david_taurus83

The quest for round stars continues..

It's tighter than I thought. I'm adding an auto focusser so need to rotate the scope with knobs upwards. Need to move the guide scope forward by adding another dovetail in between to do this. But my motto is "..if it doesn't fit, get a bigger hammer.."

Postie brought me a big empty box. It's perfect.

Ok thanks. Pavle uses the same camera as he's answered some of my questions about his DC power box. Looking forward to it now. Should be here in a few weeks!

Ordered! I never thought I'd need one as I used to just focus at the start of the session and it held solid all night. But since switching from DSLR to mono, and checking focus for each filter, it's a bit of a faff to go out each time. How do you find APT works with auto focusing? Or do you manually check HFD and adjust yourself?

Tracking? Guiding? You wouldn't notice any minute movements visually through the eyepiece but a camera will record them.

Looks great! I kind of wish I had kept my EQ5 now so I had a grab and go. Could double for a refractor and a Newt. Was there much work involved?

Is that an EQ5 in Alt/az mode? If so, how did you get it vertical?

Similar to my other thread, I'm interested to know what acceptable curvature is on a flat field. I wouldn't expect it to 0% curved though. With CCDI i think you need to load in around 10 images or so for an average to beat the seeing and variable FWHM values. I'm hoping to do this tonight if it's reasonably clear to try and get the optimum back spacing on my flattener.

I have the same focuser on my 200p. Great for bringing a camera into focus but for visual I need a small extension for all my 1.25" eyepieces. Just so you know!

@Wirral manis selling all his AP gear, HEQ5 and ED80 amongst it. Worth giving him a shout.

Yes, I made the perfectly sane choice to go from a working everytime DSLR imaging setup to this mono nonsense! Weather is predictably forecast bad for the week so will at least get it all setup indoors and make sure laptop and USB hubs are all friendly to each other.

Woke up to this email this morning. On a Sunday! Gurpreet you absolute legend!

I have the Polemaster but ironically I use it just for Sharpcaps polar align as it's more accurate! I get sub arc second guiding this way. Have yet to test it's accuracy when used via the guudescope.

As promised:

The previous owner of my 200p fitted a resistor block to the back of the secondary and ran a thin wire out along the spider vanes to be powered by a 9v battery. I've never used it but he said he could stay out till early morning without any build up on the secondary. I will take a pic later this evening.

My first foray into WL solar observing thanks to Gus @Knighty2112 An almost cast iron guarantee that the Bromsgrove Astro star party at Ledbury this weekend will be wet and cloudy!

Started to have issues last night. Couldn't load up at all. Then came back on and this morning couldn't load the homepage at all. So intermittent. Got this message last night when issues started.

Great for tv shows and some movies. I have it on now. Horrid Henry keeps the kids entertained and settled before bed! We have Virgin cable here. I only wanted the broadband but they gave us the TV package for £1 extra. Nothing but rubbish nowadays. Bring back MacGyver and the A-Team! All we ever have on is either Netflix or YouTube on the TV. Re; your other post about getting it on the TV. You need a smart TV hooked up to the internet and the Netflix app installed or like I used to, Netflix on the laptop and an HDMI cable to the telly. Was a lot better a few years ago. Had a paid VPN service and could change my IP to a US address and get all their content. Alas, they copped on to that one... If you do have a smart TV but somehow can't get the app you should be able to cast from your phone to TV. The icon should appear on your phone in the top corner like below and give you the option to play through the TV assuming all are on the same Wi-Fi network.

Finders Keepers!!

To replace my Baader Zoom recently sold. My first fixed FL eyepiece purchase. Arrived very well packaged and well priced on ABS. Looking forward to seeing how I get on with these as I even managed to pull some detail out of the Martian surface the other night using the mighty Skywatcher kit 10mm!!! Also, 25mm BST inbound from a fellow SGL'r!

It looks identical to my WO GT71. Rings, screws and grooves on the body are the same!

Should help with back garden imaging. Need to travel otherwise.

Good idea, thanks. I have a spare vixen dovetail so I could use that. Will have a play tonight indoors.

I thought the same or perhaps some observers may like to note the weather conditions in their notes. Anyway, it was bought primarily for compactness, weight, "windproof" imaging and nice round stars. The flattener and camera all screw onto the drawtube so it's a nice solid connection. The rack and pinion focuser is nice and smooth and focus doesn't appear to shift when the lock screw is tightened. I persevered last night and done some observing on Jupiter. It is a long way off from the light gathering abilities of the 200p, so I will still keep that for observing sessions. The WO gives crystal clear views and no sign of CA on Jupiter. I need to figure out how to balance it though as it's focuser heavy. Overall I'm well impressed with the build quality. Just need dark, moonless clear skies to go with it!!