teoria_del_big_bang

Yes that really is a great image Alan.

Steve

Hi Nicola, welcome to a very friendly and helpful forum.

Steve

1 hour ago, Stuart1971 said:

Yes, I am well impressed and appreciative for the work he put in, and looking forward to receiving and trying it out.... 😀

I posted it yesterday so hopefully with you on Monday.

Steve

3 hours ago, Gina said:

In PETG that should be strong enough for anything you can lift!  Assuming a reasonable infill, of course.  Very nice job. 

Cheers Gina,

50% cubic and 5 perimeters at 0.2 layers. Should be fine I think.

Steve

4 hours ago, Chriske said:

'Glow in the dark' filament would have been better imo..🤗

(just kidding)

Nice job btw..!

Cheers, Glow in the dark what a cracking idea 🤣

Steve

Turned out better than I thought it would, should be well strong enough I think. Its in PETG which means it is strong but not brittle and does not degrade so much with UV. I will PM you.

Okay no problem I quite like doing it so no hassle,  I will PM you but I am not after making any money, just postage really and actual cost of filament used . 

Black it is.

Steve

Just to give you an idea of actual sizes so you can see if they are okay.

Just modified it slightly to make finger grip a bit more ergonomic and also reduced the overall height as it looked a bit tall. Also thickened the amount of plastic that the bolt goes through. 20mm capheads or thereabouts should work best and there will be 10mm of bolt in the handle, which is made out of PETG should be well stong enough,. Any colour preference, I have various but I assume either black or white would look best.

Steve

Would something like this be okay ?

BUT, Not sure how well this will actually print and I would be a bit worried that you are carry a few grands worth of scope about on a £5 handle made by myself.

Also it is important you get a screw and see how deep the treads go on the scope rings so you can ensure screw is well into the tapped holes but is not bottoming and also then we could work out the correct length screws and I could ensure the height to the conterbore in the handle is correct. As mentioned by @sploo

Also  as mentioned by @Dr_Ju_ju most scope rings have  threads that are 1/4 UNC not M6 (they are very similar but must use correct screw.

Steve

Are you in UK ?

I do have a printer and can design a handle, although they are not as easy as you think to print a good comfortable handle because they either need a lot of support in middle of handle if printed correct way up or you print them upside down, or on their side but each of these gives some issues with making a comfortable one as you dont want it with square edges .  

Steve

7 hours ago, Gina said:

Mine is attached to the side of my observatory and uses the main 13.8v supply which is inside.  Voltage is dropped to 5v with a buck converter in the ASC enclosure.  Unfortunately that's not much help to you though.  I do suggest keeping mains voltage in the dry and running (say) 12v to your ASC.

Yes I liked the 12V option above all others as well.  I think a 5V supply would lose too much in the wire resistance and 240V has a habit of getting its own back from time to time.

Steve

I am slowly getting on with this build. I have what most  of what I think I need just need to get my final version of the enclosure designed before I print it.

I have a ASI224C camera, RPi 2B and a hard drive to store the pics until I download them.

One thing I am hung up on is the power supply for the RPI. Currently I am using an old RPi 2B I had in a drawer, I may change this to a 3 or 4 later if I need to.

I will probably position the camera some distance from the house but not too far from a 240V source.

However I do not want to really just leave a £5 to £10 5v PS plugged into this power source in all weathers.

So the other option is to build a 5V supply inside the enclosure and supply 240V to it, or I could put a 12V to 5V converter in the enclosure and probably run 12V okay to it as it will not be that far from the house (or use a 12V pond transformer meant for outdoor use). I thought 12V would stand a bit of voltage drop over the length of cable rather than a direct 5V supply).

I just wondered how others power their cameras left outside on a permanent basis?

Steve

Welcome to SGL Katie

Steve

1 hour ago, Gina said:

Most experimenters have been called stupid at the time but without them many things would not have been invented or discovered.

I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings but I feel there's a place for us mad scientists/engineers!

Absolutely !

Steve

Unbelievable, he said he wanted to reach 40,000 feet, why didn't he take a plane, maybe not quite 40,000 but would have been close.

Steve

Some brilliant advice above and I am not really experienced enough to add anything really. I was asking the same question just over a year ago and eventually went the mono route and I really do not regret it.

I think it really does come down to what you want to do and what targets maybe you want to image.

I have no experience of dedicated OSC as I went from DSLR to dedicated mono but I would think whatever image you can get in a night with OSC you can achieve with a mono. Yes you may have to take 3 or 4 images to the one OSC but the total exposure time need not be any more due to the extra sensitivity, and as Carole says if your filters are parfocal then no more fuss either as you can use session software such as APT to do it all automatically without your intervention. Yes it takes a bit more work in the processing but the end result may be worth it. 

I think the biggest factor to rule OSC out maybe if you want to go Narrowband, do you want to capture some images that really require NB whether due to their intensity, emission wavelength,  or whether due to you being in a light polluted area. And imaging in a near full moon NB also comes into its own. 

Steve

Stick with it Alan, this hobby does throw these kind of problems at us sometimes with regularity but they are all solvable, even though often it doesn't seem that way.

Steve

I tried uninstalling PI and re-installing but no difference. Tried uninstalling and installing much earlier versions but still the same. 

I never had this before the updates but it seems to have done something, maybe to the Win10 registry that has upset something.

Steve

Now I cannot open any XISF file directly, it opens up PI then says no such file. And that is for any image.

I tried uninstalling PI and re-installing but no difference. Tried uninstalling and installing much earlier versions but still the same. 

I never had this before the updates but it seems to have done something, maybe to the Win10 registry that has upset something.

Steve

Actually something funny is happening now for me but i think it is since downloading the last updates for PI.

Eventually by rebooting the laptop my PI settled down and stopped asking me to download the same updates. But then any XISF file I clicked on did something similar to yours. When I click on the image icon it now always say windows is configuring Pixinsight and takes ages to open. Never did this before. But it does this with all my XISF images not just yours, so not sure what has happened.

Steve

Seems to open up fine for me. I opened it up from the downloads directory by clicking on it directly and then moved it to my desktop and did the same both time it opened fine.

However, PI notified me I had 6 updates which I installed, it then informed me I had 13 other updates which I also installed, then when it restarted it wanted to install the 6 previous updates, then the 13 again and so on in a perpetual circle s not sure what is going on there.

Steve

Can you attach the image so I can try to open it as my default program for XISF files is PI also, and I am on Win10 Pro and latest PI.

Steve

Wow, it's a beauty, what do the clouds look like through it then 🙂 

Hope there is some clear sky soon, for all our sakes.

Steve

That is unbelievable.  😍

The shot on the screen is like being on the Enterprise itself with all it's split infinitives.

I think SGL needs a life-time achievement award and that would be in the running for sure. Well done it is incredible what work has gone into that image and to say you should be proud of it is somewhat understated.

Steve