qisback

Thats the sort of badger!; I'll go look into them, thanks. Otherwise it was a £20 "INFANZIA 197L Travel Duffle Bag" from Amazon just to keep the kit clean; but I didn't fancy trusting it for carrying this lot. (sorry for the quality it's the only image I have of the kit on the phone) Cracking idea, I will investigate also.

Just wondering on peoples thoughts and opinions of transporting "home" setups to remote locations. Like most, I have 2 setups; home and a travel. Travel - The travel setup is single enough to transport because it's been put together in a way that it runs on batteries or a small power bank and is light/small. It consists of a ZS71, 1000D ( or ASI533 depending on location), SW SA GTI plus a couple of extra pieces and comes with me when I travel abroad or if I'm just grabbing and going. Home - My home setup is a much bigger affair and normally stays setup, but stored in the garage. Each time I use it I take the mount out, align then mount the payload and adjust the alignment as required. However it is the setup I take when I'm going for a week somewhere dark in the UK. It consists of Esprit 120, ASI1600 or 533, AM5 or NEQ6, filter wheel, rotator, power box, nuc, dew straps, evoguide, gps, temprature sensors, auto focuser, etc, etc So it's a sizeable setup to move, previously I've broken the home setup down; packed everything up in all the original boxes, transported and re-setup on location and then keep the setup build for the entire time. But I've just gotten everything just how I like it! :P Do people do as I've always done? and just break it down and rebuild on location for the week? or does someone know of a peli case 1200 x 400 x 300 with some nice inserts that I can cut out What are peoples thoughts? On second thought this might have been better in the Discussions - Scopes / Whole setups section please feel free to move the thread admins

If 3d printed it’s always better to plan the holes rather than drilling. During the print it will layer a 100% infill wall around the area which is almost always solid rather than infilled. You can then put brass threaded inserts secured with a small dab of glue/plastic weld, this means the force from tightening the screw will be spread through the brass threaded insert through the 3d printed part. If you secured directly by drilling and tapping the 3d part, the hole is would almost certainly be drilled through an infilled area (normally 15-25% infill unless changed) which is almost impossible to tap, you would need to design the holes into the print to be smaller than you needed so a wall is printed and thus is able to be tapped, however the force would be applied directly to the PLA which is soft (also changes with temperature) and is easier to strip.

You are correct, the home version doesn't come with the ability to be Remote Desktop'ed into via RDP (although you can bodge it) However in these instances a third party solution can be used; Zoho, Team Viewer, Open/Tight/Real vnc, etc.

I don't think anyone has stated that you need 16GB for astro, and I agree with you all the Raspberry Pi's manage fine with 4GB (although I'd get 8GB for a Windows setup). However it was mentioned by the OP that the laptop will be used for other tasks, such as office and storing photos (which I took artistic license to mean editing them too); of which both tasks will eat RAM; so if it was my money I would look for 16GB which should be more than plausible with the budget.

True, however if they were go faster stripes it could effect the performance?

Well on the Lenovo laptops (until they renamed them recently) it's easy to tell the type/age Letter / Screen size (prefix with a 1) / year released (201#) / cpu type (0 for intel, 5 for amd) T470 = Travel series / 14 inch / 2017 release / Intel I'm sure other vendors do equally good kit; but I've had first hand experience with most of the Lenovo laptop range. For a £400 budget I would recommend "used with warranty" from a reputable refurbishing company; fortunately these days that just means eBay with a high feedback rating or laptops direct. https://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/nav/mc/48361/pmlld/intel-core-i7/pmlld/intel-core-i5/popularfea/ssd-drive/pt/laptops?sortOrder=1&rangeattribute=1~100~400 This link should give you a good view within budget and requirements. If it was my money, I'd short list in this order CPU, try to get the latest generation, i.e. 4xxx = 4th gen intel, 11xx =11th gen intel Memory, 16GB+ Storage, 256GB+ NVMe (or SSD if thats all there were) Network/USB ports Laptop Size / style Backlit Keyboard Power Source / Charger Type / Batteries Once you get past the CPU / Memory / Storage, you should find that (as long as it isn't tablet style) you will have 2-3 USB 3+ ports, Wifi 5 (or 802.11 AC) and an Ethernet port, then it's looking at the laptop size/style or make sure it's "mobile"; I know it sounds silly, but a lot of laptops; just arn't, they've been designed to live on a desk; you want something a little more business and designed for people who carry them about for work (and to an extent don't care about looking after them because they're work devices). Then it's just looking for the best laptop in budget with as many fancies you can get; back lit keyboard, dual batteries, a power source which isn't chipped / encoded (I've seen laptop only used approved chargers, which is a pain when powering from 12-19 volt leisure batteries). Linux/Mac/Windows, joking aside; it is completely a personal preference. You can use any of them to get really really good results in astro and they all have productivity tools of one form or another; as you've mentioned Microsoft office (although Open Office and Libre Office do exist) this will limit you to Windows or Mac if using the native applications; or any OS when using the web based tools (which are pretty decent to be fair). Go have a look at the laptops direct link and you should get a feel for what you want; pop some models in this thread and I'm sure someone will give further advice.

Pah, Linux and Indi drivers would sort that out; many a forgotten laptop has been given years of life that way #notamacfanboi

I'd recommend a Lenovo T-Series Think Pad for a few reasons. They are primarily designed for highly mobile users, so are better designed for being "ragged" about. Dual Batteries (Internal and external), provides longer battery running time and allows for the external battery to be changed live More rugged case/shell compared to consumer laptops Back lit keyboard which is handy in the dark An actually useful trackpad + joystick mouse I have the T470 which gives nvme and thunderbolt 3 making it ideal for most astro tasks. Plus I have 4g modem built in; which is handy. Looking on that popular auction site, they seem to be amazingly priced for what they are circa £200-£250; so maybe a T490 might be in your requested price range.

Who'd have thought? close stars I still love the image, cracking job.

Very very nice, I have to admit the Heart of the Heart is a favorite object of mine. I've been wanting to see a picture of the Heart with someone using a OSC + duo band filter (Mainly because I've just picked up the ZWO 533MC + Duo filter and want something to benchmark against) On the bottom right, is the a little bit of star trailing? or just close stars?

Looks like a 80ED DS Pro to me too; I have the same scope with the same design.

You'd only see it when connecting cables

Same here, I have the Star adventurer as my grab and go; but this could replace it.

My first question would be what part of astronomy tickles your fancy? There really is a huge range of topics that could be covered. If you're unsure on your focus then general astronomy resource should help; quite a few have been given above, however look at your local/national astronomy magazines too; i.e. the sky at night.