Craig a

I have the same scope and went with a moonlite cr2 focuser, its excellent can carry a bit of weight and no flex, what I did too is add another tube ring to stiffen the tube around the focuser even though it’s carbon fibre it’s not thick carbon so the tube can still distort from the weight of a camera but if your visual only no need to do that

Beautiful image and really well controlled, what gear was used to grab these fabulous galaxys?

My neq6 has been outside under a telegizmos 365 cover for about 4 years, I just take the cover off every now and then to let it “breathe”, temperature shouldn’t be an issue mounts can take some big temperature changes, take people who live in the likes of Canada who lug their gear out from a heated house outside to -30, I’m glad my mount is outdoors permanently makes setting up a 5 min job

+1 for off axis guiding, I tried for months and months with a separate guidescope on my 10 inch Quattro, differential flexure was my problem, I got a zwo OAG and guiding was much much better

Just to note I have had a couple of nights with my new spring and silicone mod and yes it’s much much better at holding collimation at any angle

A very very slight gap like the thickness of a cigarette paper, the silicone will hold the mirror perfectly well so some never put the clips back in but I like abit of security just incase, best be safe than sorry

The mirror still needs to be allowed to expand and contract during changes in temperature so the sealant needs to be elastic enough to allow this

I used grip bond pro for my 130pds and my Quattro 10inch, that has worked with no issues whatsoever, just ensure the mirror and cell is grease free before you stick

I vouch for the 533mc pro it’s an excellent camera, the square sensor is actually great for framing albeit it’s smaller than you’d like but I’d class ot as the little brother of the 2600, same pixel size etc, the 294 is particularly picky with calibration frames but once mastered it produces quality images also, there is a recent vid on YouTube on mastering the 294 calibration, at least 3 second flats it’s one that’s mentioned

My neq6 had the rubber mallet treatment too for an hour 😂 But all is well once back together and tuned backlash it’s running great

Yep I’d check the Bayer matrix pattern

Some of my favourite things to image and look at are galaxy clusters, I did the Perseus galaxy cluster this week, although not as spectacular to look at as some of our own galaxys show stopper nebulas, there’s just something about these images that gets my mind working overtime, and the fact that the photons took all that time to get to our cameras sensors is astonishing there’s no way on earth that there isn’t any other life out there I refuse to believe it😂 well done for having a crack at this

That’s a lovely image of m42, and from a fellow Quattro 10 user that’s nice to see, you pulled some nice detail in the clouds

this is my first image since doing a few more mods on my quattro 10cf over the summer, including upgrading the primary mirror springs to stronger ones and also siliconing the primary to its cell. its also my first image with the starizona nexus 0.75 reducer/coma corrector bringing the scope down to f3 some call it a poor mans rasa, but adding a 600 quid nexus isnt a cheap accessory 😂 guiding was abit of a pain had to bin a few subs but hey ho taken with skywatcher 10cf reduced to f3, asi 533 mc pro 106 x 2min subs 3 hours ish im quite pleased with the nexus reducer dont think its done a bad job for 3 hours on these faint galaxys please feel free to comment, please bear in mind that this is a jpeg version on here and astrobin as im too tight to pay astrobin for premium that allows larger png files to be uploaded to it so for the moment im stuck to uploading images under 25mb https://astrob.in/lsb1t6/0/

The Ra is constantly on the move so the gears are pretty much always meshed but the dec is fixed until a guide command is issued so if the gears have contracted away from each other slightly widening the meshing it will cause problems, that’s my thinking anyway I could be talking absolute garbage and looking for something to blame 😂

It was the dec that was causing my guiding problems the last two nights too, I do think the gear and worm contracted away from each other slightly, won’t know for sure till I get a warmer clear night

I was out the last 2 nights, it was -6 everything had a coating of ice but it all worked ok, my kit is permanently setup outside under a telegizmos 365 cover but when I got in after work and looked down the Newtonians tube the primary had started to get ice on it, quick defrost with a hairdryer on low heat and was back for imaging again, to be honest it’s becoming rare to get temperatures as low as this for this long in England these days, everything is running on mains electric though, two laptops one by the scope and an old one in the house where I sit and control it all through AnyDesk, so I was actually watching the subs roll in from the couch One thing I did notice though is that I had abit more backlash than usual, I might be wrong but I think the gear and worm probably shrunk slightly due to the cold

Bloody hell that center of frame has demons faces in it, if that came back at me I’d have thrown the lappy in the fire and called an exorcist

Sorted, it’s now sat on its silicone blobs on the kitchen worktop fully loaded with new springs

Cheers, the springs are fitted and mirror is cleaned thought I might aswell while it’s out, just waiting for the mirror to dry before I give it the silicone treatment, I will still put the mirror clips back on for peace of mind

So my mirror was on 3 round bits of cork, do I get rid of the cork and put a blob of silicone there instead?

I have the carbon tube version that I’ve fitted 355mm losmandy plates top and bottom, regarding siliconing the mirror to the cell, is this safe with such a heavy mirror? I did it on me 130pds and had no worries on a mirror of that size but I’m abit more nervous about doing that to my Quattro? I already use an OAG I think this is a must for any Newtonian really

Hi there, the mirror on the 130 is much lighter than the 10 inch in my Quattro my own 130 is fine with collimation, I Carnt see the focuser being at fault as I’ve fitted a moonlite to it, it’s been squared etc it’s been a pain to hold collimation since I’ve have it, for the cost of new stronger springs it Carnt do any harm and it gives me somthing to do while the weather is giving us all misery, thanks for the input

I’m hoping my measurements were near enough that I don’t need to do any heating or cutting, fingers crossed but I think you are onto something about heating a spring, I do know that heating metal re aligns the molecules or something along those lines, when I dig up bent fine silver coins metal detecting and want to straighten them heating them up and plunging into cold water before straightening stops them getting splits etc

Ok springs arrived today and blimey can hardily compress them with my fingers 😂 will have a go at fitting them this weekend and report back