fifeskies

Stepper motors will be managed by the driver circuitry and stall current may well be limited by the controller, They will probably try a bigger current if they detect the motor not turning but not overdrive it (assuming a decent design). The drive transistors may well fail before there is any motor risk as the boards tend to have small electronics that are less robust than the actual motors. I would still go for an inline supply fuse myself just to be sure. My inline box and fuse cost me only about £2 or £3, a lot cheaper than swapping out a damaged motor or driver board. This is the one inline with my NEQ6 mount, fuse is near to the mount end for easy access , though it has not needed replaced so far.

While short circuit protected , you might still want to consider in-line fuses to protect your astro gear, especially drive motors. If they stall they will draw damaging high currents and without any in-line fuse this supply will continue to deliver the high current to the motors. A small fuse panel with individual protected outputs is easily added I have small inline boxes on all my cables with a fuse protecting the line. Use anti surge fuses to avoid surge nuisance problems. (my supply can deliver up to 50amps into a stalled motor so very much needed in my case)

Looks to be a good match , a switch mode of course but nothing wrong with that ( I am old school and prefer the linear type ). Will need put into some sort of external ventilated box to protect it from damp. My only concern on these is the convection cooling aspect , my supplies above 100watt are all fan cooled, usually with a thermal switched or controlled fan that only runs when needed. I would add a 12v fan run from the output to blow cool air over it, fit this inside the external box and it will stop it overheating. You will be able to trim the output voltage a bit if you want to. Use nice thick hook up cables and you will be fine , I use 2 x 0.75mm cables most of the time , these are nominal 6 amp rated , but still small enough to fit the common connectors.

The standby current of a big linear PSU is well below its output rating, once the initial current pulse charges the (usual) big output stabilising capacitors. In use apart from a slight thermal loss , you will only be paying for the power you actually use, and this is liable to be similar to the losses in a bunch of powerbrick individual units , and perhaps actually less. My big beefy bench PSU does not get very warm in use , I am sure if I was drawing anything like its output rating it would get fairly warm but I am only using a small percentage of that on average.

A decent battery and charging solution will work very well and give a stable supply. With mains in my observatory I decided the big bench power supply was the easier solution as I don't have to consider battery health. My supply is well above the rating of any use I will put it to and can just add 12v gear without having to consider the current draw issue. (It can supply 25amps continuous). One slight advantage of the big battery route (well 2 actually) , it can be used as a portable supply away from the mains (and 2nd it keeps the gear running during power outages). I don't use my main rig away from the observatory so didn't need portability.

Seems very short sighted to not use stainless screws and bolts , I swap out any I can get to easily for SS versions and I keep my gear in a ROR. They still get damp on dewey nights with the roof open. Inside the mounts is not such an issue as they will be warm inside when running and so should remain drier, and for me at least when not running they are under the roof and dry.

used power supplies do pop up on here quite often. I used a Maplin one at first then saw the bigger one for sale on a local site so upgraded.

Astrozap site says the 6 inch bands are 1.4 amps each , so 3 will be 4.2 amps , however when cold starting they may well draw a higher start up current till the bands warm up (resistance increases with temperature). I assume you have a switch mode style power brick , the ratings on these can be a bit optimistic. Checking with a DVM off load will not give an accurate result as these supplies need a minimum load to regulate and may be clamping down to 5v off load. Do you have a small 12v bulb you can put across the output to check the onload voltage (a 15w car side light bulb is perfect), but it does sound like the unit has been damaged. The controllers (or mine anyway) use pulse width modulation so are in fact on full load then off then on again at high frequency. Your power brick may not like the high current pulses. I recommend a linear style PSU for all astronomical use , even dew bands, more reliable and no high frequency interference to have to worry about, can bleed onto USB cables and affect bandwidth. If you have a fixed obs then a big linear PSU will be an easy thing to have. I have one in mine and have had no problems since installing it, a 13.8 radio ham type is probably best (mounts prefer the higher voltage). You will need to have some inline 12v regulation for the more sensitive equipment like cameras but my dew bands work fine direct from the 13.8 via the level controller.

+1 for a wide field eyepiece first , then a narrower one , then swap to camera. That said if you are well polar aligned , and do a star calibration , you should be there with a GOTO. Do you use plate solving to make sure the scope is properly calibrated for GOTO position , one of the handy things in APT. (solve then sync). I love my Telrad but its not a precision instrument for AP. I use my Telrad and a RACI finder to get right on target. (and of course you need to periodically align Telrad and main scope (and RACI) )

reprocessed in GIMP maybe a bit too oversaturated but its a version to compare

When you do your star alignment are you adjusting to centre the star using the hand controller. (do not unclamp the clutches and move it manually). what lens are you using to align with or are you doing this off the camera view. When aligning , to compensate for backlash , always try to finish centring by using the same 2 out of the 4 direction arrows , (eg up and left or down and right) Overshoot and go back if you need to so that its the same direction every time.

Not had any power issues since I swapped over to a 13.8v linear supply. Previous switch mode power brick would lead to mount LED flashing when slewing. I now run everything , mount , dew heaters etc from the chunky linear and everything seems to go smoothly even with a heavy payload on the mount. You could also , if you invest in some thick 2 core cable , keep the Linear supply under cover and only run out the low voltage outdoors, but don't use the long thin cables that you get as 12v extensions with the dc connectors on , they are way to thin. Thick cable to a low voltage splitter , the last short part can then use those thin connectors to hook up with. Use a waterproof box for the PSU if the nearest building is too far away so you can keep all the mains stuff under cover, mains outdoors is a risky thing , so make sure there is RCD protection.

Sounds like the polar alignment is off by a fair amount , perhaps you bumped the mount after setting it, you don't mention checking the PA before you tried another 3 star alignment. Also are you sure you have both the time and the location set accurately.

Your Canon 600D (I have the same) and an ASI1600 both have fairly large sensors as CCD go. Matched to a 4inch ED scope (I have a Vixen 4 inch and an 80mm (3in+) Skywatcher they fit well as they can then make best use of their resolution as regards sampling. The smaller 72 scopes (3in -) will undersample , but not by a lot , and you should not be put off by this. The online guides are just that , a guide not an absolute rule. Having the larger sensor means that you can get good use out of the camera if you go up in aperature. ( Ha Ha Ha ..... IF !!!! ). Another way to look at it is a 73mm will give a wider view of the sky , so more ends up crammed onto a single pixel. This means you lose a small amount of detail you could have captured, but it is not far away from the maximum you can get under typical sky conditions anyway. The 80mm is narrower and the 4 inch about 3 times smaller area so gives finer detail , if conditions allow. It needs a very clear night for the 4 inch to make full use of its extra resolution at this scale. But it rather depends on what you want to look at , some of the best targets are better in a wider field anyway (eg M31) , which allows single frame capture rather than having to start doing mosaics. as an illustration here is an image I got of M31 with my 600D on my 80ED with a 0.8 reducer/flattener

+1 for this being a Polar Alignment issue as the most likely cause With guiding the Polar Alignment is not so critical , but unguided you will see this kind of drift in one direction over longer times like a 90 minute exposure. Before I guided an error in Polar Alignment of about a degree would give me a similar scale of image drift, so its very sensitive to misalignment. If you stack your images and crop the final output frame you can still get perfectly good results despite a bit of drift so all is not lost.

Had a few hours of darker sky before the bright moon rose to ruin it. A tad windy so used my tiny Equinox ED80 to avoid wind wobble. What with the current news focus it seemed appropriate to have a go at the "North America Nebula" Astromodified Canon 600D, stacked 58 x 90 sec at ISO800 (some darks and bias as well). Didn't take enough care about checking sensor temperature and ran at 30 to 33 degrees, so its all a bit noisy, forgot to unfold the back LED screen away from behind the sensor area so it could get cold air blowing over it. (but hey I'm new to imaging so allowed to make mistakes). Just some basic stretch done in Gimp, about 10 mins processing as I wanted a quick look at the image. It can probably be improved with a bit more time spent processing it.

use your Bahtinov to focus on a nearby bright star first

for some detailed seeing forecasting try this (remember to set for your location) https://www.meteoblue.com/en/weather/outdoorsports/seeing/edinburgh_united-kingdom_2650225 Lots of data and an explanation of each category at bottom of the page

Check if APT (astrophotography tools) is compatible. I use this with my Canon EOS camera and find it very good. https://astrophotography.app/EOS.php it appears to be supported according to the list

Check you have entered the date in the correct format. Skywatcher for example need it to be entered in USA format so its month day then year. So there are 2 options for the 2 November date , one is 02/11/20 , the other is 11/02/20 , confirm which one your mount uses.

NEQ6pro is on the limit for being a mobile mount (for me anyway). I take a dob out sometimes (and will probably get a small grab and go mount for my Equinox 80) Great for a fixed pier though.

Wiki Blue moon A blue moon is an additional full moon that appears in a subdivision of a year: either the third of four full moons in a season, or a second full moon in a month of the common calendar. The phrase in modern usage has nothing to do with the actual color of the Moon, although a visually blue Moon (the Moon appearing with a bluish tinge) may occur under certain atmospheric conditions – for instance, if volcanic eruptions or fires release particles in the atmosphere of just the right size to preferentially scatter red light.

Olly has lots of clear skies and can spend all his time imaging 🧐 Here in the UK with terrible weather we can spend the rainy days tinkering with the complicated software to keep us amused and get it all talking to each other and working so we don't sit tapping our fingers waiting for the odd clear night. 😜 (I do have a ROR base so am not mobile imaging)

Just a quick note , if the focus tube is too far in have you taken out the extension section of the focus tube. When using a DSLR on my Newt I had to unscrew and remove the lens holder , unscrew the extension section (was about 50mm as I recall) then screw the lens holder back on to take my DSLR nosepiece. This way with enough infocus for the DSLR the tube base did not intrude into the light path. The thin join between the extension piece and the main tube can be almost invisible so you dont see it is there sometimes. Having said that I suspect collimation is the thing to check first. (and perhaps your tube does not have an extension piece anyway