TerryMcK

There is an alternative to ultimately using a long USB 3 cable. You can keep all your cable lengths short into a local USB3 hub and use Silex DS 600 USB 3.0 Device Server https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01G9SYGLU The long cable to the imaging computer is then just an Ethernet cable transmitting data at up to gigabit rates. The USB devices appear to the computer as virtual USB devices and work exactly like regular USB devices. I have seen this used many times with great success.

Other alternatives are the Raspberry PI4 which again has multiple USB3/USB2 ports and can be kept local to the telescope. Astroberry or similar software works really well on the PI4 and I can vouch for that approach. You no longer need a laptop outside with the PI4.

One thing you have to consider with the IDAS D2 is correct orientation. Meaning the male thread M48 has to be camera side, the female M48 thread has to be sky side. On my WO flattener I had to buy a male/male converter to ensure the filter was the correct way around.

I have the D2 mounted after the field flattener and before the sensor. I don’t get any star halos but the sensor is cooled and I have a dew strap around the field flattener/filter assembly.

I use Photoshop CC and pay the £9.98 a month photography plan. Although I got it cheaper (A few pence cheaper 😆) as I paid 12 months in advance. Adobe’s model is rental rather than buying outright these days. Advantage is you always have the most up to date versions.

My wife and I watched the latest episode S1E6 tonight and both agreed it was easily the best so far. No spoilers for those yet to watch.

As I don't have the luxury of an observatory I have to break down the rig so I'd been on the lookout for something to store my flat panel generator in. Rather than pay vast prices I had a look on Amazon and found this https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B014QV4POK/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 - a set of three padded gadget bags for £22

The middle sized one stores the Lakeside focuser unit, the Raspberry Pi and power supply. The small one I don't yet have a use for but no doubt will and the larger one fits the flats panel (it's an Aurora Flatfield Panel D100mm, with 12V Inverter and works really well if you are interested). So no more storing in a cardboard box

Use the native zwo driver for the 120 in PHD2 rather than the ASCOM one and loop for 2 seconds. Set it at 8 bit and it will work fine. The 120 is USB2 only so there is no benefit from using a USB3 cable.

8 minutes ago, Stuart1971 said:

So if it’s 25 degrees indoors and you can set to -20 that’s 45 below ambient, what camera will go that low...that’s a huge drop.... 😮, mine will do 30 below ambient, so if it’s 20 degrees inside mine will go to -10... 

So I guess it’s all to do with what the camera will go to below ambient..? Which should be in the camera specs.. correct..?

Hi Stuart. Yes my ZWO ASI cameras are TEC cooled and can go 40 to 45C below ambient. If you decide on the absolute temperature you want to image at, say -20C, you can do your darks at any time. Just make sure the exposure length and gain are the same as your lights and you are away. 
I keep a library of different settings and do new ones every 4 months or so as the sensor ages.

Stuart I think you may be misinterpreting something here. I use APT, EKOS and NINA with my ASI cooled cameras. I set the cooling to -20C and it cools the camera sensor to -20C regardless if I started off at +20C, 0C or -8C

42 minutes ago, RAR_MI_USA said:

the only series I will never watch past the first episode

You didn’t give it long enough! It really improved in my humble opinion - but it’s your choice.

It’s ok so far and I appreciate Frakes direction, the appearance of Seven (and Echeb) and of course Sir Pat. However the dialog sometimes leaves a little to be desired. The CGI ideas are great and inventive.

 I am committed to watch it all the way through to the end as I like anything Trek but fear it might not be recommissioned as there is a lot of tinternet buzz and negative hype saying that “it isn’t real Trek”.

Hopefully they will give another series as it does have so much more to give like Discovery did.

Incredible!

I’ve never heard of Cheap Astronomy. Where are you based as a quick Google found cheapastro.com in Australia?

yes cheap tat that they ended up selling was cause of their demise sadly.

Just a point. Maplin only exists in a very minor form now as a website so no stores anymore. 

I worked at Birchwood until June 2019 and it is only 20 minutes away from me so I shall try to make it this year. From memory I think it is Bortle 7/8 so not good for visual.

It might be SH2-261 Lower’s Nebula

The 200pds and an HEQ5 pro combination is ok for visual if you don’t mind sometimes being positioned at strange angles or stretching to get your eye to the eyepiece. It is also borderline when imaging especially when you start hanging cameras and a guide scope on the rig. At which point you will wish you had gone for the HEQ6. The 200Pds really is a big sail on a goto mount and stability is best with a bigger mount.

If going just for visual work then a Dobsonian is a far better choice. If you are going to go down the photo path then forget a reflector and get a refractor. 70 to 80mm aperture. You can still do visual with a diagonal/eyepiece in comfort and you get a wider field of view so you can see objects in context. You can still get great views of solar system objects and the addition of a barlow will get you a little closer.

Your 700 quid budget means you may have to look at the 2nd hand market but even then it will be a light. You will get a decent visual dobby for that sort of cash though. This one is a goto dobby https://www.firstlightoptics.com/dobsonians/skywatcher-skyliner-200p-flextube-goto.html that says you can attach a dslr (I can’t vouch for that as there might be prime focus issues with that scope).

I’m glad to see Dr Becky mentioning the 60000 communication satellites being launched by Elon Musk’s SpaceX corporation in her latest Youtube video. 

She said the RAS and the American equivalent had had a conference with SpaceX and others to express the concerns about the impact on professional astronomers. Obviously to amateurs like us it also has a major impact - when the clouds finally do part to reveal the night sky.

I don’t believe that the StarLink ( or other similar systems) will bring “free internet” to the entire world as somebody must have to pay for the system. When you see the mesh of satellites it is frightening. Skynet (Terminator) springs to mind!

That looks about right to me. As jombouk says there is a setting on the handset to turn down the brightness of the illumination.

I found, when I used the polarscope, that it was best to focus on something distant during the day to ensure you had focus. Then at night the polarscope sometimes shows dust specs etc. Ensure that the RA is positioned so that the hole in the shaft is clear and just persevere. Get a right angle polarscope adaptor and that will make a vast difference to finding Polaris. 

Better still buy an electronic pole finder like PoleMaster or Ioptron iPolar and let the camera in those devices find Polaris for you. I mentioned in another thread since using PoleMaster I can be polar aligned within 2 minutes - and my knees are not dirty nor do I have a crick in my neck.

12 hours ago, RadekK said:

Well, it should not cause any problem whatsoever. Except python 2.x is obsolete now 😉 However if it works it works.

Thanks Radek. 

A cheap finderscope like a SW 9x50 clone is good. Paired to a decent mono camera it works well.

I just had a brainwave and did a google. I found a compiled version for Raspbian of libopencv_2.4.11.deb.zip from this website https://github.com/Nolaan/libopencv_24

I installed it into /usr/local/lib and bingo PoleMaster now works on Astroberry - problem solved

Yes it appears as Astroberry uses Raspbian so the software package from QHY CCD for Polemaster does indeed only seem to run on Ubuntu Mate - I omitted to read the first half of their instructions on their website which talked about burning an image of MATE. Oh well .... polar align using Winders and everything else automated using Ekos. The law of Sod - until some bright spark (not me!) ports it to Raspbian.

Building an observatory and having the scope permanently aligned is a long way down the road so that isn't an option either.

One thing I have found is that there doesn't appear to be any way of setting mount limits in Ekos as you can in EQMOD ASCOM. So it is possible to clout the tripod or pier with the backend of the scope. I haven't done it yet but can see it is possible.

Reading threads on the Indi forum it appears that it was thought about 5 years ago but doesn't look to have been implemented. Anybody come across this?