Adam1234

1 hour ago, michael8554 said:

If you've ever started a car on a freezing morning with a battery fully charged, after a few seconds of cranking the motor, the load has dragged the battery down to 10V.

It recovers to normal volts after the cranking stops.

In the case of your mount, the load caused by slewing might drop your battery volts to a level the mount complains about.

When you stop slewing and measure the volts all seems fine.......

Michael

I don't have a car, but I think I know what  you mean

Very beautiful image. I can see why it's called the Lion Nebula!

13 hours ago, michael8554 said:

Possible causes of no Dec movement:

Dec clutch not locked. 🙂

Faulty cable or plug to Dec motor 

Low volts under load. 

Finally, get in touch with the previous owner !! 

Michael 

Dec clutch is definitely locked, so it's probably another cause. What do you mean by 'low volts under load'? Contacting the previous owner probably won't be much use as they never used it - they got it as a gift but wasn't interested in astronomy.

Is there a way I can identify what the cause is? I have found a place near to me in Clanfield that does telescope repairs so I can contact them, probably not a good idea for me to tinker around with it as I don't know much about electronics.

6 minutes ago, joe aguiar said:

ops for got to memtion ya the skywatcher hand controller wont work with this mount they make it to only fit their own equipment. BUT I do like the lxd75 mount its a pretty decent mount.

joejaguar

Rechargable batteries is a good idea.

I didn't think the synscan would work but thought I'd check just in case! 

Now to try to get the declination motor working...

Thanks! The guy I bought it off put in new batteries so will use those for the time being.

Just been having a play around with it indoors, getting used to the hand controller menus etc.

I'm not sure the declination motor is working? The RA motor is working fine, it moves when I press the left/right arrows, but the dec axis is not moving at all when I press up/down and if I go into the align menus and pretend to do a star alignment, it moves on the RA axis and then comes up with a motor drive failure?

Hi All, looking for some advice, hopefully someone can help. 

I've just bought a second hand Meade LXD75 as I wanted to upgrade to an Eq mount. It's a few years old but never been used as it was an unwanted Christmas present.

The setup comes with the Meade Autostar hand controller and a battery pack which uses 8 D-type batteries to power the mount.

Would it be safe to use my Synscan hand controller and Celestron powertank that I use with my Skywatcher Dob instead of the supplied hand controller and battery pack or do I have to use these? 

I don't find the hand controller as intuitive as the Synscan and I don't want to keep buying batteries, but I also don't want to use the wrong equipment in case I mess up the electronics in the mount!

Thanks in advance

Adam

1 hour ago, lux eterna said:

I can´t decide what is worst -  a spoiled night due to clouds and a too optimistic forecast, or the opposite when you commited to something else and by chance look up at the stars.

For me its got to be when your commited to something else and there's a clear sky.

Amazing image, well done!

Morning and Merry Christmas to all!. Glad I'm not the only one either! 

My fiance got me this for Christmas - voucher for stargazing and astrophotography at Dark Sky Wales. I couldn't think of a better present (well perhaps maybe a telescope on an equatorial mount, but hey we can't have it all 🤣, I'll have to save up for one or find one 2nd hand)

I took advantage of a momentary gap in the clouds to take a few pictures of Orion the other night and Venus this evening. Taken with my Canon EOS 2000D with EFS 18-55mm lens on tripod. All images are a single exposure.

These 2 of Orion are 10s exposures @ f3.5 ISO1600, with small curve adjustments in photoshop to darken the sky slightly.

This one of Venus is 1s exposure @ f5.6 and ISO1600

Not amazing images but I thought I would share anyway. 

That's incredible, I love the colours 

It's beautiful, nice image

On 12/11/2019 at 22:44, Synchronicity said:

Nice! I'm heading there in January, would you mind sharing the settings you used?

Thanks

Michael

 

Hope you have a great time in Iceland and hope you get some better views of the Aurora than I did. 

Very nice

Great image 

Lovely colours in both. I prefer the first one too, looks slightly more natural, although both are equally amazing 

Really nice images 

Lovely images, nice to see a bit of colour, really brings out those darker areas.

On 05/12/2019 at 11:38, Horwig said:

Had a trip to OZ back in Oct, and finally got round to processing this panorama

It was taken at point Quobba on the West coast. You know it's dark when the Zodiacal light counts as light pollution.

 

Huw

What an incredible image 

I took some photos of the moon the other night when we actually had a clear sky. Some of the pictures I stacked 10 - 20 with Autostakkert (first time using it) and some levels adjustment on photoshop. 

Nice photo

Nice photo

Nice photos, I really like the close up

Very nice images

22 hours ago, Mark1489 said:

Hi Adam! I really like your Orion Nebula, it looks very natural! I’ve noticed in your sub screenshot that it’s an 8 bit image, I’m not familiar with your camera but try shooting at 12 or 14bit if possible! That should capture greater detail per sub 😃

Thanks Mark, glad you like it, I appreciate  the feedback! 

I save my stacked images in DSS as 16 bit, but I'll have a look on my canera and see if I can shoot at a higher bit.

Hopefully get round to putting the original m31 subs on dropbox tonight or tomorrow