gilesco

7 minutes ago, dazzystar said:

How are those two bolts used at the bottom of the perspex sheet?

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.

7 minutes ago, Richard_ said:

one 12V power supply being split: one to PPBA and the other to the mount? 

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.

39 minutes ago, Richard_ said:

Ah that makes sense. What I had in mind was to either sandwich the PPBA between the Losmandy plate and telescope or sticky velcro to the side of my mount. Thee cameras, peripherals and dew heaters plug into the PPBA, then it would be three cables leading up to PPBA: power cable for PPBA, and USB and Power cable for mini-pc. The mini-pc could be mounted on either the eye-piece tray on the tripod or to the tripod leg. The mount would have its own power supply. 

Is the above approach re: cable management similar to yours? 

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.

2 minutes ago, Richard_ said:

Nice! I'm looking to upgrade from ASI Air to mini-pc and Pegasus power box so seeing this post was useful for attaching things together. What do you do about guiding, or do you perform OAG? I have a 120mm refractor with carry handle and that's where my guide scope sits. 

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.

33 minutes ago, powerlord said:

It's also about 'what works' as well, and then there's the need to have radiation hardened electronics.

Military wise, I suppose it explains the fact that we have just entered the 10th year since drones (i.e. quadcopters) were made possible from a 'build it yerself' POV (that's when I built my first one too) - and yet they are not exactly everywhere in the military (wee personal ones I mean). which does seem incredible).

I want my DJI Astroscope.It takes off, flies to 10k, starts its rockets (just fill with fuel to reuse) and moves up to 150k miles above your house. It then spends freefall time targetting and imaging your chosen DSOs, before falling back down to 10k, where the rotors start again, slowing it down into a hover again by 1k, and landing back in your garden.

I don't know if you've seen the latest DJI drones with stablized telephoto lens ?

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!!

1 minute ago, PeterCPC said:

10s exposure is way too much for daylight conditions. Try 1/2s or probably less.

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.

2 hours ago, Stu said:

With 18 mirrors that’s a heck of a lot of very fine adjustment

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.

48 minutes ago, noah4x4 said:

I read many posts telling us that any old budget computer will do for EEVA (EAA) and that advice cost me silly money in progressive upgrades

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.

52 minutes ago, noah4x4 said:

If you do as I do, live stack two second exposures, using HyperStar at f/2, using a high resolution, large sensor camera in and 'end to end' 4K UHD system then you need at least an eight generation i7 with 16 Gb RAM.

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.

7 minutes ago, powerlord said:

there is no way there is anything like 1000 quid of tech in, what is at the end of the day a fancy motor.. never mind enough to justify a 6k price tag.

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.

1 minute ago, kirkster501 said:

There is a movable steering mirror inside the black nose thingy that sticks out from the centre of the primary.  That can be "steered" (i.e moved) so the telescope does not have to physically move so much.  Just image how accurately that must have been ground and polished !

Yes, for subjects on the "wrong" side of the sky the JWST has to wait just like we have to for them to become visible in the night sky again.

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.

13 hours ago, powerlord said:

ha!

Something I find second nature too, but most don't. I've often thought rather than teaching kids about subjunctives and pronouns, a better use of the time would be to give them the mental tools they need to understand and descriminate between facts and internet mince. It's not that difficult, but seems a skill as rare as hen's teeth.

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.

22 minutes ago, Space Hopper said:

I think we should cut them a bit of slack.

 

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...

1 minute ago, StarryEyed said:

 

This makes sence to me but add a counter weight and its another GEM with a 20kg capacity for which there is competition with better tracking. 

 

 

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.

8 minutes ago, Elp said:

I think given the option the majority would choose an eq6 pro. Also as it's zwos gen 1 product it needs time to prove itself. Other manufacturers are already generations ahead experience wise for this type of thing.

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

8 minutes ago, nephilim said:

@gilesco My story is very similar. Its taken me until around a year ago, at 49yrs old to be able to buy ( and justify......just 😂) a half decent AP set up & even then as I dont like credit, it took me around 14 months of buying one piece of gear each month to finally have enough to start to make a start.
Back in the 70's when my interest started the high point of the hobby was buying a Tasco frac (although I had to use my friends newly purchased one......He quickly became my 'best friend' 😂). Any scope over the standard 2.5" was an absolute fortune & as for buying AP equipment, that was totally unheard of unless you were either a millionaire or one of your parents were.
Friends I have these days who have no interest in astronomy will gasp at the price of AP gear & how much I'm willing to spend on 'a piece of glass'. But if they look back to the cost a few decades ago they would gasp far louder. If we consider what our AP gear can actually do, the cost doesn't seem so high.
The Earth is spinning at approx 1000 mph & we are able to actually photograph targets (most of these targets are made of gas) we cant see with the naked eye while we whirl around like a spinning top. Now & again I relay these facts to my friends but its pointless as I can see them slowly starting to drift away which is how I must look when they start talking about football or any sport that involves a ball for that matter 🥱😴. 

So anyway as far as I'm concerned our hobby is very reasonably priced. The main reason I'm typing all of the above is because I'm very soon going to be spending X amount of £££ on yet another piece of glass only days after Christmas & I have to remind myself of what an absolute bargain it is 😂😂

Steve
 

We are the same! Happy festivities to all!

6 minutes ago, Hogarth said:

significantly cheaper than Crux or Rainbox Astro, but are there reason why... I've got a 'reaction and my own thoughts video uploading to YT' if anyones interested

 

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

9 minutes ago, StarryEyed said:

The thing I dont like about these mounts is the center of gravity COG is basically the telescope acting as a lever on the whole mount rather than over the RA axis of an GEM or over middle of the tripod on a CEM. I just feel its a design looking for a gap in the market that doesn't exist. I could be wrong, but I've worked with structural and mechanical engineering all my life and I just see pitfalls with these mounts.

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.

On 20/09/2021 at 10:07, Jiggy 67 said:

Your scope and all your other equipment will dew up whilst being used outside, sometimes to the point of being soaked. You can minimize this with dew strips etc but at the end of the day, there’s no way of stopping it. To place it in a case will just keep it wet for longer, it would be the last thing I would do. Just take the scope in and leave it with covers off outside the case to warm up gradually and it will be fine

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.