Budgie1

That's really nicely done for your first attempt. 👍 I like the Hubble Pallet with OSC as I find it brings more definition to the image. Keep playing with PI, I love it.

At $539, I think I'll be sticking to my 7nm version, especially as it doesn't say which size filter that price is for!

Try just using Bias, Flats & Flat-Darks with the 2000D. The Darks with a DSLR don't tend to do very much and, as Clarkey said above, they can add noise to your image. There does seem to be a gradient at the bottom of the image, possibly LP, so try using DBE along with BackgroundNeutralization in Pixinsight.

I use valcro style cable ties to secure the dew heater cables for the main & guide scopes. These are stuck to the main scope tube, with an extra one for the USB & power cables from the main camera, which also have a short length of cable tidy wrap. I still keep the Pegasus Power Box Advance valcroed to the side of the mount and if you can't mount everything on the dovetail, then this works well. Sorry, no photos of the setup.

So, as I said above, not much happened last week due to being away with work. I did manage to cut the supporting posts to length and ordered a couple of galvanised caps for them before I went (caps arriving this week). Yesterday I didn't feel like doing much but did make the ring to go around the base of the pier to cover the hole, so I don't drop anything down there. It was made from a spare piece of Marine Ply, using a router to cut it out, painted yesterday and fitted this afternoon. Today is a bit drizzly but I managed to get the 4x2 frame built for the roof section, which is sat on top of the walls at the moment. Rain has now stopped play. I've ordered four x 2m lengths of aluminium unequal angle for the runners, a set of 50mm fixed casters and four heavy duty Toggle Clamps for securing the roof when it's closed. Hopefully these should all be here sometime this week. I need to get the runners installed and the wheels bolted to the frame so I can work out where the frame will sit inside the walls of the roof section, before I start putting the roof together.

Thanks, I've been pushing to get the main structure completed by this weekend as I won't be able to do anything next week due to work commitments, so I wanted to get it up and supported with the framework. We are blessed with the scenery around here and it's also Bortle 2, so nice dark skies between late August & Early May. The hills are nice to look at and climb but, being on the West Coast of Scotland, we're landfall for most of the weather systems coming in from the Atlantic. And what happens to moist air when it hits hills & mountains? It rises and the water vapour condenses, meaning it rains here... alot! This year it's rained on 154 days so far. I wouldn't live anywhere else though. Anyway, back to the build. Today was dodging showers and drizzle but my wife completed the paint spraying on the roof panels, so assembly and framing of the roof is next in the plan. But that'll have to wait a week. I cut the roof runners to length and dug the footings for the support posts. These are now set in Postcrete and I replaced the turf around them, they just need cutting to height. The roof runners are screwed to the support posts and I've installed a cross beam and braces. Even before the Postcrete has gone off, the structure is now solid. So, this is likely to be it for a week. In the meantime I still need to sort out what I'm going to use to roll the roof. I undecided as to whether to go with @ArmyAirForce approach and use aluminium angle and nylon/rubber wheels, or use gate track and steel wheels. Something to ponder over and order next week.

I can't find anything to confirm that the USB hubs are "passive" but I also assume they are. As long as you use the USB3 cable from the imaging camera to the PPB and a USB3 cable from the PPB to your laptop, then you shouldn't have any data transfer issues. The cameras onboard memory is there in case you want to us a USB2 cable, which has a much slower data transfer rate. The memory acts like a buffer to maintain a stable data transfer. Having used both USB2 & USB3 with my camera, the USB3 is near instant transfer whereas USB2 takes a while to download the image.

I also use the PPB Advance on my mount and my setup is as follows: USB I keep the guide camera USB cable short and plug it into the ASI294MC USB hub. I also plug the ZWO EAF into the other USB port on the camera. That means only one USB3 cable from the camera to the PPB. I also have the EQDIR cable from the mount plugged into the PPB. Power The PPB powers the mount & the ASI294MC. I also have a couple of dew heaters running off the dew heater connections on the PPB. This setup means I can keep the cable runs short, easier to avoid snags, and I only have one power cable and one USB3 cable running to the mount.

Things are progressing. Yesterday, while I was at work, my wife kindly sprayed the first coat of DucksBack on the walls of the shed and the roof sections. She just finished the roof panels when the rain started. Luckily she did the walls first, so they were already dry and the roof panels were put under cover for the night. Today, she gave the walls another two coats with the sprayer and when I got home I started into cutting the 4x2 to frame the inside. I've used an upright in each corner to support the frame around the top of the walls. I cut a slot in the each front corner for the roof runners to sit in and they are temporarily supported at the front by the fence posts which are clamped to them. I still need to cut the runners to length, I don't intend for the roof to roll off that far! The frame is secured to the shed walls and it's rock solid now, although the front section of the frame does cover the top of the door opening and the top of the windows, but I can live with that to keep the walls at the height I want. If the weather's okay on Saturday then I'll be looking to dig the footings for the front posts and get the cross braces cut and fixed.

Well, that's the walls in place and screwed together. The piece over the door is only temporary to add rigidity to the structure until I can get the 4x2's cut to frame & strengthen the inside. I was going to make a start this evening but I went out there after tea and the great Clan MacMidge had descended on the proceedings and I hadn't Smidged up, so I called it a night and will start on the framing tomorrow.

Thanks, it wasn't that harder build for the pier, especially as you listed all the parts you used! Because mine is a shed conversion, rather than a scratch build, I still have to fathom the bracing for the shed walls and the runners for the roof, most of all, the roof assembly itself. But I'll get the walls up first and see where we go from there. I've made a bit more progress this week. Once the hole was cut for the pier I painted the flood sections with more Ducksback, both on the underside + runners and the floor. It may not have the roof on for a while, so I wanted protection for the floor in the meantime. As you can see below, both floor sections are now in position and screwed down to the base. I think it makes a nice observing platform as it is! Next is the walls, starting from the rear corner and working forward. But that's for after work tomorrow.

I forgot to mention, this focuser uses push-fit only, there is no thread on the end of the focus tube, like there is on the standard Skywatcher Crayford. So if you use the RR/FR then you'll need one of THESE.

I do use it for imaging. I have it connected to the Skywatcher 0.85 FF/FR, ZWO filter draw and ASI294MC Pro. On my ED80 I've also fitted the ZWO EAF to it. This is my (slightly dusty) ED100:

Work got in the way of things this week and only a little progress has been made. I don't think much is going to happen over this weekend either as we're due 30-40mm of rain. Anyway, I did managed to install some floor joists in the base, the base has been painted with a couple of coats of Cuprinol Ducksback and I've also installed damp course to the base. I cut the hole in the floor for the pier this evening, remembering to make it large enough to go over the discs! Once the floor is in place then I'll make a collar from marine ply to go around the base of the pier and cover the gap. I've also got two 5mm thick, 150mm dia laser cut round plates for the pier. One has a 10mm hole in the centre for the mounting bolt to go through and the other is blank and will cover the recess in the bottom disc. I'll post photos of these once they're painted. So here's the build as it is tonight:

If you want to fix the focuser on the ED80 then have a look at the video below. I know this isn't the 10:1 Crayford but they suffer from the same issue. I did this tune to my ED100 DS Pro and it made quite a difference. I can also recommend THIS focuser for the ED80 & ED100, I have one on both of mine, and it has a built-in rotator as well.

I use the star removal as part of my workflow, not because it's in my workflow. In fact, with the exception of cropping & stretching, I don't use any process just because it's in my workflow. I may try it and if I don't like what it produces then I'll either leave it out or try something else. Like you, I'm use OSC only and I used a star mask in the past. I've now found that star removal allows a better view of the background, which is normally my main target. and makes the processing much easier to see what you're doing. I also tend not to do as much processing to the stars, other than saturation and a bit of reduction. So I can do the post-processing on the stars image and then leave it alone while I work on the background. It also allows me to produce other masks for the background, like colour masks, without having to combine them with the star mask. I don't think there is ever a right or wrong way to do astro processing, it's down to what you know at the time, what you're comfortable with and what produces the results you're happy with. I see it as more of an art form than a scientific representation.

You may as well have a go and see. You only need the backing plate off the motor to extract the small gear and get the 5.5mm spacing for the new gear correct and you should have enough room to do that.

You may be able to do the swap without disconnecting but it will be a much more difficult job. Also, the DEC cable is normally wrapped around other cables inside the casing to stop it from chafing on the central tube, this restricts how far out the motor will come and you can't free the wires with the connector fitted. Have a look at 4:25 in this video and he explains how to free the connectors they're not that willing:

I need to look at my ASI294MC & filter draw so this is just an idea but, would the filter draw screw directly onto the camera and put the 16.5mm spacer on the lens side of the filter draw?

Maybe more.

Your sensor if further back into the camera than where you're taking the measurement from: See if this helps:

So, you need 44mm back focus between the adaptor and the camera sensor. If you replace the 11mm spacer on the front of the camera with the 16.5mm spacer then you should be at the required 44mm. 6.5mm sensor to front face of camera + 16.5mm spacer + 21mm filter draw = 44mm

I think everyone's workflow may well be different but here's my normal workflow: Crop DBE BackGroundNeutraliation PhotmetricColorCalibration IntegerResample (Bin x2) Stretch with either HistogramTransformation or GeneralisedHyperbolicStretch Starnet 2 or StarXTerminator Curves etc I do the star removal straight after the stretch so that both stars & background are in the same non-linear state before I start messing with the saturation etc. Saying this, there's also no reason you can't remove the stars before the stretch because this will allow you to stretch the stars less than the background, so you can control any bloating during the stretch instead of having to do it later or just make the stars less prominent. So I guess there's no definite right or wrong answer but I would still do the star removal either right before or straight after the stretch.

Maybe have a look at the thread below and give @Daf1983 a shout to see where he used. I think when I fitted my EAF to the stock focuser I may have used the focus stopping screw hole & the counter screw hole, although IIRC I didn't remove the counter screw because it was low enough in the hole to allow the EAF bolt to screw into the hole with it still in place. This was a while ago and I now have the upgraded focusers on both my ED80 & ED100, so can't be sure.

Try to use the fixing screws, there should be some longer ones with EAF to replace the ones on the focuser. This may help in identification: https://stargazerslounge.com/applications/core/interface/file/attachment.php?id=301468 You'll also need to the remove the locking screw, as you don't need it with the EAF fitted.