Stuart1971

Well yes for visual all good.. but my point was for imaging, that many of them are not flat-field scopes, even when using the two flatteners…so they should sort out the QC and make sure they are all as advertised…

Just a shout out to Starpal outdoor store on Aliexpress, bought a new set of Optolong 36mm LRGB filters, £80 saving and delivered in under a week for free…. very responsive to questions and helpful when needed shipping info, also kept up to date with shipping. I asked about a few other items too, for my Astro rig which they gave me some good info on, they have a full stock of all top brands of Astro kit and well worth a looking… Cant do better than that….well happy….😃

These scopes are an old optical design, and Tak themselves told me that they were not designed for the modern small pixel cameras, it’s pot luck now if you get a good one or not, and it shouldn’t be, when you are spending a large sum like that, I would never buy another tak for imaging until they change the design and bring them up to date. Now when I used with my old SX CCD camera with giant pixels, it was superb from corner to corner…as that what they were designed for….i should never have sold that…☹️ for visual, I guess it’s not a real issue, I don’t know as never done visual….

You have got a really good example there, I had one and it was awful, this is what I got in the corners. With an APS-C sensor And why o why should you have to use 2 flatteners with such a premium scope, one built into the 4 element Petzval design, and another screwed on the back, no other scope I know of requires 2 flatteners to work properly, it’s a joke…but at least they supply the second flattener in the box now, I had to buy it extra and made barely any difference at all…☹️

I tend to agree with you and am also a bit slow to learn and change with the times, I also like understated images too and not much for heavily processed and over saturated colours, I like to see the more natural look, if there is such a think for images like these. As for your image it’s very nice, and the golds are just about right, the blues IMHO are a tad over saturated for my liking…but I think you have left just the right amount of green in the image, as many seem to remove most of this… Its a stunning image..👏🏻👏🏻

Another good test for checking the binding on these mints I found, was putting a power supply on them with an amps reading, then when slewing when you hit a tight spot on the worm you will see the amps increase, this is a good indication to see how tight it is in places around the worm, I found it was around 1.5amps, and went up to 2.1 amps when hitting the tight spots, it’s very obvious, the trouble with these mounts is that the large worm wheels are not perfectly round, and hence you get tight spots, so you can only set the worm gap or backlash while at the tightest spot, if not it will bind when it hits the tight spot, it took me ages to sort mine, and even then the best I could get was 2000ms of backlash, down from 3600ms In the end I just used to guide in one direction only, then this made the lash issue moot, as the mount never changed direction in DEC

Yes loosening the middle one will allow the outer two to pull in very slightly and hence tighten the worm block, as the centre one is the push screw…👍🏻

Well it may not fix the issue, but I would have thought that would be your risk not there’s…I am surprised really as it’s no skin off there nose, so to speak…

I have an obsy and my kit is covered on the house insurance, as items in an outbuilding, and the scopes, mount and cameras are listed individually as items of value, but all under £3000 each which was the limit for one item. and it cost me around £60 extra a year… Same as my bikes in the garage, all individually listed with values…

In this order. You need to loosen the centre one and then turn the outer two a very small amount clockwise the same amount on each, then re tighten the centre one, if needing to close the gap. Then if need to enlarge the gap you should loosen the outer two then turn the the middle one a small amount clockwise, then re tighten the outer two, again in that order… so no you don’t need to loosen all three at the same time, as when the outer 2 are loose, the middle one will be anyway, as that only pushed against the worm block, it’s not screwed in to it.. same when you loosen the middle one, the outer 2 will be looser… The outer two screws are threaded into the worm block, the middle one just pushed against it…

Sounds like a very reasonable request, hope they see sense and go with that…👍🏻

Well after having the desiccant tube in my QHY268 for 4 days the humidity reading at zero degrees was 38% and at -10 was just 48%, now after removing the desiccant tube about a week ago, the humidity is back to 61% at zero degrees and up at nearly 70% at -10..😮 So the sensor chamber is deffo not sealed properly, and I can see it’s probably beneficial to leave the desiccant tube in all the time….

Great image…👏🏻 can I ask what you used for your website, what hosting and design, as it’s excellent, nice and simple and to the point, with a good easy to navigate set of pages…👍🏻

Stunning 👏🏻👏🏻 is my maths correct, over 41 hours of integration time…😮😮

Ah, yes, I see it now, what threw me was the colour as it looks black in the image, and I know they are blue in colour….👍🏻

Great glad you sorted it…yes best to give individual names, although when you hit connect after the first time it may well remember and connect automatically anyway from now on… Very Nice set up there, what mount is that…?

So best to give each of your boxes a unique name in the configuration in Unity, then you know which is which…👍🏻

In the Pegasus Unity software, does it show the two boxes there..? If so then you need to pick the item from the drop down list, in each instance of NINA, then click the gear icon on that same tab, and choose the correct box from the Unity icon that pops up in NINA

Ah, and it’s $45, I will stick with Stellarium…

Just looked on there site and there has been no updates since 2020, are you sure it’s still being developed…? EDIT: Ok I went to the download page and not the beta testing one, all good….👍🏻

You are certainly not on your own here, i was exactly the same, to the point where I went year in and year out, for around 5 years, with about 4 sessions under my belt, BUT the turning point for me, as has been said already was building a permanent home for my rig, so I just have to nip out and open the roof, takes 45 seconds, and that it… TBH without my little mini obsy, I would have given the hobby up. Even now if I have to re do my PA or change something that can only be done at night outside in the cold, it take me a while to bother to do it, but ATM all is good and set up ready to go at a moments notice. I have a second scope, an 8” SCT, and it sits in the garage store cupboard year after year, because the thought of swapping all my kit over and then re rigging all the neat wiring, just cause me so much anxiety, I don’t use it, even when galaxy season comes round, I carry on with my frac rig. It’s just easier….☹️

No I haven’t ever tried this, I am still using what came with the camera, old firmware and old USB driver, but what I will say is that AFAIK the firmware is updated along with the USB driver, and there was a firmware update for the cooling on these cameras in the last 6 months I believe

I managed another 9 hour session last night from 18:00 until 3:00 am, and got SHO data in 3 targets. Everything worked flawlessly again which I was happy about after a few months of disconnect issues with my CEM70 mount, I finally got it sorted… ‘It was cold and the QHY268 stayed at -10 with zero cooler power needed yet it was only -5 outside, which was odd, and the camera even dropped to -11 for an hour or so, again with zero cooler power, I started to think of @tomato and his issues, but then the outside temp came up to about -4 and the cooler power kicked in on 1.6% to keep the camera at -10, so I assume all was good… Not sure how the camera stayed at pretty much exactly -10 with zero cooler power when the outside temp was almost 5 degrees warmer…🤷🏼‍♂️ ? and as I said, at one point the camera dropped to -11 It does seem as if these cameras are a bit quirky in the colder temps

Sorry, I posted on the wrong thread…my appologies, re posted in correct thread now But odd you needed 4% power to keep your camera at -10 and I had zero power for the exact same temps….-10 camera with -5 outside…🤔🤔

Sorry deleted as posted in wrong thread…☹️