teoria_del_big_bang

10 hours ago, lulu57 said:

Does anyone know if the café will be open the whole week? We're staying Fri-Wed, and I don't know if I can be a*sed to cook!

If not then get takeaways delivered to the gate 🙂 

Steve

7 hours ago, carastro said:

Is there a grocery shop at the camp? 

Carole 

 

If the onsite shop is not open all week there are busses from the entrance into Hereford. Maybe not as easy as driving into town but not too much hassle.

Steve

9 minutes ago, Nikolas74 said:

I have read too about the Baader filters.....with the Astrodon's both sides look exactly the same , that's why i posted the question in case someone else experienced the same dilemma....

Anyway i will make my tests and see the result....

Thank you all 😀

Yes I thought the Astrodons were pretty clear cut in that it did not matter. And I guess from how people praise them they are head and shoulders above other filters and maybe worth the extra money just to stop the confusion I had have 🙂 

Steve

6 hours ago, Tim said:

Well, you learn something every day!

Well I haven't 🙂 

As a novice I was looking on line for an answer to which way round they went and found this link

unmounted-filters-which-side-should-face-the-telescope

And as it had the Baader name attached to it thought that was Gospel but also searched a little more and found nobody else adhered to this odd rule so went with the flow and mounted as normal with arrows pointing towards the scope.

As I said as far as I can see I do not have issues although being relatively new to all this do not see as many issues as some more experienced imagers do.

The reasoning for the shiny side being towards the telescope I understand but what it says in the link just confused me really.

Steve

In the end I too have the arrows pointing to the telescope, as this is what other people seemed to do, and also it is a bit vague saying a few centimeters in front of the filter rather than specifying any distance.

My thoughts being if I got halos then I would then try to reverse them and so far I do not seem to have suffered with them.

Steve

6 minutes ago, Uranium235 said:

Could you please point us to a link (reversing Baader filters) where this information is posted?  Otherwise it means that 99% of all imagers have been doing it wrong for many years (including myself), as practically every optical system requires a flattener or reducer for imaging

unmounted-filters-which-side-should-face-the-telescope

The website states:

Always put the more reflective side towards the telescope side. On these filters were the position matters. This arrow indicates which face of the filter should be directed towards the sky (telescope-sided). All cell-mounted filters are already oriented in a way that the most appropriate filter face is facing the sky when the filter would be mounted directly on the front end of the nosepiece of a camera. 
If you mount your filter the other way, any reflected light would have a short to the camera sensor, resulting in a higher risk of getting some kind of back-reflections inside the camera field. Many sensors have highly reflective areas near the light sensitive area.

But:  this is true only for instruments without optical elements near the focal plane. If you have a coma corrector, field flattener, focal reducer, focal extender (to a lower degree due to concave surface), or in extreme cases a whole lens group for more complex field corrections a few centimeters in front of the filter it could be useful to flip the filter against the rule from above (thus having the arrow pointing away from the telescope). Cause in such cases the likelihood of reflections from the sensor could be better then fort and reflections from such glass-surfaces. If in doubt, it helps to make some test images from a star field with bright stars, using the filter in both ways for comparison.

1 hour ago, Adam J said:

I also have no intention of letting my spending go any further and dont want to move away from the HEQ5 for this reason, FLO have reassured me that the HEQ5 pro will not have issues guiding the Esprit 100 and I dont want to move to larger mounts.

I recently obtained an Esprit 100ED with flattener and I have a fairly heavy FW with a ZWO 1600 camera.  It is a fairly heavy scope and I originally was going to use my WO Z73 as the guidescope but has issues balancing the HEQ5 with the two weights. I didn't really want to go to using an extension to the CB bar.

In the end after much advice I reverted back to my small 50mm guidescope and it now all balances with the two weights, albeit they are close to the end of the bar but not quite.

So so long as you do not plan to have much more weight than I have then should be fine on the HEQ5. Before I got mine I searched about and there were plenty using one of these on a HEQ5.

Steve

On 18/08/2019 at 16:31, david_taurus83 said:

I have sent my OIII back to Baader for testing as none of the other filters give me halos. They are advertised as halo free after all. I'm a bit sceptical tbh as it's a known issue. Would be very interested to see how you get on with the 4.5nm version. Only one review I can find and that's on another thread here!

@david_taurus83  I just remembered this post of yours about how I got on with the ultra NB OIII. With one thing and another I have not managed too much imaging since buying them but the few I have done I do not seem to see much in the way of halos.

Here's a stack of 8 400S frames of OIII

And a close up of RH top corner

Steve

I have Baader filters which have an arrow on the side but I am sure I have seen other threads saying it doesn't matter with Astrodons, hopefully someone else will confirm this.

From reading many threads the majority of opinion says that of one side is shiney, like a mirror, then that points towards the direction of incoming light, that is the scope side. But oddly enough on the Baader website I read that this was true unless you had a flattener, or reducer in the optical train and then you may have to reverse them so the shiney side points towards the camera.

I did ask whether other members followed this rule in a thread but didn't get a firm reply.

Steve

Wow, that is a cracking image 🙂 

Steve

On 30/09/2019 at 20:51, Knighty2112 said:

I’m terrible at quizes, so I’ll just prop the bar up and watch all those great minds ticking over searching for the right answer!  

Sounds good to me so you will not be drinking alone 🙂 

Steve

22 hours ago, Gina said:

rigid.ink was just about the very best but they are not selling filament any more. The Economy range from colorFabb in The Netherlands is a lot cheaper pro rata and very good.  You might have a problem accommodating their very large reels though.

Yes that was good filament, but was expensive. I did not know they were not selling it anymore 😞 

Steve

Also I have used the PrimaValue PLA available from Amazon and it is okay but did not think it was a good as the 3D Printz. Some of the other cheap stuff of Amazon I did not fine very good at all.

Steve

28 minutes ago, Thalestris24 said:

PLA. Any recommendations of affordable brands?

Louise 

I am really impressed with 3D Printz.

https://3dprintz.co.uk/

PLA is £21, which i think is a very reasonable price for a good filament but you need to order over £50 though to get free delivery but I have found it very easy to print with.

Steve

Welcome Rich, you are were I was just under 2 years ago. Astrophotography is not the easiest thing you will do in your life but stick with it it can be so rewarding when you see those images that you have created. 

I owe so much to this forum. I have a few images under my belt, they are not fantastic and I still have a way to to but I do feel proud what I have achieved but a lot is down to the great advice I have received on SGL.

So welcome and enjoy the journey 🙂 

Steve

12 minutes ago, barrie greenwood said:

So I need to integrate plate solve into APT  its a little confusing

Regards Baz

I would not say it is a must but if you do it makes life so much simpler, or at least it did for me. Using plate solving with APT revolutionised my imaging made it so much quicker and easier.

Download Platesolve2 and All Sky Plate Solver (I am told PlateSolve2 works better if it is not installed in the usual Program Files location, don't ask me why I just followed others instructions). Then after polar aligning go to your desired target, take a shortish sub (30 secs usually enough to show up enough stars when stretched) then using Point Craft in APT click on "Scope Position" so the platesolving has an idea where roughly in the sky you are and a few seconds later it tells you exactly where ypou are pointing. You can then click on "Sync" and if you now slew to the target you should be perfectly on your selected target.

Steve

10 minutes ago, barrie greenwood said:

So correct me if I'm wrong with APT and PhD I don't need to bother polar alinging or star alignment all I need to do is level the mount pointing roughly northwards

Regards Baz

I would still polar align, otherwise you are asking a lot of PHD2, but no need to star align. Just go to your target, plate solve it and correct for any misalignment.

Steve

1 minute ago, redhat said:

Hello,

What are those PODs exactly?

glamping-pods

Steve

1 hour ago, Alien 13 said:

The scary thing is that we will get hit by a comet at some point in the future but could take several million years or next year....

Alan

Knowing my luck I would move to another planet and that would be hit and the Earth would survive.

Steve

We can't leave Europe how the heck are we going to leave the planet.

And do not tighten the taper bearings too much. It just needs to take up any play and does not need a lot of pre-load. Basically tighten as much as you can by hand then maybe just an 1/8 turn more with a spanner (at most).

Regarding the grease as well although I see no need really for any specialised grease most people seem to recommend lithium grease, but I notice that now even on the Astro-Baby site which most people use as the bible for doing this they give a caution about using white lithium grease:-

NOTE 2: When this guide was originally written the accepted wisdom was that white lithium grease was an overall good lubricant. However it would appear that
standard white lithium grease may cause problems under some extremes of damp/temperature. All of the mounts I have rebuilt have been done with white
lithium that is stable and often mixed with a syntehtic like Teflon or PTFE. It is best to consult the manufacturer on the quality of the product.

heq5-rebuild

Steve

More or less as above none of the bearings are under any real load and do not move with speed so most good quality grease will do. I would say do not use really thick grease and do not pack them so tight with grease, they do not need a lot.

Also get normal clearance bearings not C3 bearings. C3 bearings have a bigger clearance means that the bearing has room for expansion if needed between the races of the bearing. These are meant for high speed operation where the bearing may get hot and so need that room for expansion. You may think you are getting better quality bearings if you buy C3 but all you end up with is bearings that have play in them that is not required. You will get better precision with the normal, cheaper bearings.

May not be of much use to you as you are not in the UK but this is what I bought when I did mine.

I bought the larger bearings from Bearings R Us

and the small bearings for the worm from Simply Bearings as that was the cheapest option.

 Steve

Just now, blinky said:

I do - I have the ZWO 7 position filter wheel with LRGB/Ha/O3/S2 filters, so looks like Im correct to expand it a little then

Yes, I have Baader filters at 2 mm thickness so need to add about 0.7 mm, I think I read somewhere the ZWO ones may be 3 mm so looks like you may need to add 1mm.

Steve

I think the adjustable flattener is a great idea, unfortunately is cam on the market just after I bought mine otherwise I would have loved one.

Steve

Do you have a filter in between flattener and camera. if so you need to add 1/3 of the filter thickness to the 11.4 mm.

Steve