AstroMuni

4 hours ago, powerlord said:

thanks Guy, it was shot with my 300PDS though - not an SCT. Think Iraqi supergun 🙂

Very nice image 👍

On 30/05/2023 at 09:55, Kiwi_Brad said:

The two images are both of the southern pin wheel and a single frame.  Different exposures but you can see the differences in the images.  The second image is using the L-enhance filter.  I have a pds130. Eq6-r mount and use a Nikon DSLR

I would suggest taking images where the stars are slightly out of focus so you can see if its collimated properly. Its tricky to get the back focus distance correctly and it took me a multiple tries to achieve a situation where I was happy with it. Also worth checking the tilt as I struggle with getting the camera+CC perfectly in line with the focal plane. Have you upgraded the eyepiece clamp to a compression ring one so that this can be better addressed?

On 26/05/2023 at 16:57, labtech1122 said:

When I go into photometric colour calibration and search for the NGC object it doesn't come up with anything.

There could be a couple of reasons for that - no internet connection, the provider's server (eg SIMBAD) is down. Otherwise I havent had any such issues

As long as Astroberry relies solely on one person to take it to the next stage then we have a potential problem. IMO it should be a collaborative effort. So lets hope there are others out there who can help push Astroberry onto the 64bit space.

16 hours ago, vlaiv said:

This brings on an interesting topic - how many galaxies can be actually seen with a naked eye?

We could include our own as we can see the core 🙂 And we can see a few nebulae too eg M42

On 28/05/2023 at 12:46, Ravi Hegde said:

For visual astronomy, which scope performs better? 130mm reflector or 102mm refractor?

One aspect thats also important is the mount. Get the sturdiest mount that you can afford. Generally the stock mounts supplied with these scopes are its weakest link.

On 28/05/2023 at 15:24, SwiMatt said:

how much work is collimation really? So much has been written about it on the internet, but somehow it's still unclear to me. Especially in the beginning, when one is still learning, I'm afraid it could be so offputting that I would end up not observing at all.

Dont be put off by it...heres the good part..if you are not collimated perfectly, its still OK. All it means is the scope is not making full use of the optics. The chance that your scope is delivered to you badly out of collimation is low so you should be able to make a start. If you are seeing stars with strange shapes other than round then you know you need to collimate.

Learning to collimate is a bit like learning to drive a car, initially it seems hard and confusing but in a couple of days it seems routine. And once collimated, you may just need to tweak it once in a while to make sure its still aligned.

On 28/05/2023 at 17:47, Goldfinger said:

When one looks up at the night sky and sees all those pinpoints if lights, are they most likely stars or galaxies?

I'm a little confused since I've googled this topic recently and they all seem to run 50-50. 

As already mentioned above they are all going to be stars from our own galaxy. Galaxies will appear as fuzzy blobs even in telescopes when viewed visually. With cameras you are likely to see more detail. Think about it this way, our nearest galaxy is around 70,000 light years away. Our very own galaxy has a radius of approx 50k ly and we cant even see all the stars which are possibly there on the outer periphery. So the only time we can really observe a star from another galaxy is when there is an event like a supernova (eg the one thats visible in M101 at the moment)

7 minutes ago, jfrijhoff said:

I did download and install the driver from skywatcher website, the following one: I rebooted at multiple stages, still nothing:

I was referring to EQMOD/ASCOM drivers. This has more info https://eq-mod.sourceforge.net/docs/EQMOD_Doc.pdf

On 09/05/2023 at 19:17, Lightfoot said:

I'm interested in planets and galaxies and just might want to try astrphotography at some point.

How about something like a MAK, something like this https://www.firstlightoptics.com/telescopes-in-stock/skywatcher-skymax-127-eq3-2.html

This would leave you some budget to get decent eyepieces etc.

Have you got the right drivers and have you rebooted after the driver install?

While we seem to have a glimmer of light for RPi being more readily available soon(?) there is no clear future for astroberry. Whilst there is stellarmate OS, there is no prebuilt like for like equivalent for astroberry in the 64bit space. There are many scripts available to compile your own version of Kstars and PHD2, but the rest of the useful tools that astroberry provided are not in the mix. 😞 Just my rant...

21 hours ago, jwhitaker23 said:

I'm looking to purchase a telescope for astrophotography and also moon/planet viewing. I have a limited budget so was looking for some advice.

I have used the Celestron 130EQ for astrophotography (see my signature line) but as @ONIKKINEN has mentioned, the mount is not suited for that and I upgraded to the HEQ5 pro. The scope is more suited for deep sky objects than planets - you would need something with a longer focal length like an SCT or Mak for planetary.

On 14/05/2023 at 10:33, Michaelxr3 said:

I’ve recently bought a HEQ5 pro. Last night I spent several hours attempting to set it all up with the majority of guidance from YouTube. Achieved some progress but confused! Should I start with polar alignment or home position?

I have the HEQ5 pro and its definitely PA first and then place in home position. The bit that was confusing for me in the manual was the polar scope reticle. Mine has a clockface and not the one shown in the manual. If yours has the same then you just need to get polaris at the right position on this clock. I use an app on my phone to tell me the correct position of polaris at the time of alignment. I actually ended up writing a short FAQ on this after various discussions on this forum.

The other thing that got me down a rabbit hole was people suggesting opening up the polarscope to realign the reticle so that 0 is up in the home position. You DONT need to do that, just rotate the mount around the RA axis until the 0 position is at the 12 o'clock position. The important thing to check is what @carastro has mentioned about checking if the polarscope is correctly aligned.

There is no bubble level on my HEQ5 pro. The paving is quite level where I set up so I havent felt the need to use a spirit level.

Others have explained other tips quite well so I wont repeat. 🙂 Good luck.

Nice one @tomato 👍.

Here is my attempt - a quick 120s x 30, captured on Saturday night. It must have been a massive SN for it to be seen at similar brightness as the foreground stars from our galaxy.

@DPF also remember that when you increase the magnification, you will find that the slightest touch to the scope will cause the image to jitter. So bear this in mind and you may wish to go for a more sturdy tripod to reduce this jitter.

18 hours ago, MessierMatt said:

@AstroMuni thanks for the feedback.  I have moved to 0.4 single exposure time which has reduced the elongation a little.  I'm also sure collimation is not spot on and am still practicing with this.

It seems odd that such a small exposure is causing so much drift 😞 Perhaps someone who has done imaging without tracking can comment. This may help https://beltoforion.de/en/astrophotography/camera_settings.php

Nice image! Stars are showing a bit of elongation that maybe because of slight drift or its not correctly collimated. If you are seeing elongated stars in the individual images then its collimation.

On 15/05/2023 at 13:38, Astro_by_sona said:

do you think I need a primary mirror clip mask?

Sorry to hear about your personal loss.

Ref spikes, I would say its down to personal preference on how much diffraction is acceptable for you? The mirror clip mask should reduce the spikes in the centre, and in order to make the large spikes pointy(er) you would need to straighten the vanes.

Also bear in mind that its not often that you are going to image a star as bright as Vega 🙂

Nice mount, btw 🙂

On 07/04/2023 at 11:44, Space Oddities said:

This focuser from Artesky is sadly only compatible with the 150P-DS and bigger, but not the 130P-DS due to the lack of a notch on the 130P-DS (just above the stickers, on the picture above).

The other reason maybe the curvature of the OTA as well, so worth checking this too.

On 08/05/2023 at 14:34, nikooo said:

Hi guys, I recently bought a dobson 250/1200 telescope, and It's my first telescope that I ever bought. Do you have any advice for amateur?

Hi Nikooo, the first thing I would do is get to know how to use your scope. eg. how to use the finder and get the object in your eyepiece etc. Learn about objects in the sky either using an app on the phone (skychart) or via a PC based software like Stellarium.  Use the lowest magnification eyepiece and learn these.

If you find that you are NOT getting round stars then you can look into improving the collimation mentioned above in other posts. Also feel free to post your questions here once you get started. Good luck.

On 08/05/2023 at 17:21, alecras2345 said:

If you search an object you can choose which telescope you want to use canaries or chile,  also it tells you the weather forecast for a certain night.

Hope you are enjoying it Ash 🙂 Good luck. Images look great

21 hours ago, kev100 said:

Hi, and thanks for the tip. Can you point me to the strips you referred to?

Something like these https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/225443294900 which you can cut and insert into the gaps. So depending on the play in your focuser you may need thicker ones.

I also tried the plumbers PTFE tape but that didnt work and I realised that you need something more stiffer .

1 hour ago, powerlord said:

Do you reckon NASA is buying site licences from Russel to redo all Hubble's images ? Do you reckon they'd tell anyone if they did ?

😃

Now you are getting into areas like the ZWO ASIAir controversy. 😉 

2 hours ago, Mr Spock said:

Aligning to North is easy - my patio is perfectly aligned. It's the azimuth I'm confused about - something tells me I need to lower the S or raise the N for it to track accurately. With the old motor, E-W tracking was perfect. It's that little bit of N-S drift I need to eliminate.

Before you make alterations to the actual platform, suggest you put props under the unit to raise the level at the appropriate end. That will give you an idea of how much correction is needed. And then you can decide best approach.