Tailspin45

Well this is embarrassing. When I collimated my scope yesterday I left the piece of paper in it that blocks the primary to avoid distraction when adjusting the secondary. No wonder the stars looked weird and plate solving gave up time after time. It didn't completely cover the mirror and was curled so some light got through but that sure explains the crescent stars! I went through the whole procedure you recommended and immediate discovered that the secondary vanes were about 5mm off center L to R but okay top to bottom. The procedure recommended creating a card with a hole in t

Thanks! I have both, and used them. But not very well, apparently. I'll review the linked procedure. It occurs to me that the defocused image will look very different in an eyepiece, without a camera and software in the mix. I'll see what that shows.

I understand that collimating a short tube Newtonian (Orion 4.5" Starblast 450mm ƒ/3.95) can be tricky, so I read numerous articles and watched several videos. Nevertheless, I think I'm doing something wrong. The secondary seemed to be too close to the primary and, thus, not centered in the drawtube. So I moved it back and made sure the face of the secondary was at right angles to the collimating eyepiece. I then adjusted the tilt of the secondary to center the image. Then I adjusted the primary to center the ring on the primary, so everything looked right. But when I

The SV305 works remarkably well. I suspect you have a focus issue. I could barely focus in far enough for the camera to work on my Meade 114mm ƒ/4 newt; it was right up against the focuser stop. And I had to buy a shorty C-mount tube to use it with a filter. As others have suggested, try focusing on something during the day. Here are the settings I used for the attached image of M42. Video below the nebula (click arrow to star, opening fames are black) was the same but using .AVI output. [SVBONY SV305] Output Format=FITS files (*.fits) Colour Space=RGB24 Capture Area=

Had an Asahi Pentax right angle finder from the early 70s in a box. Removed the camera slide-on bracket and used the four tiny screws to fasten it to the polar scope eyepiece cover. Ta-dah. Thank you for the inspiration.