david_taurus83

Is it a sensor issue? Ie could happen to other brands or just something to do with how ZWO have placed it on the board? What causes it? 

Wow. £2k worth of camera and this is supposedly a fairly common issue? Anybody on here had this yet?

https://www.firstlightoptics.com/astronomy-cables-leads-accessories/lynx-astro-silicone-21mm-dc-jack-to-female-cigarette-socket.html

I'd drop FLO an email with details about your powerbank just to be sure buy 2.1mm plug is the most popular.

Take the camera off the scope and put a metal dust cap on or line the plastic cap with tin foil and take your darks. If your struggling with dark calibration it's the only way to be sure there's no photons hitting the sensor.

For a beginner, it's got to be an ED80 all day long on an HEQ5.

3 hours ago, newbie alert said:

How deep are you going?!

On 17/10/2021 at 21:55, Starflyer said:

Lovely job!

Did you / will you cut holes in the pier to let water out?  They tend to fill with water over time as they cool, draw in moist air and it then it condenses out.

Nope, didn't think of that buy its something to keep an eye on. Thanks for the tip!

Not had a chance to do anything after work as it's near dark and the weather has been rubbish but the clouds finally broke yesterday.

Got everything wired up and running. It's not pretty but I made do with all the cables I have to hand. Will order some shorter ones and prob locate the Startech USB hub to the scope. All controlled by the mini PC in the shed and powered with the Nevada 12v PSU. I use a powerline adapter to give a hardwired Internet connection to the PC in the shed so no WiFi and great connection over VNC.

Got everything up and running for some testing last night. Polar aligned with Sharpcap, was less than half a degree out with placement of the North peg! Then switched to PHD to have a go at drift aligning. Shortly lost patience with this so redone it in Sharpcap again! Will be left alone at that! Managed some test subs. First 1800s sub on Pacman looks well. I bit of tilt to sort out but guided very well. 

One thing to look at though is condensation. I noticed this morning, after a few hours of heavy rain, when I took off the Telegizmo cover thwre was a small amount of condensation on the drawtube, guide camera, filter wheel, counterweight bar etc. Not soaking but enough to cause concern. I've put a spare dew strap round the Dec axis and left it on for now. Will see how it is tomorrow morning.  Some people mention they use pet heat pads? And links? Particular brands?

Where are Mark I and II?

Leave it outside and stick a cover on it!

@AstroNebulee 

Inside that little gearbox are the 3 nylon gears with AU's of backlash!

The motors on these mounts have little gearboxes on the output shaft. Inside there are 3 small nylon gears with loads of play between the splines. There is no way to reduce backlash there unless you fabricated something custom. The worm gear is spring loaded onto the ring gear so minimal backlash issues there. I wish I had taken a picture of mine when I opened it up as nearly all the complaints and issues people have is with the Dec axis.

The best way to guide these mounts is to polar align with some error and guide Dec in one direction only so it doesn't need to go the other way. Forget dithering in Dec also.

Despite its short comings there, its a cracking little goto portable mount considering it's price and it was only ever intended as an Alt/Az platform.

I've been saying SV-Bony. Never considered it as one word. A lot of their products are prefixed SVxxx

3 hours ago, Craney said:

Thanks Paul.   Yes, It is hidden in plain sight, once you know.   Only discovered a few years ago as well, 2007  by an amateur.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soap_Bubble_Nebula

I like it because it is so round.

That would have drove me absolutely bananas as it looks just like a dust bunny that flats failed to remove!

2 hours ago, Lee_P said:

Both great images! If I had to choose, I'd go for the first one. It just looks a bit crisper. 

Thanks! The second one with reduced stars was my first attempt with a quick process just to see what sort of image I could get. The first image I took a bit more time and used deconvolution on a synthetic Lum (all Ha and Oiii stacked together) and also some sharpening towards the end. I wasn't completely happy with it as imo it's too noisy for the hours put in but the seeing was rubbish and a full moon to boot. The more I look at it on the forum the more it's grown on me so I think I'll call it done!

Approx 9 hours each in Ha and Oiii in 15 minute subs last month. The seeing and transparency for the 2 nights of Ha was terrible along with a full moon so the stack was almost as noisy as the Oiii and the Ha stars were bigger than the Oiii! So I have done two versions. One with full stars and one with them removed and put back after processing the nebula. Not sure which one I prefer? Comment and criticism welcome. Processing done in Pixinsight.

Altair 80 EDR doublet, Atik 460, Astronomik Ha and Oiii 6nm filters.

StarXterminator is good but on bright stars with large halos, instead of leaving that hatched artifact Starnet does, SX blurs the background where the halo was so it looks a bit out of place compared to the background. Still needs some work.

1 hour ago, Stu said:

I’m in exactly the opposite situation as the first two posters, I never used my AZEQ6 in EQ mode. I’m purely a visual observer so find AltAz much more convenient as it keeps the eyepiece in the same orientation as you know.

I assume you would either be imaging or observing in any one session? You may find if doing a lot of AP then you end up leaving it on EQ mode so as to keep your PA reasonably accurate and only requiring tweaks.

In my experience it is a very capable mount, far more so than the AZEQ5, and it carried some fairly crazy kids when I was observing with mine. This was a C8 Edge and a 150mm f9 apo doublet weighing 20kg! Must have been the hot summer, looking at the grass. 2015.

It looks so dinky with those 2 scopes on either end!

Would you not process the colour data to how you like, same with the Lum separately, and them add the Lum to the RGB with LRGBCombination in Pixinsight? Or are you trying to do something else?

On 06/10/2021 at 08:47, ollypenrice said:

Thanks for the heads up. I get very mixed results from Starnet and also find that either it or my PC cannot handle the images from the ASI2600 I'm now processing. These are around 140meg. Does anyone know what kind of processing demands StarXterminator makes? I would spend £45 on it in a heartbeat if I were sure it would run.

I know it's quite a price but de-starring is so powerful when it works. I don't want to publish starless images, I want to de-star and re-star with smaller stars, which is dead easy in Ps. Put the starless image on the bottom, paste the linear original on the top, set the blend mode to lighten, and stretch the linear image till the stars appear at the level you like. This will improve star colour intensity by stretching them less, preserve their relative sizes as captured and let you keep them small. And it saves you the hassle of masking and star-reducing as well.

Olly

Hi Olly. Many thanks for this tip! For the last couple of years I've always struggled with adding stars back in. Starnet sometimes makes a mess of the stars and creates a hatch pattern on the bright ones. I used to use Pixelmath to simply add them back in and was never happy with the result so I've largely avoided using Starnet to process. I've just tried your method and it's so easy to control them! Thanks again! 🙂

It's as if it grew there! You'd never guess there was a hole lol. 12v and ethernet cable fed through the water pipe (that was easier said than done), buried along fence and fed into the shed. Mount should be on this week. I can't wait for all the clear nights that are going to follow!

Finally have the brake disc ready. Need to scavenge a metal plate for underneath and an M12 bolt for the mount and we're not far off now. Treating the disc to a bit of Hammerite while we're at it.

Drilling today.

7 minutes ago, UKDiver said:

Hmm, I wonder what part of the job is missing 1.2m of pipe? Such bits are usually bespoke in my experience. Good to see upcycling occur though.

I did wonder why they left a double flanged bit behind but everything was fitted (foul water pump station) and there is even a few lengths of DN80 left behind but with single flange only though. I did ask if any of it was needed btw 🙂

3 minutes ago, UKDiver said:

Well that's a use for flanged DI I'm not used to.   Neat job all round. I'd have got some stainless washers though.

It was free! Left over from one of the sites I work at. So far I've only bought the ballast for the concrete and the threaded M16 bar. The perks of working in construction 🙂

Not had much time in the evenings after work to do much more. Got pier fitted, fed a length of water pipe up through it which will act as a conduit for power cable and ethernet cable which will feed back to the shed where I have power. Had to level it up on some washers under the flange so filled in underneath the gap with some strong mortar as backup should the washers rust. Treated the holding down bolts to a bit of spray on hammerite for rust protection also. Need to source a brake disc next for drilling.