Stephenstargazer

22 hours ago, lifeonmars said:

Could I please ask for some info regarding the panning handle and eyepiece balance weight clearance with the azimuth motor housing as it moves in altituide.

Is it possible for  the  pan handle it to collide with the motor housing anyone with this set up any practical hands on experience with this.

Any info greatly appreciated.

Ta Frank

 

 

There is of course no problem if you put the clamp handle and weight on the right hand side. If you want to keep clamp and handle on left then Rowan make a spacer that moves the clamp out. Depending on where you position the handle, I suspect the weight could still potentially clash or have limitted movement.

You only need to add a counterweight if the tripod is likely to tip. It depends how the scope is attached to the mount and how heavy and wide the tripod is. 

First light was brief. Aligned in twilight and 100% cloud came 1/2 hr before end of astronomic dusk. However, enough to be pleased, despite groping for absent slow motions a few times 🙂.. The horizontal stop is far more use than I realised - eg alignment start position  , setting up and taking down scope were all assisted. Clutches can be set just so and movement is smooth, even at higher mags for Venus and Mars (waiting for stars.....).  I knew it would be quite solid with a 4" but actually never noticed any shakes. I haven't  used a pure push too for sometime (at least not one this size) so there is some learning curve before it becomes second nature. Sometimes less is more, it's nice to have the choice.

IMHO and blessed with perfect foresight........

I think the hobby will diverge even more strongly into those who want to use robotic telescopes in observatories, some who persevere with better domestic robotic systems and a retro movement determined to use the simplest historic gear with no aids at all and a Mk1 eyeball. The latter will be using some of the stuff we leave behind......there wont be a market for new visual gear.

And obviously the first two groups will be using every wavelength of the EM Spectrum.

I have joined the club and bought an AZ75 with encoders. The AZ100 got a bit ungainly with motors and now sits on the pier, though technically still transportable. My small portable mount (based on Vixen AP modules) is not quite man enough for the FC100df fully dressed, but is perfect with FS60. (It does hold it steady but any clumsy mistake and the bearings could need resetting - tedious stripdown.)

So the A75 is the 'goldilocks' transportable solution for the FC100 and all three mounts (bears?) share the Nexus DSC. Sort of 'one ring to control them all' (mixed metaphors but only one software to remember - good for ageing braincells).

Fit of the DSC bracket is neat (tight 🙂) but only required an extra hole. It sits well on UNI tripod and, like any Rowan, will last forever. First 'light' tonight🫰🫰🫰 

k,

14 hours ago, HollyHound said:

Moon, Jupiter and Pleiades

And at this time of year the Beehive (M44) also Double cluster, Coma Berences and many asterisms which tend not to fit in  a telescope f.o.v. Comet hunting too.

Was fortunate to get my 15X50 IS in 2004 and still rate them the best grab and go or travel kit. I too started with birds but it got me into astronomy. What they lack in magnification they make up for in spontaneous availability. (Mind you that is true of other binoculars - if you can keep them still.......)

@Telescope40 have just been out and done a 1 star alignment on the moon.  I set my intial position (level South) and turned on. Connected my tablet to the control module web page by wi-fi. Turned on the motors. Used SEARCH to select the moon.  This was shown as my TARGET. An arrow appeared on the screen pointing in the direction of the moon. As I pushed the scope towards the moon the sky diagram did follow the direction of my scope until the moon was on screen. I then aligned it and pressed ALIGN 1st STAR. It is tracking now. ( NB not perfectly because it has a siderial rate only) I am not using Sky Safari at this point, but could do after first alignment.

If I understood your problem, your sky chart does not follow the scope direction when initially pushed around ? It should. Can I suggest you go into CONFIGURATION and check that you have a sensible Lat. and Long. for your location first. I believe the software needs a value in order to work. You should also have a green TIME indication and eventually a green GPS indication - mine stays amber some time (even 15mins?), but still works while finding more satellites.

Good luck !! let us know!

5 hours ago, Telescope40 said:

I'm somewhat limited in my choices of alignment stars. 

Instead of tapping on a star on the screen, just select one from the list for your alignment. I am fairly sure that works, but will check tonight.

Thanks @SuburbanMak, I dug around in podcasts and now listened to a few of these. Once you get over the panting (Chris not Mr Max) I found them engaging and found out a few things about the 'common' objects he picks on. Would suit a new comer or even someone not sure about astronomy. I am a follower, cant wait to hear what Max eats next..............🐕

On 20/02/2023 at 17:40, AstroKeith said:

Don't do what a few others have done - reverse the supplied cable by mistake and feed 12V into the Nexus DSC USB port.

Yep! The day I unpacked my DSC I put tape over the USB socket and now it has a silicone plug. It would be so easy to forget and plug in a phone charger 😖

I think this topic will be very useful. I have been using DSC on two push to mounts, but now my Rowan AZ100 has motors and I am waiting to make that connection when software is out. Until then my DSC will stay on the older version. (My grasp of IT is limited to following instuctions.)

The view from here is much the same, entirely uniform grey........but without any planets!! ☹️

Leaving the golf club the crescent moon was up, sky darkening and Western cloud dispersing, I said to my pal  "this will be good in 20 minutes". Once I had put away the car and stood outside my front door, the view between mature bare trees was spot on. A navy to royal blue twilight and a line of three bright contrasting celestial objects, well above the roof tops. Such a shame more non-astronomers wont look up, but I do try to encourage them to share these occasions. An hour or so later I did the CPRE star count - a miserable 9 from my back garden. Then it misted over, Carpe Noctem.

@BGazing look down on the screw from the top and with a thin screw driver you should be able to get the rubber 'O' ring to move up and onto the thread. Then your fingers can roll the the rubber ring up and off the the thread. Now the screw will screw out downwards through the mount head. It is quite easy once you have done it once !

Measure how much longer you would like the screw to be. Cut a bit less than this off the plastic, with a hack saw, working around the handle. Use a file to make the cut nice and square and tidy. If you have a handy friend with a lathe , he could do it very neatly.

Sadly you are not the first person to find that Berlebach bolts can be short. I replaced mine with one I made, but you can amend the original (though you should not have to of course) by cutting away some of the plastic material. You can restore the original length to make it 'snug' by adding washers

The Berlebach one, cut back, is on the right

Mine looks exactly like the one on the leaflet...... (and is up for sale, but not economic to Serbia).

On 20/12/2010 at 14:08, starscy said:

Could anyone suggest a focal reducer for an 8" f/10 Schmidt-Cassegrain Telescope? I read that some focal reducers have issues focusing with 2" star diagonals.

With a moving mirror focuser you will have lots of back focus, so it will reach focus - but the prime focal length also gets longer as you do so and this is not optimal. As you are thinking visual (star diagonal) you might get vignetting (due to the baffle tube inside) if trying to reach very wide views. However it could be cheaper than buying widefield eyepieces for very occasional use. The Antares amongst others is affordable, look for used? worth a try.

10 minutes ago, labtech1122 said:

not actually knowing the BF of the antares FR 😕

It is not difficult to measure the focal length of the reducer and telecsope directly. On moving mirror focusers the telescope fl changes too**.  Then calculate* the back focus that matches FR=0.7. Whether that is actually the ideal is another matter !

*you can look up the formulae in any respectable source. ** so the calculation may be iterative.

1 hour ago, Deadlake said:

Has anyone got the latest software version that supports joy sticks/pads at all?

I think Derek said on CN they would be issuing a major update with many items, such as catalogues and maybe DSC (please) 🫰, next.

Website latest version is still V1.0.4 from November. Makes some sense to try and get as much tidied up as possible rather than drip feeding new versions. There has been a lot of feedback to go through.

3 hours ago, BGazing said:

Joystick is super slow even on the higest setting.

It gets faster as you move finger to the edge of the circle. Intended only  for fine movement with fairly high magnification, which you can try when clouds gone? I found it awkward at first even on a tablet. Step movements Iikewise small in SS, but you can just push the mount instead when the clutches are set right.

I also found the gps indicator slow to go from amber to green, but when I checked the lat, long in 'config' it was at my house.

Very frustrating delivery for you! What is delayed?

34 minutes ago, lifeonmars said:

,then press align it slews off somewhere random maybe 5 to 10 degrees  away very odd.

Basically this is the same behaviour I have found. I think the distance it moves may depend on the initial mount position. As mine is on a pier (which is leveled and adjusted North/South) this can be quite accurate hence a smaller movement.

@Stu and @lifeonmars.

I changed my 'AZ config' so that the motors had to be turned on manually and re-tried the alignment routines. There was no substantial difference eg

Aligning in SS only - on aligning the first star the mount moved off the star (only about 10 minutes)  when the align button was pressed. This was probably the distance I had corrected with the SS control arrows ( < > ). @Stu do you align solely manually?

After just a one star align in 'AZ web' - or just a SYNC, there is no such problem with any subsequent alignment in SS. 

I think it is unlikely to be an SS Android/IOS issue as this has had much resting and many,many users with other systems. (The SS help files do list the few differences.)

I am using the AZ firmware  version - AZ100.V1.0.4.bin.  

11 hours ago, Stu said:

It may be an Android vs iOS difference in SS??

That SS alignment method works same way on Android. 

11 hours ago, lifeonmars said:

Moving between stars for alignment I manually push the scope but the motors are running and the encoders are counting.

I can use the SS movement buttons to align a star and find th is easier than the Ropwan joystick.

11 hours ago, lifeonmars said:

If I  remember correctly on pressing align the Ist time, for some reason  the scope starts slewing

Yes , pretty sure that was what mine did and moved the scope away from the star I had just centred - irritating!

I shall try following Stu's method again, though I am not very happy with going into AZ web just to turn motors on when you can start with them on. There are a few other rather odd behaviours with the AZ web page that I have passed on to Derek.

10 hours ago, Stu said:

then access the web interface and enable the motors.

This may be significant, I have mine set to come on automatically (for the benefit of a Quick Start). I'll try the other way. 

@lifeonmars commented earlier on problems aligning the mount with Sky Safari and I have found the same. Unless you initially open the AZ100 webpage and align at least one star, Sky Safari will not do an alignment point succesfully. However if you have done that beforehand then Sky Safari will add align points OK , up to 10 of them according to SS help pages.

Can any one else confirm this ?

BTW 1 it seems possible to switch between SS and AZ100 Web as much as you like, or leave the mount wifi network. As long as the mount is kept swithched on it will pick up again when you reconnect. However when you close SS I am pretty sure it loses its own alignment data ? (At least with SS+ in Andoid)

BTW 2 you can set the starting position where you like in config. Level, South is just the default.

 BTW 3 on the Rowan firmware update page there is an updated Manual. Thanks Derek !