gilesco

The Tube rings that come with the Esprit 120 have 1/4" bolt holes. They're the same on the underside, so I removed the Losmandy plate from the tube rings and used it as a template to locate and drill appropriate holes in the perspex sheet. Then I have four 1/4" bolts which basically act as thumbscrews to attach the perspex sheet to the tube rings.

Yes, on my Nevada mains PSU I use a Lynx Astro cable directly to the mount, and another one to the PPBA. Reasons are historical where I tripped the power, and just found that powering the mount directly appears to not cause that issue to re-occur.

Before I replaced my Raspberry Pi with the Beelink I opted extensively for the use of Velcro, but as the Beelink came with a mounting plate, and I had purchased the mounting plate for the PPBA I decided against Velcro this time round - no reason, it works, just feels better to use nuts and bolts when you can When I bought the Perspex sheeting (from plasticsheets.com) I bought two, specification is below, I recommend this, as they're about £7 each with shipping of £6, so, for economy, and knowing that I tinker around a lot, it made sense to up the quantity a bit. Cabling is as: PPBA Dew Heather --> Dew Strap 12V Line --> PPBA Power In 12V Line --> Celestron CGX PWR PPBA 12V #1 --> SestoSenso 2 PWR PPBA 12V #2 --> ASI1600MM Pro PWR Cooler PPBA 12V #3 --> Beelink GKmini PWR PPBA PC --> Beelink USB3 #1 PPBA USB #1 --> SestoSenso 2 USB PPBA USB #2 --> ASI1600MM USB Hub PPBA USB #3 --> Celestron CGX HC USB Beelink USB #2 --> UBlox GPS Receiver ASI1600MM USB2 #1 --> ASI 8port EFW USB ASI1600MM USB2 #2 --> ASI290MM mini USB I started out with all the stock cables that came with devices, but over time had bought ones of the right length to reduce the complexity, and if you take the sheet off the OTA it is a lot easier to work out which cable is which when putting it back on again. I am yet to properly affix the PPBA Temperature / Humidity sensor to the sheet, but will do that at some point.

My imaging train is ZWO OAG + EFW with ASI1600MM Pro for imaging, and ASI290MM mini on the OAG for guiding, connected via a ZWO Helical focuser. I power everything from the PPBA, except the Mount which I give it's own 12V line.

I recommend perspex sheeting to attach to the tube rings of the OTA, easily orderable, much cheaper than a ADM plate, much lighter, pretty easy to drill holes in.

Don't know if you recall that guy who went to that extremely high altitude in a (helium?) gas balloon and parachuted off? If I recall he went into an uncontrollable spin for much of his descent, because the air resistance was so low and his suit was so bulky he couldn't really control and stabilise himself like a parachutist would normally do. My guess is that you'd need some pretty expensive stabilising equipment to allow a DJI to acquire any faint DSO target and stop it from just spinning out of control. Still, a nice pipe dream - with the recent weather here, that's something we need!!

For this kind of thing during daylight hours I often end up using AsiStudio on a PC or ASICAP on a phone or tablet with OTG USB adapter, and then just enable "Auto GAIN" + "Auto Exposure" once it has settled to a reasonable setting I then disable the Automatic side of things and make a note of what they're actually set to.

I'd expect SkyWatcher price increases soon too. Celestron is owned by Synta, and Synta also owns SkyWatcher.

It's going to be like collimating 18 telescopes based on the stack of images received from all?

If the website is still up and running and I was out of pocket I would create a new throwaway email address on gmail or something and pose as a new customer, then try and arrange a meeting (e.g. "Oh, I see you are in Norwich, I'm really close by, perhaps we can meet up and I could give you my deposit in cash"). Then just give the collection people the location and time of the meeting.

The OP did mention some specifics - looking for the minimum specs possible. must be able to be battery powered. most heavy processing on another PC. while he mentioned sharpcap, he may have been looking to try the EAA route, but he didn't mention it specifically. A trade off here is that if you have a high wattage CPU, then you will also need to have a bigger battery to run it on, or lower your expectations on how long you can run for before needing to re-charge your battery.

The high price tags of astronomy kit in general are mainly due to the low volume of production. If everyone needed an equatorial tracking goto mount at the same volume that they need a smartphone, television or a kettle then I would imagine you could manufacture and sell them at around £150 a pop.

Thankfully without the unknown of whether the weather will be OK!

Question, can the mirror array tilt and rotate relative to the sunshield, or is the whole apparatus rigid and uses small jets for alignment? Just wondering whether we've got to wait for up to a year to be able to look in particular direction.

I did GCSE (read 'O' Level) History and I do recall that there was quite a bit of emphasis in evaluating primary and secondary sources of information. I guess that part of the syllabus just needs to be updated to include Internet tosh as well.

I agree, testing niche products is not the same as testing washing machines and televisions which are orders of magnitude greater in production volume. Let's wait and see, some people will take the plunge, there will be positive and negative reports and we will all make a more informed judgement down the line.

I'll stream it from the office, far enough from the leg of lamb I the kitchen...

Yeah, and you know, the iOprtons range were next in line for my attention, still going to wait and see on this - sometimes the direction of innovation changes.

Zero Backlash is the headline for this product, let us wait and see what the early adopters say....

We are the same! Happy festivities to all!

Post the link, we can make our minds up over time Merry Xmas everybody!

Yeah, I would still recommend a counterweight, believe it is an option, 20kg stated load with counterweight, 13kg load without. On a pier this is less of a concern, but on a carbon fibre tripod, but of a worry. I would like balance whenever possible, so would use a counterweight. Requirements will be different depending on your latitude. They're not shipping until April, selling my current mount would be needed to be in the market for a new one. Still a wait and see for me.

Exactly, I stagger this and bring it into the conservatory first, then when I've had a rest, and the heating has come on, I cover the scope and put it back into storage.

I always had an interest, for as long as I can remember. The advice was, at the time, do naked eye seeing first (my eyesight is terrible), then move to binos (can't really keep my hands steady enough). Then if you're happy with the results (results were terrible, really), invest in something a bit better. It was only after spending a lot more money (and 40 years waiting to be able to afford it), that I'm fulfilling my expectations through astrophotography. There are many dissuaders to making that investment to this hobby, but I would just say, as long as you are not remortgaging the house, go for it.

I think with the harmonic drive, the expectation is that you would use this for computer aided astrophotography only. * As @vlaiv mentioned, the PE of harmonic drives means that auto-guiding is a must * If you're auto-guiding then you may as well use the plate-solving methods for polar aligning * The laser is likely to be disabled in countries where pointing a laser to the sky like this is sometimes illegal or at least tightly restricted - we've had instances in the UK by pilots in aircraft being blinded by ground laser beams. * If the laser is available, it will be for a rough alignment, before software assisted alignment. This isn't a product you would use if you wanted to do tracking only AP.