no maintenance and tracks very well. Stargo works well with SGP. Luciano replies to emails himself (he's the boss at Avalon as far as I know) and there is now a forum on their website. Although not many people have these mounts I have never read a bad word about them on the net. Best purchase I have made recently aside from my Golf GTI and my North Face parka

Thanks for your replies. May or June does seems like the best bet

Theres always the Avalon Uno? Single arm and no meridian flip (more often than not, depending on which part of the sky you are tracking and the length of your scope). Still fairly portable. I have one and I'm very pleased with it.....

I’m planning a trip and have had a good look at a lot of the useful information on here but just wondering about thoughts on best time of year when it comes to weather and cloud cover ? I know there’s the option of getting above the clouds which I will certainly do but it would also be good to image from wherever I am staying (haven’t got that far yet) on the west of the island. Any thoughts / experiences will be appreciated Chris

I have an eagle3q which works well. I don’t find the WiFi connectivity to be very good though, the range is only about 20-25 feet, although this could possibly be improved with bigger ‘aerials’ on my laptop and on the eagle. Prima Luce labs said to me that other WiFi signals in the area can interfere with it, which may be the cause of the WiFi issues, so I use a 60 ft cat 5 cable to connect it so that I can operate it from indoors using Microsoft Remote Desktop.

Hi Piero, its this one - stock ed80 . It’s got a sesto senso attached at the moment . Hope you can see the Allen key heads....

So I've got my laser collimated and my paper circle with the middle marked on the objective lens and the red dot is a little bit off centre. Probably worth getting dead centre with a little adjustment however I can't work out how to adjust this. The focuser seems to be a very tight fit in the tube. I have read the Tommy Nawratil guide which seems to me to be about adjusting the grip strength of the focuser rather than having it exactly centred in the shaft. Do I have to take the focuser out and use a spacer of some kind?

Much appreciated Jock1958, thanks for taking the time to post the photos, makes your approach much clearer.

Thanks for clarifying , John. That makes sense.

One more thought. If I line up the focuser and then shine the laser through the scope and there are still two points of light that hit the wall (or the floor), overlapping or otherwise, does that mean the lens cells needs collimating?

Thanks Jock for the tips. There’s no adjustment of the lens cell on my ed80 as far as I know so lining up the focuser in the draw tube and getting the correct distance between the FF and the sensor is the best that can be done. all the best Chris

Thanks for both of your replies, very speedy and helpful. Cheers

It's an ED80 with the stock focuser. I think there is some astigmatism somewhere as my stars can be a little stretched and so I want to see if I can use a collimating laser to check if the focuser is in straight. (I'm also going to make a determined effort to get the spacing right between the FF//FR and the sensor, but that's another story). I can't see any threads that get into the detail of lining up the focuser with a laser. If I put the laser in with the target bit facing up, then the red dot that bounces back off of the lens is slightly off centre on the target on the collimator. If I loosen the screws, turn through 90deg, retighten and look again, then the red dot is in a different place and so on all the way through 360 deg. I'm thinking that the red dot should be central (as when collimating a Dob that I used to have). Is that right? It may be that the laser needs collimating, but I'm not sure how to do that. Any advice on whether this approach is going to get me anywhere would be appreciated.

Hello, I have had similarly slightly pointed stars which I have been seeking advice from FLO about. I have the sw ED80 with FF. They think it may be to do with the distance between sensor and flattener, which has to be 55mm, or 56 with the filter wheel and a mono camera. Might be worth checking the distance and adding/removing a 1mm spacer to see if it makes a difference.

I have an Eagle 3Q and have also had wifi issues. Fillippo at PrimeLuca labs is quite helpful and suggests that a possible cause is interference from other networks. Its difficult to be able to get away from other networks to test this out. When I have had it working the range seems to be only 20-25 feet, which is a bit dissapointing. I ended up buying a very long ethernet cable which it works well with.

Thanks for your replies. I didn't have notification on and so thought there weren't any...... I don't know much about pinched optics, but am I right in thinking that its worse in cold weather? The temperature was close to 0 deg in the image above. When I took my setup to France a month ago it was very hot and didnt fall much below 20 deg on many nights, but the starshapes were better without the distortion noted above. So it was the cold?

Thanks Derek. I was surprised too. They are excellent mounts.

Hello, I have an Uno. I'm a relative newby to astrophotography having previously owned an heq 5 that I could never get to work properly. I'm glad to say the Uno always works properly I took it to France a month ago and had around 6 -7 clear nights where it didn't miss a beat. It's a pleasure to use. I don't regret spending the money on it - its superbly well made. I previously used it with win10 partitioned on a macbook pro and have recently purchased a Prime Luca labs Eagle 3 mini computer and power distributer which it works very well with. Stargo software is easy to get the hang of and works with sgp pro etc very well. Customer support is very good; Luciano gets back to you personally (I think he's the md of the company). When I had a software problem with SGP they sent me a patch to fix it (they had also experienced the same problem). The mount comes with its own power supply, You can put 240 volts in to it, which I do, or alternatively 12volts which it will step up to around 15 which it works best at. It seems remarkably immune to mediocre guiding - even with rms >1 I never get star trails on an ed80. Even with my small scope i had to buy the dec riser so that the scope/camera/filter wheel sits above the back of the mount. This pulls the weight away from the central axis but balancing is usually achievable as the single arm is adjustable and moves to and away from the central axis depending on what size of scope you have. It has two dec axis so you can also put something on the other axis to serve as a counterbalance. Cheers

So this may appear a little picky, which I'm not usually, but my stars seem to have a slightly pointed top to them. Any ideas what could be causing this? setup is a skywatcher ED80 ds pro with flattener, zwo 1600 mm and Avalon uno mount. This crop is of stars around M81, quite high in the sky and is a final image with around 3 hours of LRGB frames. It was taken in France under dark skies with what seemed to be good seeing and a good PHD graph (can't remember the numbers exactly) but probably around 0.5 RMS. 4 minute exposures, -15 degrees c. I've noticed this slight elongation on more than one occasion and it would be good to get to the bottom of it. Thanks.

I'm currently using one of these excellent mounts with a small refractor. I would like to get a longer focal length scope in the future but just wondering if anyone has had experience with larger scopes, either good or not so good? I have the dec extender so a longer scope won't hit the mount, but I'm wondering about bigger refractors especially in relation to disturbance by wind and any potential balancing problems. I think some people use large SCT's but it would be good to hear about any personal experiences. Thanks