Synchronicity

There's an old saying, 'If you want to give the gods a laugh tell them your plans for the future'. My plans were along the lines of spending the very light nights setting up and testing ASCOM, PHD2 and other software and practising my post processing. What actually happened was that my laptop died, taking with it all of the settings that I'd struggled to figure out - but hadn't noted down It also had lots of personal data that hadn't been backed up recently so a new laptop and dozens of hours getting the old hard disk connected and copied. I also had and my mount in bits as I tried to figure out how to improve the latitude adjustment. Anyway, on Thursday night I had everything assembled, all the software re-installed and maybe working and a free evening to play with it. I got on quite well before it clouded over and Friday night was forecast to be clear. By twilight I was all set up and ready to go. I started work as soon as it was dark enough for the guide setup to work and got a good series of exposures up to 3 minutes long guiding with perfect stars - I was delighted! After trying a few things out I set the rig up to take a series of 20 second exposures of M11, the Wild Duck Cluster. It was still too light but I wanted to see if it would behave when left alone. A bit later I started on M27, the Dumbell nebula. There was quite a bit of high, wispy cloud blowing through so I kept it to 30 second subs - 198 of them. Basic processing has got me this image which is my first public post on Astrobin. I still need to go through the images and remove the poorer quality ones, re-stack and spend more time processing. https://www.astrobin.com/full/360831/B/

I'm shocked at what I have found when I stripped it down. My latitude was set for home which is 55 48' and the bolt had felt tight even though there was some play in the head. It turns out that the bolt was fully in and touching the other side of the mount base - the flap it is supposed to push was sitting on top of it! This means that it is physically impossible to set the angle any higher using these bolts. Thinking cap on and turned up to stubborn ? Michael

I've decided I need to 'refurbish' my Skywatcher EQ5 Synscan mount so here I am looking for advice. Part 1, stripping down, cleaning and re-lubricating the RA and Dec drives bearings etc I am happy enough to just work through and see what I find but I'm looking for advice on what to use as a lubricant? I'm thinking a light silicone grease for the axis but I've got very little experience to go on. Any other advice or things to look out for is also welcome. Part 2, the latitude adjustment bolts I am more concerned about. I replaced a bent bolt thanks to Paul (wookie1965) kindly sending me a spare he had but it's still not right. Looking at photos online it's clearly a design weakness so I'm trying to come up with a workaround. I tried contacting Gunnar about his NEQ6 mod on this thread but he's not replied. Does anyone know if there is a mod available for this or does anyone have any suggestions? I've looked at a few ideas like fixing a rotatable pin joint where the plate that the bolts push is located but I'm concerned that I limit the rotation angle too much - I'll know better when it is in bits and I can see and measure everything. Thanks Michael

I've just recieved this bolt for my EQ5 from Paul (wookie1965) who saw my post asking about them and sent me the replacement I need - wouldn't even let me pay postage. What a great guy!!!

Having wanted to do astronomy properly for decades I finally took action late in 2017 and bought a pair of Canon 15x50 image stabilised binoculars. I was absolutely blown away with what I could see using these from my garden with what I now know are Bortle 8 very light polluted skies. For the first time in my life I saw the Orion Nebula M42 - only as a small cloudy area but I knew there was more to see with better optics. When I saw the Pleiades, directly overhead, for the first time I knew I was hooked! I'd been reading posts here and on other sites and blogs and I knew that I'd need to think through what I wanted to achieve and what to spend my money on. I used a strategy that has served me well over the years - Start from where you are! That might seem obvious but I have read so many posts - facebook is the worst - where people go out and spend thousands of pounds on equipment because it is the 'best' but they don't know how to set it up never mind use it! I experimented with what I had so that I'd know what I needed. I started with my wife's Canon PowerShot SX730 which takes great pictures but isn't suited to astrophotography and then I got out my old Canon SX1. That was a bit better and I used CHDK (Canon Hack Development Kit) to allow longer exposures. I tried taking pictures through my binoculars but would have needed some precision DIY to hold the bins and the camera together. I wasn't getting any good images, but I was learning about aperture, exposure length, ISO and the importance of keeping the camera still! My first purchase was a Canon EOS 7D Mark1 and a couple of lenses (18-55 and 75-300). I got an Amazon Basics tripod - very well built for under £50 and set about trying to capture the universe. Using the 7D with Canons capture software I was taking lots of pictures and learning the hard way about star trailing. With the 300mm lens fully extended the longest exposure I could manage which kept round stars was 0.8 seconds - so I took lots and lots of them and fed them to DSS. Of course DSS sometimes struggled to stack them and I couldn't see the results at first because the images were still extremely dim but I'll do a separate entry about software and how I got round these issues. It was clear I would need to buy a mount or a tripod mounted tracker if I was going to progress but first I had to think seriously about how I planned to use it long term. My Priorities - Transportable, sensibly priced, good quality. As mentioned, the sky where I live is Bortle 8. I'm fortunate that I live on the southern outskirts of Glasgow and my back garden faces south so I can do a lot of practice and get some reasonable images but I really wanted to be able to pack my stuff up and drive to better sky. 20 minutes takes me to Bortle 4-5 so it's worth doing. I'm trying to do this as a hobby and not go overboard with the budget but I also don't want to waste my money on cheap stuff that doesn't perform well. That's been great because it's forced me into researching options and being strict about what I need and what is just a 'nice to have'. I don't buy stuff just for bragging rights! I'd thought seriously about getting an Ioptron Skytracker or Skyguider sized device but I didn't want to be too restricted on what I could mount on it, and I'm not likely to take my kit on a flight very often. In the end I saw a 2nd hand Skywatcher EQ5 Goto mount at a reasonable price and I already knew it would do what I need for now. I had originally planned to use the DSLR with a large zoom lens but when I costed these it was clear that I'd need to spend several thousands to get what I wanted. That led me down the path of a short APO refractor. Again, into the classified ads and someone here pointed me in the direction of a Skywatcher Esprit 80 which I am absolutely delighted with! So that's me got all of the hardware I need for now... but then I saw a 60mm Guide scope and Orion SSAG for a good price... So now I have everything I need for a while. Why am I still looking at the classified adverts? Just in case there's a bargain

This was taken 8th April 2016 from an apartment in Hamilton Island, Australia. The equipment I used was a Samsung Galaxy S5 and an old but good quality pair of binoculars left by the owners. The skies were incredibly dark and we were able to attend a talk by a local astronomer who guided us around what could be seen with the naked eye. I was delighted last year when I used Stellarium last year to look at the view on that date and confirm that I had indeed captured Jupiter and 4 moons!