fifeskies

10 hours ago, John said:

 

It would be a strange world if we all agreed wouldn't it 

 

 

No it wouldn't !   🤪

I love my 4 inch Vixen (103mm), compared to my 80mm scope the extra aperture makes a world of difference for visual, planets in particular.

The 80mm holds its own for wide field photography though.

Surely the title should be     "Something is afoot"      🤪

SD103s and a DSLR, was that with a reducer or the native scope? @Alan

It was with the native scope (image cropped).

I have been trying to acquire the new SD HD kit for my Vixen which is a 0.79 reducer and field flattener combined kit and is rumoured to be superior to the previous reducer. None to be had anywhere.

I don't see much distortion out to the edge of field with my DSLR in the Vixen, but it is the smaller APS-C sensor.

I cant say what it would be like with a full frame camera, but I image without distortion issues native on the smaller sensor, at least as far as I can see.

See you have a OOUK 10 inch as well , mine is the CT10L

So most of us are supposed to stay within a few miles of home, some of us shielding can't leave the house.
Claustrophobic yet ?

Well last clear night I was taking photographs of something 205,751,888,000,000,000,000 miles away.
So that's one way to think about the lockdown restrictions.
 

I hr 20 mins of the Leo Triplet with my SD103S , 360 second subs. Canon 600D astromodified DSLR

This is a reprocessed image (in Gimp) from the one I posted a few days ago , I think this one is far better).

I'm just storing this pier , mount and Telescope in the attic of my summerhouse. 

The opening slot is for ventilation.

4 minutes ago, johninderby said:

Hmm.........How many floors can you have in a shed? 🤔.  😁

Tell them the summerhouse is to be a Georgian model

1 minute ago, Alan White said:

Indeed, I had missed that train of thought,

So when is too many shed applicable then?

That's not    "too many sheds"

it's ................  "too small a garden"

3 minutes ago, Alan White said:

Really 🤨?
So roughly how many is too many?

I think when you cannot find room, too many start to kick in....

That's not    "too many telescopes"

It's ..............  "not enough dry sheds"     

As others have mentioned the Evostar 150 is a fun scope and I kept one for quite a while.

It performs well on star fields and DSO when there are not bright objects to show up its poor Chromatic Aberration performance.

For the moon not so bad, but this is mostly down to the moon only needing small levels of magnification to fill the view so CA is less pronounced. (other than it will fare poorly at the edge between dark and light).

I'll predominantly use it for the moon/ planets @ Happlsolderer

However I found it VERY poor for the planets ,clearly smearing out into overlapping coloured versions of the target.

If planets are your main interest this is very definitely NOT the scope for you.

I upgraded to a lower aperture ED scope and this gives vastly superior planetary performance.

SD103S an ED 103mm scope, but it does retail at 3 times the price , I was lucky to find one at a very good price second hand.

Below is Venus in the basic Evostar 150 and the moon at 2 different phases.

Jupiter and Saturn show similar poor performance as the Venus photo

(though being low down from the UK just now this is exaggerated by atmospheric issues at the low altitude)

I think you would soon tire of an Evostar 150 , and end up upgrading to an ED scope.

Another issue is that it is a very big scope and requires a substantial mount (I used an NEQ6 PRO with it) , but I see you already have the suitable mount.

So we are supposed to stay within about a few miles of home .
Well last night I was taking photographs of something 205,751,888,000,000,000,000 miles away.
So that's one way to look at lockdown.

I hr 20 mins of the Leo Triplet (needs a lot more really).

I would redo it with the camera level , you do not need the sky in the image, just the obstructions around the horizon.

If the buildings are particularly high you may need to put the camera into portrait mode to get enough height to the panorama

Here is a tutorial that is very helpful about how to create custom horizons

Stellarium: how to create a customised landscape - skyatnightmagazine

Great Job Silent Running

I had one of the airfix Saturn V , was a highlight of my childhood building it , tempted to buy one of the new kits

Now this is what you call a model

Saturn V world record - YouTube

Check your location co-ordinates and the time zone, though I expect you have done this already.

It may be that your panorama is too high up or too low down

You can use a photo editing programme to move the image up or down (within the blank template) to get it exact

Also check you have not overlapped the image by using more than 360 degrees in your panorama , or that you have cropped it to less than the full 360 , you may need to trim the original image.

Also make sure that the image width is the correct value of pixels. I think this is 2044

Finally to be accurate the panorama needs to be made with the camera level , if it is off level the panorama will probably still be produced but the "horizon" will be at an angle to what it should be, high at some parts and low at others.

You can indeed rotate the panorama in Stellarium to get exact alignment.

You need to make a change in the "ini" file

It often takes a few attempts to get it exactly right , also note that when you update a landscape the new image location will only activate after you close and reopen Stellarium even after the new landscape version has been loaded and set as default.

Adjust the angle rotataz value

Estimate how many degrees you need to adjust the value by , then add or subtract that amount from the default value depending if you need to adjust to left or to right

(I cant recall which way it goes for a + change but it will be obvious after you try once, and it is a 360 range i.e  if it is set at 20 subtracting 30 degrees will make the value 350)

maptex = Dec2020 new horizon2.png

angle_rotatez = 297
[location]
planet = Earth 2020 Dec

Thanks for the reply

How often do you need to recharge these and does the auto sleep function cause any problems.

I am planning on adding a gamepad to my setup to have local control of RA and DEC on my NEQ6 pro from the pier when doing some visual observing.

Not many recent mentions coming up in search so thought I would just ask what people are using these days.

Don't want to do anything that will make my usual AP system encounter any hiccups, (I use APT, Stellarium and Ascom Eqmod with PHD2 for AP usually).

I have a USB hub on the pier so could use either a cabled or wireless gamepad, maybe cabled is more reliable (eg Logitech F310) than the wireless Logitech F710.

Any comments or recommendations gratefully received, thanks.

I have a fixed system in my ROR observatory.

If you are taking down and resetting each session , take care to use the same USB ports as before or you may get comms errors when gear is not on the comms port it is expected to be found on.

are you using the latest versions of APT and Stellarium

I upgraded both to latest stable versions and seems to run OK.

Sorry I cant help with those error messages

other than "try turning it off and on again" , but often that does work.

I always open and connect APT and PHD2 guiding first. Also do a Platesolve with a test target using APT. (And Sync mount to platesolve co-ordinates)

Then start Stellarium.

If I dont do that order I find Stellarium will not work properly , or places the scope target wrong.

Default opening has Scope Icon at Polaris , I use a custom park (horizontal) to fit my scope under my Roll of Roof.

APT seems to handle this recovering the Custom Park co-ordinates wheras Stellarium gets confused if opened first.

You do not need Stellariumscope in the latest versions of Stellarium , it has been integrated into the core program.

You do need to activate the telescope control plug in however , and configure it for your system (click configure button)

You do not need Stellariumscope in the latest versions of Stellarium , it has been integrated into the core program.

I sometimes find Ctrl +1 unresponsive , but after a few tries it seems to reset and work , no idea why , maybe don't hit the 1 too soon after ctrl

I have found allowing a second or so with ctrl down before hitting 1 usually makes the scope slew OK

38 minutes ago, inFINNity Deck said:

(only when you hit it hard it trembles for a few seconds).

If you were to hit me hard I would probably tremble for a few seconds too 😜

That is one awesome pier, looks like it would fly if you filled it with fuel and lit it at the bottom.

Yes , except that Polaris is near to but not actually the correct place to align the scope.

Set to Polaris will not give good tracking for very long exposures, but for visual should be good enough.

If getting into Astrophotography you will need a utility of some kind eg Sharpcap pro , to get exact alignment.

12 minutes ago, wimvb said:

So, how many dust particles does it take before performance is affected?

I guess its a mote point ..............................  I'll get my coat.

Its unlikely a few odd dust specks make any real difference but if it's new they should not be there.