Varavall

The RRP of a 10m Startech USB 3 active cable is around £170 and the hubs are £50-115 depending on number of ports. So say over £200! But the Mele at £500 ish is water impermeable? Thinking of those heavy dews. You pays your money and takes your choice. I sit in the comfort of my home with the cables running through the wall.

If you go for this, make sure it is an ACTIVE powered cable, lesser will not do!

Hi I use a 10m Startech active powered USB 3 cable (expensive but very good) and that sorted out the problems I had which you are having now. Until I save the pennies and go for a Pegasus Powerbox, I connect the filter wheel and HEQ5 EQMOD cable to the USB 2 hub on my ASI1600MM which connects to the Startech, and the ZWO EAF and guide camera to a separate USB 2 mini-hub on a 15m powered USB 2 cable (cheap and cheerful), both running to my laptop in the house. Yes, I use NINA and PHD2 also. Adrian

Nice image. Is that with native focal length or was a Powermate/Barlow used? Adrian

I was wondering if a piece of velcro strip could be used to compete the circle using the product here https://www.amazon.co.uk/Temperature-Regulator-Universal-Telescopes-Eyepieces/dp/B08LGRVF9C giving you the 50cm needed. I have one of these and do not use the regulator as mine would cut out after a few hours and needed to be reset, but without the regulator it gets nice and warm and I have never had any dew issues on my 80mm scope, so maybe a solution to heat a larger aperture. If you are Amazon Prime you can return it free of charge if no good. Adrian

Hi If you are doing photography and using plate solving there won't be a problem. If visual, well when I have a software glitch and lose connection to the my HEQ5, I hit park to home position so EQMOD thinks its moved the telescope there, I then go to the telescope and release the clutches to place the scope in the home position. I then go and reset the software and when I reconnect over EQMOD I unpark and it slews correctly. So in a long winded way, I think you should be OK. If using the hand controller, then park, power off, change scopes, release clutches and re-balance, put scope back to home position, tighten clutches and Bob's your uncle. Adrian

Hi all I searched the sky for an appropriate Ha target as there was a full moon, so I plumped for NGC7822. in Cepheus. Location: My home, Terra Alta, Tarragona, Spain the night of 9th September 2022. Without the Moon usually Bortle 3/4. Kit: SW HEQ5 Pro Rowan belted; SW 200pds with SW coma corrector; ZWO 1600MM-cool; filters Astrodon 5nm Ha and Tru balance RGB; guided with QHY5III462C on TS 80mm finder/guider; software CdeC, PHD2 and NINA. Subs: 17 x 900s Ha; 2 x 120s each RGB for capturing stars. Calibrated, aligned and stacked in ASTAP; processed in Starnet and GIMP. Using the Ha as luminence channel also. Colour chosen to give best detail, at least to my old eyes.

Yup, that seems to be my life since taking up astrophotography. Thanks for the pointers with APP, I'll give that a whirl and see what comes out. And yes, it's the same dataset used in each programme.

Hi Andrew Because they want to integrate with ASIair, and QHY's don't work with them. I also have the ZWO ASI1600MM so I am not anti-ZWO, but I don't want to be limited to just using ZWO. Disparate products can be run through the Pegasus Powerboxes for example. The QHY has a smaller form factor so depending on the setup that may be an advantage. As they say, you pays your money and takes your choice!

Hi A good upgrade would be to the QHY5III462C at around £219 with IR850nm and IR block filters or £249 with methane, IR pass and UV/IR block filters. At IR it acts virtually as a mono camera and makes an excellent guide camera and with the filter makes an excellent colour planetary camera. I love it purely for guiding, but soon will put it through it's paces when the planets are at the meridian at a reasonable hour. I made the move QHY5-lI-C to the QHY5III462C. Adrian

Hi Below are 2 mosaics of M31 the top one from ASTAP and the bottom from APP. The subs are all luminance of 300s taken on the same night, then processed in ASTAP and APP. The resulting 6 panel mosaics show different issues. ASTAP has gaps between some of the panels, whereas APP shows different background luminosities for each panel. I guess there are two questions: 1. How best to eliminate the gaps in ASTAP; and 2. How to equalize the backgrounds in APP. I'm all ears for the solutions!

Hi I would suggest looking in the mirror, then going to a well known online emporium and buying a stand to hold the drill (assuming you have a drill) and appropriate size drill bit and tap. Probably be cheaper than paying someone to do what is a very simple job and you will have the tools to do the job again! Adrian

Hi all Looks like I'm first out the trap, probably because of the lousy weather in the UK; lucky you 😁 IC59 - Ghost of Cassiopeia. Taken on night of 5th September from my home in the mountains of Tarragona. SW 200pds, HEQ5 with Rowan belts, ZWO ASI1600MM-Cool, Astrodon Tru balance RGB, Astrodon 5nm Ha, Optolong 7.5nm Sii & Oiii, Guider TS 80mm with QHY5III462C. Software NINA, PHD2, ASTAP, GIMP & Starnet. Images: 11 x 600s Ha; 10 x 600s Sii; 9 x 600s Oiii; 10 x 120s each for RGB. Aligned and stacked in ASTAP; processed in GIMP and star removal by Starnet. Adrian

Hi I use a Startech 10m active USB 3 cable which I run from inside the house to the mount. It has worked flawlessly over the past 18 months and is out in all weathers, well the business end with the power supply are protected by the clamshell cover during inclement days. Cost me around £100, but worth every penny for glitch free nights. I did try the Amazon USB3 cables, but beyond 1.5m they are useless! Adrian

Hi I did similar by going to my local scrapyard and got a piece of 10mm aluminium alloy plate (cost about £1) and drilled and tapped some holes then attached my TS 80mm finder/guider scope to the top of the main scope. Rock solid! You can see it if you look past the cables (now tidied up) in the photo. The Zwo guide camera has gone and been replaced with the lovely QHY5III462C which is almost a mono camera when used with the IR pass filter. Adrian

Hi Yes I did try. The problem seems to be in two plates only in Oiii, so when I move those stars to coincide with the other channels, the stars from the other 2 plates move out of alignment. I tried aligning and stacking each plate, then mosaicking each channel, then aligning the mosaicked channels before importing into GIMP, and I got the same misalignment in 2 of the plates. Looks as if there is a problem with the astronometric alignment in ASTAP. As its only the Oiii channel, I think I will need to run another imaging session for all 4 plates and see what happens, if the clouds part before it gets too low and the Moon comes again. Exactly how I did it.

I have created a 4 panel mosaic of the Lagoon Nebula, but as can be seen the Oiii channel is out of sync on 1 or 2 panels. My process was to capture Ha for each panel, then Oiii and then Sii over 3 nights, then stack, align and mosaic each channel, then align each mosaic. Is that the best way or would it be better to do all the channels for each panel over say 4 nights? The images are 5x each NB for 300 seconds each, then aligned ,stacked and mosaicked in ASTAP and processed in GIMP. Equipment- HEQ5 Pro rowan mod, SW 200pds, ZWO ASI1600MM-cool, Astrodon 5nm HA, Optolong 7.5nm Oiii and Sii, controlled by NINA. Any hints most welcome. Ignore the excessive green hue. PS I have learned that I need aa beefier computer and a camera rotator. All donations kindly accepted 😉 Adrian

If that's what they like to call it 😆 Solar scopes appear quite often in the secondary marketplace so keep looking and prepare to pounce.

Well the tilt tuned version sells in the US for $1500, but seem unavailable in Europe/UK at the moment. The ones at FLO are pressure tuned and are multipurpose (i.e. night and solar) and are clearly much more expensive.

£850 seems about half price of new. It's not a pressure tuned version, but a tilt tuned version.

It is useful as far as it goes in locating the screws and adjusting the backlash. However, when the mount is loaded there is some flexure/torsion/compression within the mount, therefore binding can occur. If a small telescope is being mounted, then probably not a problem. From experience mounting a SW 200pds with guidescope, cameras, etc then beware, binding is likely, so personally I would check the backlash once the setup is complete. In my case the RA did bind, so a quick adjustment was required.

I hope that is backed up 😁

Having been an IT consultant for 10 years I can't count the number of times people shout "HELP! my computer has died, how do I get my files back" and my response was "where do you keep your backup?" Invariably I get the reply "what's that". Lots of heartache and tears easily avoided. Take heed 😉

A bit of further info is that the erratic behaviour was during 3 star alignment. It is possible my power source dropped voltage during the rapid slews and that messed the handset electronics. If you have a beefy battery, i.e. a heavy one, then maybe all fine. Of course it could just be my mount. Adrian

Hi From my experience with my HEQ5 if the voltage drops to anywhere near 12v it does not function correctly. I run it at 13.5v but I do that with a mains power supply and a transformer (5A, 13.5V output). So maybe someone with experience running one from a battery can give their experiences. Apart from that the HEQ5 is very capable mount and I run it probably overloaded for those who follow the recommended loads (SW200pds, 80mm guidescope, ASI1600MM, filter wheel, electronic focuser, etc). I did the Rowan belt upgrade (very easy to do) and it tracks superbly. But for a portable mount, my back aches for you 😉 I made those myself from bits I bought from a well known internet retailer. I can make them to custom length, put in splitters, etc. Cheap and cheerful but does the job. How would you be planning to use these in the wild? Take some sort of computer or dedicated device like ASIair? Depending on how long your exposures are, well more than say 15 seconds, I think you would need guiding. That's my twopenny worth and good luck.