dazza1639

It would be good if you could use it with an indi server. I have all my gear connected to a RPi, and connect to the remote indi server running on there with KStars on my windows machine. It would be nice to do somthing similar with NINA, as it looks great and a bit slicker than KStars.

Stunning the colours are so vivid 

I use a spark plug socket it fits perfectly and the additional depth of the spark plug socket spreads the torque over a larger area reducing the chance of slipping or damage

The consensus seems to be that less than 5 minutes is good enough for guiding. I can't reccomend enough the polar alignment routine in Ekos, it is really simple, I ran the process 3 times in about 1/2 an hour. I could never get drift aligning with PHD to agree with the handset when I used to use the Nexstar polar alignment routine.

New website looks great. I can feel the pain in my wallet already.

nice 👍

I haven't used the C8 in ages, I do plan on trying it out as it is still mounted next to the Equinox 80 on my EQ8.

They look pretty good to me.

It is in the Observatory. I have aligned using the Polar Alignment routine in Ekos. It is currently reporting an error of 1'32" so I'm less than 2 arc miniutes If we get some clear weather I will give it a go and see if it improves my guiding. I currently get an RMS of about 0.7" and that was with a mis-allignment of about 7 arc minutes.

Thanks. I will see how I get on with my current PA.

Great, hopefully the rest of autumn and winter will be kinder than the recent weather 

James , did you ever get to the bottom of this? Also, do you know of any good tutorials showing how to use the scheduler to create target selections and imaging runs then flip, re-align and continue imaging. I have recently made the move to Ekos ant the moment I am creating my imaging runs on the camera tab but I am manually getting targets, plate solving and setting the guiding going, then starting the run.

I have given APP a go and found it to be really good and quite straight forward to use, however, when I enlarged my M27 image I found what appears to be a hot pixel stacking artifact. I don't know where I went wrong. I followed  Sara's tutorials, I think I must have missed something. I think I need to do another trial.

Looks good. I wish there were more videos like this when I started out. It would have been really useful. I have since made the move to a Raspberry Pi running Stellarmate OS then connect and control everything through Kstars with Ekos. Great  video though.

My stars are usually pretty round before my re-alignment and my initial error was over 7 minutes. It was a very brief clear period last night just enough time to do a few iterations of the alignment routine. My last image before the alignment was the Crescent Nebula, 10X600s exposures in Ha.

Making the most of a brief gap in the clouds last night. I ran the Ekos polar alignment tool on the EQ8 in the observatory. After a few iterations I have got the error down to 1 minute 32 seconds of arc. 

My question is, do you think this is good enough or do I need to get it lower, if so what should I be aiming for?

Thanks

Darren

stellariumscope does't seem to work with the latest versions of stellarium, I have had to go back to version 0.13.2 as I had an old copy of this in my downloads folder.

[emoji20]

Darren

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Twitter: @SalAstroSoc @Astronut1639 www.salfordastro.org.uk

Nexstar 8 GPS ADM MDS Rings & Counter Weights, Skywatcher ST80 & Synguider, Canon EOS 1000d,

Dew Heaters & 4 Channel Controller, Orbit Wedge, Observatory and not enough clear nights

You can come and do mine next [emoji56][emoji51]

Darren

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Twitter: @SalAstroSoc @Astronut1639 www.salfordastro.org.uk

Nexstar 8 GPS ADM MDS Rings & Counter Weights, Skywatcher ST80 & Synguider, Canon EOS 1000d,

Dew Heaters & 4 Channel Controller, Orbit Wedge, Observatory and not enough clear nights

I want one [emoji4]

12v stepper, easydriver and arduino. I want mine to drive the 10:1 reducer on my crayford. Closest i've found is a pulley with 3mm bore.

Sounds like a great project, when you're done perhaps you could come down the the obs and give us a bit of a talk. I know quite a few members who are looking at remote focusing I think it would make a really interesting presentation

Darren

Darren

@SalAstroSoc & @astronut1639

www.salfordastro.org.uk

Finally had a chance this weekend to take some pictures of the observatory. I've made them into an animation that can found

HERE

Thanks for the comments! My wife is very understanding letting me build the obs, it couldn't have gone anywhere else. She's quite happy with the location (quite close about 1.5m from the conservatory) and the way it looks.

I've just got a few bits left to do before I can move everything in, I need to put a work top and some shelving in the warm room then it should be all systems go. I will post some internal pictures and some more details when I'm all moved in

Finally got around to building my observatory! It's been 10 days of 10 hour days but well worth it. I have taken a week and a day off work to do the build. I've attached some pics below.

I use 75mm SQ posts and 750mm long anchors to suit. I think they where £6.59 each from B&Q

Regards