DaveL59

How's the overall weight of the tripod, extender and mount Neil? 

Am seriously thinking I should do the same and get the extender to keep some stability while still able to clear the fence, but I leave the rig assembled and hoik the assembled tripod and mount out to the garden as one, with just the OTA removed. Guess I could drop the weights off to make that easier if needs be.

2 hours ago, jonathan said:

I'm curious about the UV cure - I have read on these forums a time of about 20 minutes, but is that direct sunlight shining through glass itself or is scattered UV sufficient, e.g. eyepiece laying on it's side?

If working with lens elements or OTA glass or mirror surfaces etc I would recommend a bulb blower (with long plastic nozzle) to blast away dust and small particles etc, I could only find a medium-sized one which I bought from eBay, I wanted a much larger version (the bulb itself the size of my hand) but couldn't find where to buy one from.  I've seen advice not to use an air duster as this can spew out liquid propellant.

hi Jonathan, ideally you'd not have the sun directly aiming into the lens as mentioned elsewhere. Risk of heat damage and of course potential to start a fire if the sun gets focused onto something thru the lens. Offset from the sun so that diffuse UV can flood the component should be fine. It will only kill fungus tho, not remove it, so while it will prevent spread you'd need to strip things down to clean the surfaces if you felt it worthwhile. HTH

I see they're listing a SW150 on EQ5 synscan at sussex police ebay account
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Sky-Watcher-BKP150-Telescope-With-Aluminium-Tripod-Untested-For-Spares-Or-Repair/164394108516?hash=item2646a70664:g:dU4AAOSwMltfaLKi

So long as the sun isn't directly hitting the lens then you could be fine but 20 mins I'd reckon being a bit short. More usually for indirect solar you'd be looking at a few hours perhaps and even repeated on a few days. How frequent is hard to say, depends how much the gear has been exposed to the potential of spores and storage conditions. I more use a UV light than the sun, more reliable than the sun here and is convenient and less of a risk of starting a fire 🙂 

looks good Gina, tho you'll miss views of the flies and eight-legged beasties like this 😄 

I see svbony now do this type too
https://www.svbony.com/SV407-Super-Wide-Binocular/

takes filters and can be tripod mounted.

15 minutes ago, Gasconman said:

But the whole point of it is that the phone has to be aimed at the sky, perpendicular to the OTA in both planes, otherwise the 'Push-To guidance' isn't going to work.
If you use a decent phone holder, like that Manfrotto I'm using which has a pretty fierce spring and dimpled rubber grips, there's no way the phone is going to drop out.

yeah I have on order a holder to use. Reason in part I made that remark is if you look at the celestron starsense explorer, using a mobile parallel to the OTA, tho that has plate-solving using the camera. Downside of the phone having to be perpendicular is its a bit like using a straight thru finder vs a RACI one, much more of a pain in the neck...

probably synscan init

make sure it's a regulated supply too...

managed to flash a ported Note-7 ROM onto my old Note-3 last night, so it now runs droid v6.01 and SkEye installs and runs. Will need to sort a suitable phone holder for it and then I can give this a go. Am thinking to use one of the Manfrotto 200PL plates to fix it on the tube ring, that way I can use the quick-release to swap between a couple of the scopes easily. Pity you have to aim it at the sky as if taking a pic rather than having the phone parallel to the OTA which would be easier when aiming high, not to mention less chance the phone might drop face down... 

Are the arms that connect the eyepieces to the centre focus spindle both straight and not loose? When you can get focus with the RH dioptre side is the LH side needing in or outward focus. I wonder if the dioptre side has been apart at some stage and reassembled incorrectly, limiting the travel needed to get focus.

that's a lovely looking scope James, a real beauty!

I expect the black is some sort of lacquer finish, tho if its shellac or something else I'd not be able to guess at. Probably hard to replicate these days but not impossible. The brass screws you may be able to obtain new replacements, tho they'll be imperial size. If desired the new brass can be aged to be a closer match to the existing ones.

Have fun restoring it tho, and using it too of course 🙂 

2 hours ago, Rusted said:

The flint is particularly prone to large, scalloped, surface flaking when your hand shakes.
Or you lose patience with gravity as the lens clings desperately to its cell. It probably has far more sense than you do at this point!

 

you mean something like this...

In this case tho the lens "cell" was quite different and just the small step between the inner and outer tubes securing the lens in place and that was enough for the lens to tilt as I was turning the dew shield outer section trying to overcome the glue that was securing the inner and outer sections together. A lesson tho for sure in how fragile the flint glass can be. Now this lens still performs very well after blacking over the spalled part. The rainbow area returned to "normal once out of the cell tho I'm aware it is a weakened area that could fail later on of course.

The above lens is a glued 3-inch vintage doublet where the ED in question is 2 air-spaced lenses of course, so double the opportunity for a lens to decide to go its own way as you try to free it from its prison...

out of interest, what is the eyepiece you're looking at? Sounds like it was a gem and rare to find?

as Alan said, UV will kill the spores. Coating may already be slightly etched, or more. To clean you'd need to be prepared to strip the optics down and clean the glass and other components, how complex that would be will depend on the eyepiece.

This may help in terms of cause, prevention and treating
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3864060/

If you've a bit of wood to fit that slot in the adapter you'll get away with not marking it too as well as add leverage 🙂 

Just saw your reply to me as I edit this one. Yeah I get what you mean, option then is get another adaptor, perhaps. You wouldn't lose the AZ-GTI ability to work if the mount is refitted to the adapter, but does sound like it'd be a pain each time you want to swap things around if it gets stuck like this. Has to be tight enough tho so it doesn't come loose in use but then it's hard to remove later.

planning a production line for other members? 😉 

I've sometimes found on the TAL-M that the knuckle under the L-shaped ALT-AZ is hard to undo, with the AZ axle just rotating even with the clutch tight. Similar to what I'm guessing is under that adaptor. You perhaps will cringe but try slacken the clutch and turn the RA axle a bit then retighten, then a light tap on the adaptor with a hammer in the undo direction may be enough to overcome the resistance and shock the thread to start to turn. Once it does it'll undo ok. Don't overdo the pounding tho or you may create a flat spot in the bearings.

doing a search, turns out someone here already crossed the bridge of finding an adaptor:

Looks like what you need to fit direct and then hopefully have enough in travel.

ah yes, just measured the one on mine, the silver part is 39mm rather than 43mm, how useful 😞 

Something like this may work:
https://fotodioxpro.com/products/m39-m42

Would need to confirm the thread pitch tho, mine looks to be 1.25 pitch rather than 1mm in that listing.

I believe on the SW130 the inner silver drawtube has a T-thread (or T2?) but I can't confirm for certain, having neither manuals or a T-thread to try on it. That would likely make a big difference tho as you'd gain at least half an inch of in travel which may be enough. Is your helical threaded, in which case its worth a try?

got me to thinking if I can co-opt an older droid phone, sadly tho they are droid 4 or 5 variants and SkEye needs v6 or above. Might have a look at updating to LineageOS 16 or 17 to bring them up to v9/10 tho I think the older Note-1 still wouldn't be useful. The note-3 may be up to the job tho but it'd lose the S-pen apps going that route.

For polar, I tend to be lazy and either use a compass to aim the RA to north on the EQ2 and manual EQ5 or the app for the EQ5 goto. Seems to work fine for me but I'm visual not imaging so high accuracy tracking isn't a problem.

I was tempted to suggest having extra wings on the camera housing, with threaded holes or captive nuts to allow you to secure the camera separately and allow removal of the dome but figured that'd add a complication and perhaps less secure dome clamping in terms of load on the o-ring. Looks like you figured a solution tho which should work fine 🙂 

sounds sensible, mine's a black tube 130/900 SW130 and I've had the cell out with no issues, but if the nut does come away for sure it'll be a challenge to refix them, epoxy would likely be better than superglue but either way allow a lot of time to outgas before refitting the optical bits. I was thinking about lifting the mirror to use a modified CCTV camera with it but I've other scopes so no real need. I did lift the mirror in the TAL-1 so it could use regular 1.25-inch eyepieces which was simple to do, just used longer screws and springs and it's been very stable.

With the SW130 I've had no issue with eyepieces or barlows but I've not fitted a helical to it. I guess that's increased the length of the focuser tube which causes you to not have the in travel needed.

you'd want to mark the lens edges so that you can align to the same orientation when reassembling, a sharpie or wax pencil would achieve that, and make accurate note of where spacers etc are located. However getting the elements optically aligned doesn't sound trivial on these from what others have said on other threads so might be best left to a specialist to do this work.