rnobleeddy

I guess I'm still not convinced that carrying a mount like this in the car to setup in a far away field and rely on batteries is my idea of fun. However, the EQ6 is prohibitively heavy (IMHO) so at least with the HEQ5 and lighter mounts it's an option!

I'll look around and see if I can get an idea of how well people find the iOptron mounts guide. I'd prefer to buy something that works out of the box, but I'm not averse to fiddling with the Skywatcher mounts if needs must - despite the issues with my old EQ6, I understand the design and the fact they're widely used means there's lot of help online. The CEM26 and GEM28 models appear to compete on price with the HEQ5, so will probably do some research on those.

It's perhaps 15 years old, and on taking it apart to fit the belt mod, I've found a number of parts have seized together, and it appears at least one bearing has failed. It's a black EQ6 with the words Heavy Duty on the plastic label, which appears to predate most of the strip down guides I've seen. It's similar with the exception of the polar scope, and less PTFE shims. I did get it apart, but on reassembly, one axis has wedged halfway back in to the mount. I'm making progress one hammering it out one session at a time, and the only definite casualties are some PTFE shims and some bearings that I can easily replace. So I will see. It's something similar to this https://www.astro-baby.com/EQ6 Demon/EQ6 Rebuild Case Study.htm ! I don't know if it'll go back together (assuming it comes apart) as I'm a little lost as to how the fit can be so tight, but I'll certainly give it a go.

Sorry - thought you had the older version. In that case I guess it's just a case of tuning, but I'll let someone else with more experience comment futher!

My old EQ6 may have tracked it's last star, and so whilst I work out if I can fix it, I'm wondering what I might opt for if I get a new one. I'm pretty well versed with the Skywatcher gear and would choose either a HEQ5 or EQ6 based on the trade-off between payload and portability. I don't have an observatory but am able to leave the mount under a heavy duty cover in the garden. Is there anything else worth considering at a sensible price? I realize a mount should be a long term investment, but I probably don't want to spend a great deal more than a new EQ6-R Pro at ~£1400. I'd be after no less payload than the HEQ5, and will be primarily imaging, so accurate tracking is the most important factor. Compatibility with ASCOM + INDI/EKOS are the only other requirement.

I'd guess the belt mod might be the easiest solution?

Out of curiosity, is the consensus that expoure time/exposure does matter a lot? I've assumed that as long as I have them somewhere in the middle of the histogram then all will be fine - and that I'd rather steer well away from overexposure as that's guaranteed to ruin an image, so I err on the lower side. I generally find results are solid, although on occasion I can end up with color gradients on LRGB images and I haven't really worked out if that's just present on the image (moon or LP from the local city), or is a problem with the flats.

Sounds brilliant! The important question is how much weight did the better astro conditions play in choosing to move house?!

Never had any issues with my CMOS. I did have issues with an old ATIK CCD. I don't imagine the sensor has any bearing, it's just the camera + cooling design.

Yeah - I got a pack of 10 male/female from somewhere. They're cheap but the issue is the postage costs! Mine is 2.5mm for the input - but I got it over a year ago. I like the fact I can't accidentally get them the wrong way around!

Forgot that - I just chopped the cigarette lighter end off and swapped to the right size connector for the DSD. You can buy them there the wires screw in so no soldering required!

I have a DSD power hub and had the same q. I've been using https://www.harrisontelescopes.co.uk/acatalog/power-supply-10a.html#SID=1667 for a year now. No idea if it's better than the cheaper ones on eBay, but I've had it for over a year and it's still working.

I've been happy with everything I've owned from ZWO. However, I have lots of kit that isn't ZWO and I'm comfortable with Linux, so I'll probably continue to use Astroberry for the forseeable. I am acutely aware it's not for everyone and may have a steep learning curve if that's not your thing, but I find it works very well, and allows full flexibility on hardware.

If you have a desktop there are some budget GPU options that will make a difference, even in today's GPU market. But this is an alpha, so I'd suggest you give the feedback and see what the actual release brings.

I've been there, and have a folder with a number of targets that are half finished. However.... With LRGB data I can buy the OSC over mono debate, because it's easy to not complete an LRGB image, there are lots of choices (how much L vs RGB) and there's a certain simplicity to processing the OSC data. However, for narrowband with only H/O, it's not that cumbersome to ensure that you capture both with mono. And mono cameras are almost always more efficient, so the maths is clearly in favor of the mono camera. And mono allows you to add an S filter too, which is very inefficient to do with OSC.

I know it wasn't the question, but I'd take a look at Startools - it's lighter on price and time commitment to learn.

Thanks for the help again. I actually have a proper adapter that I used with another lens, so I'll dig that out.

I've been trying out an old 300mm Russian photosniper lens and a DSLR for imaging. I have no expectations other than a few vague forum posts that it's decent for astrophotography. Having sorted my processing (thanks for the help @alacant!) I just want to confirm my diagnosis based on the following images. I guess it's tilt? Not sure the best way to show this - so I have a single frame with calibration done (flats + bias frame, no darks but dithering). The top left center and bottom right It looks like a pretty strong gradient in focus from top left to bottom right? I think the camera is OK - I haven't used it for a while, but when I did use it with telescopes, the images were good. What I do know: - I stopped down to f/5.something (it's f/4.something) as I've never had a lens that worked well wide open. But I did take some systematic shots at different apertures a while back so I'll dig those out and see if aperture matters -the lens is heavy and my mounting approach is best described as DIY - please forgive these crimes against DIY - I intended to make something permanent if it worked well - the adapter that converts the lens to fit the canon is potentially the weak point - to focus, I slewed to a bright star in the centre of the field and focused using live view on the Canon 550D. One side of focus travel has a blue halo, one side has red. Obviously this approach isn't ideal but I don't think it explains the above? - the focuser on the camera has a decent amount of travel, but it shakes the mount, making fine adjustment tricky I guess what I'd like to know is if there's any way to systematically determine if the lens is damaged/out of alignment, or it's just that the camera sensor is titled a little with respect to the lens? I also wondered if anyone has seen this pattern of focus before? A quick crop + process lead to this - which I'd have loved last year - but now underwhelms. No loss if it turns out, like many lens, to have it's issues. It was £50 and came with the most amazing case and array of 72mm filters that I don't understand. If not astro, one day, I could take it out in daylight and look like this!

Sorry - that's what I meant - I couldn't understand why the 25 pixels appeared to repeat at random intervals - so some groups were close together or overlapping, and then some of the frame looked ok. I guess I don't really mean the hot pixels are randomly located - the pattern is random, but once we know it, it's the same on each sub!

Aha - that starts to make sense. My brain hadn't really processed it properly. So it's a series of randomly distributed hot pixels and the repeating pattern is the dither pattern. I can't say for sure, but when I checked back to DSS just now, it was using average rather than the cliping algorithm. So let's assume that was the issue! I was perhaps too tired to do anything useful last night. Next up to fix is what appears to be horrendous tilt! The centre of the frame was in focus, but either corner is out of focus, one corner with a red halo, one corner with blue

Thanks. I was using kappa-sigma. Dithers weren't so large that he same bit of the sensor could explain all of these. I had messed up the flats (overexposed) but whilst fixing those improved the image, it didn't fix these. What did was turning on hot/cold pixel detection in DSS. I now have So still a little unsure what caused this. My dithers are probably less aggressive than recommended but DSS is reporting offsets of >100 pixels on some subs. So I'm still leaning towards some weird stacking artifact or some other calibration issue, that just happens to be taken care of by the hot pixel removal.

Had a clear spell last night so gave an old Russian 300mm lens a go with my DSLR. Overall, can't complain - it's got better stars in the corners than my £400 60mm APO refractor! However, when I stretched the image and started processing, I spotted a weird repeating pattern of noise. It's all over the image - I highlighted a few below. Does anyone know what this is? It's 25x300s subs. Dither every sub. Stacked in DSS with (as far as I checked) the settings recommended by startools. As best I can tell these are exact repeating patterns - so either camera or calibration or stacking? Stacked, stretched image Single sub, stretched

I used some variable sized plumbing pipe holding fixtures. There's some DIY needed to get them to attach to a dovetail, but the flip side is two at about 70mm cost me a total of £7!

I guess what's why I shouldn't guess! My Newt has visible vignetting which I think might dominate my unprocessed subs, but these look great without flats!

I'd guess a, but assuming it's easy to do, try both and stretch both images and see which one looks best.