gilesco

In which case he won't be able to take deposits for new business, he's already not answering the phone. I think that's a good thing, until such time people get what they ordered, or a refund, no?

Yes, I intend to start off with the trial. I already have "The Deep Sky Imaging Primer" by Bracken, which has a few chapters which flip between PixInsight and Photoshop (I don't have Photoshop) for some workflow, so will review that at some point. While I prefer printed books, they often get out of date to new developments in the software. I will probably have to devote some serious time and planning, I admit to having been one of those who just tries to dabble around randomly trying to pull detail and remove noise from images, l and not using any of the serious tools that PixInsight and other tools offer. I haven't worked much with Masks and Layers, but recognise it is something that I'm going to have to get used to doing.

Yes, I saw reference to that - from the looks of it it is only available from its own website, and only digital copies are currently available. They don't appear to be planning reprinting anytime soon and I very much avoid eBooks.

Do you have links for the other books? Can only find Warren Keller's on Amazon. Thinking about pressing the button for PixInsight, but as have not been able to image since early December I am not in any hurry as yet.

That certainly makes a lot of sense, I also have seen that some rentals only allow a certain number of miles per week e.g. 500 miles, and then charge a fee £0.25 per extra mile travelled. Your price points are borne out of what I've discovered, ballpark is £500 - £1000 for a decent set up, with power hookup and fittings, anything less than £500 seemed to be more of a van conversion, sometimes just limited to being a mattress in the back! Would still like to hear the information on the Drumroamin site in particular, whether it is typical that it would be fully booked two weeks beforehand, as that issue pretty much puts it out of the question for me, unless the site was in a location where bad weather is the exception rather than the norm. We can't blame the campsite operators, they need to take the bookings when they can, and I hope they do well to survive and prosper in the future.

I was looking, not because I'm planning on going this year, but wanted to check on prices of hiring a Motorhome (which would need to large enough to hold various kit, and also small enough to be driven by a B license holder). I worked out it would probably be a 10 hour driving trip, so would probably have to break it up into 2x5 hour stints. I also looked at the Camp Site website, and that looked pretty reasonable too. But I did notice that it appears fully booked. Do they generally blanket book this period for the star party, and you have to book your pitch by some other means, or is it actually full up? - I do worry about the weather, as I'm not a regular camper / motorhome user, so stars excepted I'm not sure I'd enjoy it in the cloudy and wet!! And it is certainly too early to judge what the weather will be like in two weeks time.

Would be good to know as to why you have the juddering?

Now thats pretty good, I reckon they can sort out about 15/18 pretty quickly. Some of the others will be a bit more tricky.

Glad to see this issue getting some mainstream media bandwidth: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-60262100

I have the cover the OP gave, but not for permanent use. I use it if I am setting up during the day to cover the scope and tripod until nightfall. I live near the seaside and the seagulls like to bomb their waste around the place, particularly if they're flying towards the house and suddenly feel like they need to put a little extra wing effort in to gain height to clear over it. Who knew that our seagulls were somewhat incontinent?, probably caused by rummaging around in human litter bins and general poor diet. Thankfully they're not nocturnal creatures.

As follows, from plasticsheets.com

I imagine they're still cooling towards 45 deg K - I expect they won't turn on the imager until it is cold enough.

I will PM you shortly, these have the aluminium armour cases on them, so not easy to identify which model is which without booting them up!! You can opt to have it with or without the case - I'll take a picture of it so you get an idea and then can decide if you want it or not.

I do have a number of Pis, anoriginal model B, around 2 Pi3B, one Pi3B+, some (3 or 4) Pi4 4GB and 8GB, I'd be happy to let one go if I was reimbursed the retail price + cost of packaging and shipping, board only.

While you might be able to replace components, you may have fried stuff way further beyond the power regulator components (which I suspect are what would take the brunt of this error). Pi4 2GB are in stock apparently: https://thepihut.com/collections/raspberry-pi/products/raspberry-pi-4-model-b I'm afraid that for ~£50 it wouldn't be worth my while working out how to repair it or go down that route without necessarily having any idea whether it would be successful. Note with the Pihut, when stock comes in it is always already sold for backorders, in general it will be a long time before they have a surplus of unsold units, so waiting for them to come into stock without placing an order is not going to get you one.

So 1A to 1.5A, but the initial pulse to get the mount moving can be much higher than that. All these values are time-series averaged, and so while over a 0.1 second period the max is 1.5A (to push the needle upto 1.5A), for 0.05 seconds the pulse might have been 5A, then a half-life descent to 1.5A. A lesson I have learnt, is that ensuring your power is good is paramount to smooth running, and if you add extra electric kit in the future you are future-proofing your set up. A good PSU with plenty of power capacity is a good way of avoiding future issues as you develop the kit you use, and not all that expensive to stay on the right side of the curve.

The Nevada PS-08 only manages 6-8 Amps via the cig lighter, and is 8 Amps on the tongue sittings. Also when you check the cig lighter fuse you often find that they're fitted with 5A fuses. This was the reason I moved to the higher capacity Nevada. I also tend to have the Nevada indoors, with a 5m Lynx Astro cable to the kit. Anyway, I have not had issues running the kit in the way I do now. Agree that the Pegasus PSU doesn't look ideal for 10A operation (I have never used it).

I had an issue with the SestoSenso 2 reporting under voltage when I had everything powered via the PPBA. Since then I have done two things and have not experienced the problem again: 1. I moved the mount power from the PPBA to a direct 12V from the PSU. 2. I changed from this PSU to this PSU Now it might have been either/or both these were required to resolve the issue, but since doing that I have not had any issues. Just add that I still use the old Nevada PSU inside at room temperature for testing equipment set ups, and don't have issues. When I did have issues it was very cold, which can have an effect.

Looks like a good candidate:

I am absolutely staggered by the amount of science lined up and queueing to use this telescope: https://www.stsci.edu/jwst/science-execution/approved-programs/cycle-1-go

That is what is in stock right now. Would suggest that read their methods of requisitioning equipment, and get on their waiting list, buying out of stock Pi4 stuff is different from going to get eggs at the supermarket.

Usually not, as I said, sometimes getting a drill and a perspex template is the best and cheapest option in this regard. Make a few measurements and order some templates that fit your needs, then just drill the relevant holes where you need them. You can spend more than £200 on a plate from ADM after you've had so send them back because they did not fit etc.. the added metallic weight won't help.

Most Raspberry Pi OS images are in this range, once installed you will also want to download the astrometry data, which is few more gigabytes in itself.

I wouldn't settle for anything less than the 4Gb version. But the answer is "it depends". Higher resolution cameras will need the 4Gb. The highest resolution cameras benefit from something better than a Pi. The 8Gb version doesn't currently gain you much as astroberry is 32-bit, so any single process on the Pi is limited to a 4Gb addressing range. This could change in the future when 64-bit becomes the norm.

The stock 10mm and 25mm eye pieces are usually low end, and 10mm may be at the limit for magnification of your optics. A zoom eyepiece like this one will allow you to see better than a stock 25mm, and the zoom will allow you to go a lot further, maybe not all the way, but somewhere in the middle as a good compromise. Getting a barlow later on to go with this one will extend the magnification range of the zoom - although I would see how well you go with it without the barlow at first, if views are acceptable at full zoom (unlikely with entry level scopes), then the barlow would allow you to reach further higher magnifications. I appreciate you might think this is quite an expensive upgrade, but if you are more likely to upgrade your telescope not eyepieces in the future, I doubt you will need to upgrade from this or a similar zoom eyepiece, you'll be able to use it on all future telescopes, so the initial cost outlay is protected for your future astronomy journey. When the Pandemic is over you may be able to visit a star party and borrow other people's eyepieces for use in your optics, to get an idea of the improvement. Doesn't look like that is going to happen any time soon however