rnobleeddy

For the UK use +00:00 as the offset. Use the time your watch says, and say yes to daylight savings time. I used this system for the first time on Monday night and if I used a +01:00 offset the first star on the alignment was miles away...

I use a similar setup. Last night was a disaster for me too - EQMod on the Pi plate solved but then slewed off 90 degrees in the wrong direction! I tried to switch back to synscan to get some images but everything was covered in dew, the stars I know had moved behind trees, and so I went to bed. Today I'm tired for no reason! My advice - Ditch the raspberry pi and the stellarmate for now. I code for a living but trying to solve problems at 1am in the dark isn't fun. You can do very well with just the handset, and I figure it'll be more palatable to try these things when it gets dark at 6pm. - Take it one step at a time, which means - Sort out your polar alignment. Find a tutorial and make sure you're getting close to good PA. This is the fundamental step for an EQ mount and if you don't do it well everything else will be harder. This includes making sure your polar scope is aligned. - Don't expect star 1 of 3 start alignment to be accurate. The point is you're calibrating so future GOTOs will be accurate. If you're a long way out, remember you can loosen the clutches and move the scope by hand, although that would suggest you've got something wrong. Make sure the coordinates, time/offsets are correct (UK is +00:00 and day light savings in Synscan world, and the date format mixes up days and months for us in the UK, so be sure that's right) - GOTO to a bright easy to locate target, but probably not one of the ones you just used for calibration. I did the above on Monday this week, pointed at M13 and it was on the bottom edge of my image. Take small steps. You're not going to work it all out in one night.

EQ5 polar scope. I thought it was relatively well aligned when I set it up, pointing at a far off lamp post and rotating around completely. I've had 3 goes at lining up the mount using the polar scope + a polaris time app. My clock on the polar scope isn't rotated to the right point, but even so, I'd imagine I'm getting getting to within 1/2 an hour on the clock of where I'm supposed to be aiming. I then use PHD2 to check alignment and I've been 55", 60" and 150" arc minutes away from PA, and so start the process of making adjustments to the mount until I get within 10". Should I be doing better with the polar scope? Is there anything I might be missing?

I believe the non mini works better in Linux. Probably not something you care about though!

Dark Sky is brilliant for local weather, although clearly it's impossible to get the weather forecast correct all the time. It's much better to think of weather in terms of probability - you can't know if it's definitely going to rain tomorrow night, but you can say there's a 50% chance. Unfortunately Dark Sky was bought by Apple and isn't going to be available on Android past the end of this month.

I've just got into imaging so was hoping this thread could provide concensus, but I guess there are too many options. I'm happy to use Linux or Windows. I've played around on using Deep Sky Stacker and that seems like it'll stack the images fine (and for free) but haven't found a fully featured free post-processing option that people strongly recommend. I'm not against paying but probably want to be in a position to really make use of the trial so I can make a more informed choice. As I capture more data I'll have a play, but incase anyone else is looking, star tools have a decent summary of the software available at https://www.startools.org/links--tutorials/free-image-stacking-solutions.

Sorry, I wasn't very clear. The barlow magnifies the image (a 2x barlow by 2 times, etc) which has the effect of shifting the focal point such a reflector that can't reach focus, can with the barlow. It's generally suggested for scopes where you can't reach focus, but it looks like yours can, so you won't need one.

It's unlikely that the heritage will be able to focus with the camera, so it's common to use a Barlow lens in-between the camera the scope. Barlow's often come with a t thread as I guess this is a common usage. For various reasons that I'll let someone else explain, using a Barlow isn't idea for serious astrophotography of deep space objects, but for £30 I found it was a decent way to get started!

I think I watched this after I'd already decided to take up the hobby, but lockdown lead to a bit of a blur! Either way, this video helped inspire me to try to do the same. It was also reminiscent of Top Gear when it was good. I didn't quite hit the £600 mark - I ended up with some new stuff and a lot of second hand stuff for around £850. I managed to get my first decent shot of the sky last night, but didn't manage to actually include the thing I was after, and before I had a chance to fix it, cloud forced me to bed. I fear that my mount may end up as annoying as the one in this video, but half of the fun is the journey...

Worth consider astroberry (https://www.astroberry.io/) - it runs on a raspberry pi, so for well under £100 you can have a 4Gb Pi and 20,000mAh power bank that will last all night.

Also something I didn't spot (but got lucky with) is that the USB 3.0 version of the camera works well with linux but a lot of people had issues with the USB 2.0 version. That may not be important for you, but I found the astroberry software for Raspberry Pi to be a really easy starting point, rather than having to have a laptop plugged in.

Mono is better but from my research, and (albeit) limited experience the colour version will perform perfectly well. I use a ZWO ASI120MC-S with a SW 9x50 finderscope and the camera is working well for guiding. I made this choice because I'd like to use it for planetary imaging without filters.

It should be fine to achieve focus. The 130PDS is designed for astrophotography so has taken this into account.

Thanks - I'll check out those options. Looks like it's a toss up between a cheap garden cover and a very expensive specialist cover, so knowing my usual approach, I'll buy the cheap one, then end up buying the expensive one as well.

Can't find an obvious place to put this - can anyone recommend where I can buy a good quality mount cover? I don't have a permanent setup, but I'd like to leave my mount outside for a few days/weeks at at time. I'll probably bring it in again if there's going to be a storm/snow etc, but I'd like something that will keep it dry. I have an EQ5 with motors but without GOTO, if that matters. I can bring the entire scope in easily, so it will just be the mount. I found a few old threads, so I'd welcome any advice on breathable vs non-breathable, but particularly, they all seemed to link to items/retailers that no longer exist, so current options would be appreciated.

Thanks, I'd had the idea of building something lightweight/plastic to put over the top, but then I should have realised we have a few things covered in our garden with good quality covers and they keep the contents dry all year round. I was hoping to live of battery power for the cameras/raspberry pi I'm planning on using, but I'll look at the boot heaters too. They key will be in not having to realign/balance the scope each time. I can take the scope/cameras in with when I'm done each night.

I was thinking of doing this. Have you had an issues with the mount? Does it have motors/electronics?

Sorry, it was too late when I posted last night. I have a 130PDS so F5. Given the numerous threads on cc's on here I find it surprising that there's little commentary about the the two models. I'm not sure it's particularly logical that one version from SW would be OK and the other rubbish, but stranger things have happened! The real motivation of the question was that someone is selling the 1x Rother Valley version on astrobuysell so was trying to work out if I should get that or order the 0.9x.

Apologies for another cc question. I have searched high and low and can't find an answer. FLO sell the 0.9x sky watcher coma corrector which gets mixed reviews, but seems like a fair choice for the price. However, what I assumed was the same product at https://www.rothervalleyoptics.co.uk/skywatcher-2-coma-corrector.html is specifically listed as not impacting the magnification so is presumably a 1x. Just wondering if anyone has tried this one? As best I can tell there must be 2 versions, with the 1x getting pretty poor reviews at https://www.astroshop.eu/flatteners-correctors-reducers/skywatcher-2-coma-corrector-for-newtonian-telescopes/p,18852#tab_bar_2_select, but I've seen complaints about reflections in threads about the 0.9x too. I got a second hand scope with the tube already cut off so that's no an issue I need to worry about with the 0.9x.

Answering my own question, but it appears I can rule out #2 based on this thread. In better news, this thread suggests #1 should be fine. So I guess the questions really boil down to whether anyone has any advice on GPUSB, astroEQ and any others that are available, and how would guide performance using a guide camera compare to getting the full upgrade kit?

Thanks to one of the admins for pointing out that I'd misunderstood what I needed to get started with guiding yesterday. This lead to more research and inevitably, some questions, which I'm hoping some of you fine folk could help me with? I have a EQ5 mount (yes, I know, not perfect!) which started off without any motors at all, and have since added dual axis motors and have just found a second hand enhanced handset, so have effectively added https://www.firstlightoptics.com/sky-watcher-mount-accessories/enhanced-dual-axis-dc-motor-drives-for-eq-5.html. The enhanced handset has a ST4 port and I'd like to full understand the options I have to start experimenting with guiding. The goal is to be able to autoguide - GOTO functionality would be used occasionally but not essential. I'm almost exclusively interested in controlling the scope via PHD2 and/or using EQMOD so don't need handset GOTO functionality. I also have a planetary imaging camera that whilst not sold for guiding (and not having an ST4 output, only USB) has been reported to work well as a guide camera. As best I can tell, there are four routes that I think will work: 1. get a guide camera which outputs ST4, which connects to a laptop and the ST4 port on the handset 2. get some more skywatcher kit such as a synscan, which will allow me to cameras that are not specifically for guiding, in which case I'd connect the camera to the laptop, the laptop to the synscan and then the synscan to the ST4 port on the handset 3. get a 3rd party box that sit between the laptop and the ST4 port. It appears there's at least the Shoestring Astronomy GPUSB, astroEQ and hitecastro usb guider available to play this role. 4. sell what I've got and just get the GOTO upgrade for the EQ5 mount Unfortunately my questions are numerous: - Have I made any obvious mistakes in understanding how this all works this? - Is option 2 really different to option 4 - with the equipment I have, if I stick with skywatcher kit, can I just add the synscan controller box (assuming I can find one) or is it more complex than that? - If I try to get a 3rd party box (option 3) then are there others out there? None of the ones I've listed are particularly easy to come by right now. As I understand, GPUSB can't do GOTO but astroEQ can. - If option 1 is viable then it may be the easiest approach - it looks like a ZWO ASI 120MM would work fine - any reasons why not? - outside of the quality of the guide scope and the guide camera, are any methods better/worse than others?

I'm jealous you found stock! Let me know if you find a viable alternative - it might not be perfect, but if you want to image there doesn't seem like there's anything else that comes close at the price.

Thanks all - sounds like the 0.9x is fine as long as you don't mind taking a little length off the focus tube. As best I can tell, the 1x's are a little more expensive, but I'll probably see what comes up second hand until the 130PDS is back in stock.

Assuming I've understood correctly and a 0.9x coma corrector causes problems with the focus tube on the 130PDS, is that a reason to get a 1x coma (such as Baader Mark-III MPCC or the GPU) for that telescope?

Thanks, There's no obvious problem, it feels like the threads are just incompatible. Given the Barlow and the Nikon t-ring were obtained separately and work fine, I presume it's the canon t-ring and so I've ordered a different brand. Realize this question may have seemed obvious, but it's good to get reassurance that I'm not missing anything obvious. I expect I'll be posting more here in due course, but hopefully not about screwing threads together!