kmaslin

should have stated that was only looking at this for astrophotography so image can be quite dim (and using a Herschel wedge to cut out majority of sunlight

If someone has used a 1nm filter would be interested to know if they see any structure (apart from sunspots) 

Has anyone tried a 1nm filter? Aware they are not cheap >£500 with a supplier in US but wonder if significant improvement?

Reconsidered and will put them side by side

Oh should have said as well the mount is Ioptron CEM120 so can easily manage the overall weight - just wondering about strain on optics 

Does anyone know what is the maximum weight of a 2nd scope that can be attached to the Celestron losmandy bar without distorting the main scope? Would a 10kg refractor have an effect?

Thanks but the standard fitting that cones with the RASA is 42mm and therefore covers up the guide camera. Therefore need a RASA fitting with minimum 48mm or better still 54mm - have googled but can't find one

Anyone figured how to fit large aperture adapter 48mm minimum (and where from?) to female 54mm thread on camera?

Will this 2600 Duo work with 8" RASA or is the guide chip outside the image frame?

Thanks guys for all the input

Thankfully have found a more powerful PSU and it is working again 😁

Now will see if I can update the firmware and then test on the Vixen SXD mount to see if it works

tried swapping polarity - no change. Think it is dead....

Oh that is weird. I didn't have the original power supply but just used a spare 12V 2A unit I had knocking about

Was chuffed when I first plugged it in and it fired up after 15+ years (don't think the unit was ever used) 

However after 3 or 4 times of testing it stopped - which means I might have fried it as am sure the normal PSU have +ve to central pin (confused that it did work?)

Will try the other way around - nothing to lose...

Come across and old Vixen Sphinx SXD eq mount which had a Starbook 1 controller. This is over 15 years old and cant get the Starbook to work

Could replace the Starbook 1 for a Starbook 10 but they are over £800!

Has anyone managed to make a rig to control the Vixen mount?

Otherwise can try to sell the mount for visual work only as can handle a big scope eg 50lb

IF do 2 versions of the on axis unit, one for aps sized sensors and one for full frame approx 50mm diagonal. As for video can't see why it doesn't work the same. Also most cmos sensors have very good ir sensitivity and usually needs to be cut off to stop star bloating. Oh and here is a fun article about clever multi-split imaging 

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12567-021-00418-9

Thanks Dan most informative. Still reviewing this as possible option as usually guiding is good for my SCT, but galaxy season can get hard work finding guide star. I use Starlight Xpress cameras as guide cameras as their QE etc is excellent compared to previous 120/178mm camera. Any more advice would welcome 😀 

Has anyone got experience of on-axis guiding, especially the setup from Innovations Foresight? Not cheap but wonder how it compares with offaxis guiding when using bigger scopes/smaller fov where it is difficult to do multiple star guiding

Hi - has anyone figured out a very thin 2" filter drawer that with fit onto a 8" RASA and will work with the camera e.g. Altair Astro 26C that has a 16.5mm back focal point?

Cheers

Keith

Can someone give the distance for the focal point for a Celestron 8" SCT (not Edge) with a 0.63 Celestron focal reducer, with clear notes as to where to measure from 🙂

Various posts on forums give different measurements and also unclear where actually measured from. Camera is an Altair 294C which has an offset of 17.5mm to the sensor

Sketch would be great 👍 

Cheers

Keith

Cheers James - keep me posted if you do develop that 

Another issue is trying to sort out extension cable for powering the all sky camera as the standard Pi4 PSU uses USB C (why?)

so now trying to sort out a 5V 2.5A PSU with standard 2.1mm jack that I can fit into 5m meter extension cable and then put a 2.1mm to USB C adapter on - yikes!

Yes Mike think you are right. My fault for reading the article to build a Raspberry all sky camera (which works with Windows/Allskeye) but I have an Altair camera

So looking at alternative options that James is suggesting oacapture

Other options with Astroberry/Nina etc as well....

but first a psu 😉

no

I have a suspicion that is might be power related as I am not using a pucker power pack with the Pi - and it crashes every now and then

will order a proper 3A power unit 

just plugged a spare USB webcam in and that works - so something not quite happening with the Altair even though it can see it?

Thanks James

Figured out how to load both these .deb files, and can open up oacapture and it scans and sees the 178C

However I don't get any image when the camera is connected?

Any clues?

Keith

Thanks James - it can see something under lsusb as MSC, and can identify altair178c3 in message tail

But still new to raspian and can't figure out how to run oacapture - a zip file has downloaded but what now? I try to install and nothing seems to happen?

Also the libaltaircam file won't download?

Cheers

Keith

Have a working all sky setup using an Altair Astro 178C via long USB cable to PC running Windows AllSkEye in the warm room. However would like to replace with Raspberry Pi4 (which I now have) to eliminate the PC link

Trying to follow Thomas Jacquin links to set up his Allsky script - but cant seem to get it to work as it doesn't like the Altair camera

Has anyone else managed a setup of a Pi and Altair camera?

Cheers

Keith

Have been looking at Kstars as alternative to current setup of CDC and SGP, but would only work if the hardware setup via Ekos works? However it looks like Ekos only runs outside Windows using Linux etc. Can anyone put in layman's terms if I can run on current Windows PC or do I need to set up a VM/Raspberry pi controller to make this work?