Stuart1971

I use a Mele mini PC with windows 11 and all runs fine with my QHY268, but I do use an older QHY all in one driver, as I heard the latest one is buggy…

I don’t think it is yet obsolete, certainly not in some parts of the world, but here in the U.K. when you would need at least 5-10 min subs with CCD to match a 2-3 min sub in CMOS, I would say it is, or at least CMOS is far better and you can get much more data in a much smaller amount of imaging time.

I was a long time user and supporter of CCD and was stubborn and did not want to change, but in the end I did, and never looked back, one of the best decisions I ever made, albeit late to the CMOS game…

3 minutes ago, SteveNickolls said:

Intersting question. SkyWatcher produce a weekly webcast, more here.

https://youtube.com/@SkyWatcherUSA?si=IMaR3Aa4yywmToFH

Maybe worth posing the question to them though I don't expect a necessaily straight answer. 🤐

Cheers,

Steve

I might just do that…thanks 👍🏻

I would have thought with the size of the Skywatcher company and there mount range it would make sense to produce there own EQMOD equivalent driver, but more up to date, along the lines of GSS, but get the point about technical support, but a user based forum could take care of most of that…

31 minutes ago, malc-c said:

But I agree with you, it does make sense to provide an application along the lines of EQMOD or GSS, even if it was stripped down and had less options.  

Yes, I totally agree here. Thanks for the reply…..👍🏻

22 minutes ago, ollypenrice said:

I'd just use Hammerite. No real surface preparation needed. They only seem to do the liquid form here but the trick with Hammerite is to put it on warm. This is easy with a counterweight, which can just be put in the oven till warm (not hot) and its large thermal mass will let the paint flow nice and evenly after application.

Olly

Very useful tip, I have used this loads and never got the finish that they show…👍🏻

11 hours ago, Elp said:

The thing with rust which I presume is on it, if it's on the metal it is extremely difficult to get rid of without some sort of real surface grinding and pre treatment, hammerite is supposed to cover the rust and metal but does it continue to rust underneath?

When I painted an area on a previous car, even when sanded down to bare shiny metal, a few coats of primer and a few coats of spray paint and lacquer, it still continued to rust a few months after. I suppose this application it isn't so exposed to the elements.

With paint you usually want a good keyed (textured) surface so there's something and more surface area to adhere to in the absence of an electro static process. Maybe use a coarse grit sandpaper to finish the surface prior to coating. You can always sand down with wet and dry to smooth it off afterward but needs a few coats of paint prior.

The rust will not continue if both air and water can’t get to the metal…

now on a car when you treat the rust and sand it down to bare metal, then treat, you are only doing the outer surface, a lot of rust on cars comes from underneath or the back of a panel, so really you need to treat both sides to stop it altogether..I found this out when I renovated my first car 40 years ago, I spent 18 months on it, only for 6 months later it to be just as bad and all the paint I had put on was bubbled back up with rust form underneath…☹️☹️ learnt my lesson

22 hours ago, FLO said:

@FLO What is the item here above the QSI camera…??

1 minute ago, Colinhunter said:

Forgive me if this isn’t what you need. I use this to connect my heq5 pro direct from mount to my pc. 
Lynx Astro FTDI EQDIR USB Adapter for Sky-Watcher Mounts

 

Yes that is an EQMOD cable which uses the third party EQMOD driver…I was asking why skywatcher don’t provide a driver, I have owned a few SW scopes so I do know how they work….👍🏻

I like the look of the new Harmonic mounts from Skywatcher….🤔👍🏻

So I have owned a few Skywatcher mounts, including the EQ6 and EQ8, and I have always used third party ASCOM drivers such as EQMOD and GSS, but with all the modern latest mounts from all other mount manufacturers, they provide an ASCOM driver for you to connect your mount direct to a PC via the mounts USB port, so my question is..

Why don’t Skywatcher provide their own ASCOM driver that allows the connection of the mount direct to PC from the mounts USB port…?? Why do they rely on the third party drivers that people have to use…?? 
is this just laziness or for a reason…?

I know they provide a Synscan Ascom driver that connects the mount handset to a PC, for control but this is not the same…I am talking about direct connection like all other mounts on the market with USB connection

Or am I missing something here…

3 minutes ago, Stu said:

Don’t let one idiot put you off! 👍

😂😂 no we won’t…it wouldn’t be around Yeovil anyway, looking more like Wells, or Shepton Mallet…👍🏻

Hmmm, and here are us looking at moving to Somerset…in the next 6 months…😮

You don’t even need USB 3 cables, you get far too much interference with them, USB 2 is perfectly fine and better in nearly all cases of long exposures, USB 3 is only needed for fast frame rate capture, like planetary imaging with a ROI, give yourself less headaches and just use a USB2 cable and set the USB traffic on about 10, in saying that i use 0 on my 268 with USB 2 and it works flawlessly..👍🏻

One little scope comes to mind, that’s the Skywatcher Evoguide ED50, very light and good FPL53 glass, with an optional flattener if needed, it’s an non rotating helical focuser, but it’s used a lot for imaging too, but in your case you only want for visual so no need for the flattener. I think a scope with a traditional focuser will always be in the realms of 1.5 ish KG…just my thoughts for an ultra lightweight little scope.

Yea, back up again now….👍🏻

Down again for me, this is becoming a real issue for them, but if they will insist on using cloudfare then theses issues are not at all uncommon…and to be expected 

5 minutes ago, therealt said:

"I don’t see the Moon anywhere" that's incorrect. Look at 1:16. You can clearly see the eclipse starting to pass through the clouds. Sorry no one here has given any explanation at all. I know clouds move. That does not explain why it started out slow moving then suddenly rapidly moved later in the video.

It happens because the earth is flat…which is obvious to anyone…👍🏻

Sorry but you started it…..😂😂

Suffice to say those numbers are excellent….👍🏻

On 04/04/2024 at 08:24, 900SL said:

Two things spring to mind.

Firstly. We are not mind readers, so details of scope, eyepiece and maybe a photo might help inform the reader.

Secondly, it's not rocket science to try it both ways to see what works. The odds are 50-50, after all

 

Give them a break, it was there first post, probably joined just to try and get help with this issue, you were a beginner once…like we all were…!!

I have a set of the new Askar C1 & C2 filters (Ha / OIII and OIII / SII) coming from Askar for review purposes, if I like them I will buy…

38 minutes ago, old_eyes said:

I played around with different balances of the two originals using the max(x,y) function in PixelMath and reducing the intensity of the HaO3 image.

This is the one I like best - max(S2O3, 0.7*HaO3). What do you think?

Very nice indeed, 👏🏻

maybe create a blue mask and up the saturation in the blue, and it will pop a bit more…

11 hours ago, JonCarleton said:

OK...same image as a png instead of jpg.  Reprocessed in PI.

 

 

Can you upload a link to the original fits file..?

38 minutes ago, ASTRO1966 said:

Hi Stuart yes i have latest installed

Not the one from the yahoo user site, the one from GitHub…? As I think they may be different….

4 minutes ago, tomato said:

Camera arrived back safely today and is once again operational.👍🏼

A 40 day turnaround and £154 total cost including shipping, I can’t fault RisingCam’s after sales service, Eddie kept me fully informed and a fair price for the out of warranty repair.

As a post script for those owners of this camera who may be concerned about their reliability, I think the failure may have been self-inflicted:

I had retro fitted a ZWO stick on heater to the camera which was wired into the same cable as the power supply to the camera. I think on the night in question as my unsteady hand plugged in the power I may have made and broken the connection rapidly thereby subjecting the camera to an induced voltage from the heater coil which blew some components on the PCB. 
This scenario will not be repeated.😏

Alls well that ends well….👍🏻