Budgie1

As Nubbin's go, that's a good one! 🤣 It looks very much like a blank thumb screw part of the casting. I've only got the 1.75" version of the tripod and it doesn't have these on but the 2" version is a different design. Maybe SkyWatcher use that for another application or maybe it's a generic tripod fitting with multiple applications?

Re-tap from the top would be my first option, with a longer bolt to take advantage of the good threads. I would also run a thread chaser die down the that bolt, if you want to use it again, just to make sure there's no aluminium left in the threads which will catch in the mount thread and cause it to lock up again. If the threads are totally shot, you can ask the engineering firm to "Helicoil" it back to the standard size. This involves drilling out the old thread and re-tapping the hole to take a threaded insert with a M12x1.75 internal thread (assuming it's M12). You can get Helicoil kits from the likes of ScrewFix.

Like the others, I don't use Live View for plate solving. Firstly, I would advise installing all three solving applications, ASTAP, PS2 & ASPS. I originally only used PS2 & ASPS but had a few failures when plate solving. Not had any issues since installing ASTAP as well. With my ASI294MC Pro camera, I use 10s at gain 300 and have the timeout set to 180s.

I've got better news for you; you can create a Darks Library when it's cloudy and just re-use the Darks, no need to create a new set after each session. You can do this as long as you use the same temperature, gain & offset settings and create a set of Darks for all the exposure settings you're likely to use. I went for the ASI294MC Pro because I prefer the sensor shape to the square one on ASI533. It gives me better framing options and, as has been mentioned above, the amp glow on the sensor is calibrated out with Darks. I did notice with mine that using Bias frames caused a residual of the amp glow to remain on the image, so I only use Darks, Flats & Dark-Flats.

This is not a easy target and you've got some nice detail in the dust lanes. 👍

I use PHD2 for guiding but looking at the SharpCap user manual there are two items under "Dither" in the Topics menu HERE and HERE. As for Darks, you do need them with ASI294MC Pro because of the Amp Glow on the top righthand side of your image above. I use a cloudy day to create my Darks Library, which consists of darks for every exposure time I'm likely to use. I only ever use Gain 120 and Offset 8 (ZWO default) and remove the camera from the scope. With the camera removed from the scope, put the cover over the nose piece on the camera and connect to your laptop. Cool the camera to your normal operating temperature, I use -10°C, and set up a plan for the darks. I normally do 20 - 30 images per exposure time and store them in a separate folder for each exposure. Once this is done, you can re-use the Darks until you notice something has changed and the darks are not calibration correctly. This is what your Master Dark for 300s at 120 gain should look similar too (this has been stretched to show the results but they are not stretched when used for calibration ) . You can see the main "Amp Glow" on the right, but there is also some on the left and bottom right. The Darks allow this to be removed from you final stacked image, giving a nice clean background.

Is that image the stacked 24x 5min subs or is it one sub? If it's the stacked image, do you see the noise in the single subs? Are you guiding and do you use dithering? It looks like "Walking Noise" caused by not dithering, but I'm not 100% sure so hopefully others will be able to assist.

I run the Pegasus Pocket Power Box Advance (PPBA) on my HEQ5, running power for the mount, ASI294MC Pro and two dew heaters. I also have the ZWO EAF and a ASI120mm Mini guide camera. This lot is connected to a 15 metre active USB3 cable from the mount to my laptop in the house. The PPBA is powered by the Pegasus 10 amp power supply from a 240v waterproof extension lead. Download speed from the camera to the laptop is very fast, compared to the old USB2 extension I used to use. I don't normally need the full 15 metres but it means I can place the mount where I want too in the garden.

It doesn't take any knowledge to remove the side panel and have a look. It sounds like the RA belt is either too loose or has snapped. If you need a new belt then FLO have them listed HERE, although they are currently out of stock. This video is for fitting the Rowan Belt modification but shows how to check the correct tension on the belts. Also, make sure the belt and gears are correctly aligned and the gears are secure on the motor & worm gear shafts. Top Tip: When refitting the side cover, don't tighten the screws too much because you can crack the cover.

I use Cartes Du Ceil (CDC) instead of Stellarium but I assume the routine is similar. Once focused, I use CDC to choose my target and slew to it. In APT I take an image of where the scope is now pointing. Now open Point Craft & pick the object the scope should be point at and ask it to "Solve". If it doesn't solve then click "Blind" and it will ignore the target reference and try to do a blind solve. Once Point Craft has solved the image, click "Sync" and APT tells CDC where it's actually looking. Now choose your target in the "Centre FOV at position" part of the Point Craft menu and click the "GoTo++" button and Point Craft will centre your target in the field of view. No need to do any star alignment or alignment South, East or West. Plate solving make this operation redundant. I hope that helps.

I also return the mount to the Home Position after PA so the mount knows where it is. To set the basic Home Position is quite easy. On your ASIAir, go to the mount menu and scroll to the bottom and you'll see a green button with Home Position on it. Click on this and then OK and mount will go to where it currently has the Home Position stored. If the mount is now pointing counter weight down and scope to the North then great, that's about where you need it. If it's pointing somewhere else then undo the clutches on the RA & DEC axis to put them into the counter weight down/scope North position. and then lock the clutches. I've put marks on the RA & DEC axis so I can quickly put it back to the Home Position after balancing the mount, this just makes life a bit easier because the setting circles can move. Here's a video which explains the process.

Hi Chris & welcome to the forum. To get the best advice, could you tell us what you would like to achieve? Do you want to do visual observations of the Moon and planets, visual of deep sky objects or are you looking to do any astrophotography? Do you plan to use the setup mainly at home or will you be looking to have something that's easy to transport? The more you can tell us the better the advice.

When you say you reset, what/how did you reset? Have you sent the mount to the home position on the handset to confirm that it's pointing North & scope-up? Sometimes, if the position is changed using the clutches, the mount will still have the old Home Position registered and will work from that to point at an object. Get the mount to put itself to where it thinks the Home Position is and then release the RA & DEC axis clutches and manually put the mount to the correct Home Position should sort the issue.

IIRC, @scotty38, you also use the ASI294MC Pro? I had a look at my results of the same target from 19th March 2021 using the Evostar 100ED DS Pro with 0.85 FF/FR, ASI294MC Pro and the L-eXtreme. This is 23x120s subs, stacked in DSS and processed in PI using BackgroundNeutralization to removed the green cast and then SFT & HT only. So nowhere near the integration time of your image and you can just see the halos starting to form on some of the smaller stars. Unfortunately, this target is only visible to me of an hour or so due to trees, so I haven't had a chance to try me Askar Duo-Band on this one yet.

I bought the ASIAir Plus when it first came out, back in late October and I do like it. I'd not used the ASIAir before and it's straight forward to setup and you can be imaging quickly, when compared to using a laptop. Having said this, I have gone back to using the laptop with SharpCap, APT & PHD2 for my main rig because the ASIAir Plus does have some drawbacks, which may be caused by my lack of use/experience with it, but clear nights for me a few and far between and I need to make the most of them. The first one is the plate solving. It seems to be a very rough solve position and if you're doing the same target over several nights the positioning isn't as accurate as APT. Second is the calibration frame capture. I haven't found a way to capture the calibration frames without having to add them to a Plan on the ASIAir, in which case it seems to need a target and complains if it can't point the mount at that target. Third, if you're using a DSLR with the ASIAir and the camera goes into stand-by mode, it loose connection with ASIAir and you have to go back outside to activate it again. Once reconnected it remains so while you're imaging etc. Don't get me wrong, for someone just starting out in imaging this is a great piece of kit and saves a lot of messing around. I now have it permanently attached to my wide FOV setup using the Samyang 135mm F2 lens, modded Canon EOS 1300D with a 32mm guide scope and ASI120MM Mini guide camera. It's a quick & easy setup for when I know I've only got a hour or two of clear skies and I was using it last night.

It should work fine without ASCOM because the mount is being controlled via the ST4 cable. So, PHD2 sends the corrections to the camera and then to the mount. If you want to take imaging further, adding the likes of Astro Photography Tool (APT) for imaging, then it's best to have ASCOM installed because it's what links all the software together.

If you're using the ST4 cable between the guide camera and the mount, then the setting in PHD2 for the mount is "On Camera" from the mount drop down menu. The intervalometer is connected to the DSLR, not the laptop. Only the USB cable from the guide camera is connected to the laptop in you configuration.

What stacking software are you using and has this been set to debayer correctly?

I'll see what I can do with imaging IC1396 again but with the Askar filter. The filter is also a 7nm pass, same as the L-eXtreme, so they should be similar performance. I got this one because I had the L-eXtreme but it's the 1.25" version and wanted to start using the ZWO Filter Draw, so needed the 2" filters for that. I already had a 2" UV/IR Cut filter and then 2" Askar Duo-Band came up in the FLO sale with a good reduction. I managed to get another 2 hours imaging on the Bubble & M52 last night and it is showing halos around some stars but I managed to remove it in post processing by reducing the saturation on the stars, once they're removed from the background. The halo is still there on some of the brighter stars but the colour reduction has made it less noticeable. This is the image with only a STF stretch applied by PixInsight, so you can see the halos as they come out of the camera.

Make sure it's the grub screw that's rounded off and not just the allen key. If the grub screw has rounded then you have a few options: Remove the focuser from the scope and try a bit of heat on the focuser knob to expand it, then try the 2mm allen key again (if it has any grip at all). I'm not talking about a welding torch or anything here, just holding it under the hot tap may provide enough heat. Try to get a 3/32 inch allen key into the grub screw, this is slightly larger than the 2mm but may need to be forced into the grub screw (with a hammer or press) so be careful! Drill out the grub screw using a Pillar Drill. Don't try to do it freehand because you're more likely to damage the internal thread of the course focuser knob. The drill size for tapping an M4 thread is 3.3mm, so try a 3mm drill to remove the grub screw, but watch the depth you're drilling too as you don't want to drill into the shaft. Once removed, you'll have to get the remains of the thread from the grub screw out of the threaded hole in the course focuser knob if you want to use it again.

Looking at the forecasts I didn't expect to have a clear night this side of the New Year, but this evening cleared up about 5pm and allowed me to get just over 4 hours of imaging. Looking at Stellarium I figured I could fit M52, NGC7635 and NCG7538 into the FOV with my Evostar ED80 DS Pro and ASI294MC Pro, fitted the Askar Duo-Band filter. I managed 61 x 4 minute images with Darks, Flats & Dark Flats. Stacked in DSS & processed with PI. It needs more integration time to pull out more detail but I'm quite pleased with the amount of Ha the filter managed to capture and the overall image is quite pleasing. C's & C's welcomed.

For the stars in this image, I used a slightly different way to reduce them. Normally I just use MorphologicalTransformation set at 0.3 (30%). On this image that did reduce the stars in size & brightness but left them looking more like smudged dots on the image. So, as well as 30% reduction, I also gave one instance of Deconvolution at default settings. This sharpened the reduced stars and I think it gives a much better final image. If it's of any help as a comparision, here's my last effort with IC1396 in late August, using the 1.25" L-eXtreme filter on the ASI294MC Pro.

I finally got a clear night! Still had the Moon to deal with later on but it was the first change to image since 21st November. In the FLO Black Friday Sale I got a 2" Askar Duo-Band filter at a reasonable price and this was the first light with it attached to my Evostar ED80 and ASI294MC Pro. I wanted to see how it compares to my 1.25" L-eXtreme and it seems to work quite well, still very early days yet. This is 5 hours 20 minutes of 240s subs, stacked in DSS with Darks, Flats & Dark-Flats and processed in PI. There was quite a bit of wind last night so guiding could have been better, but there were no bloated stars or any signs of halos around them, so I'm pleased with the filter so far. C's & C's welcomed.

Your not missing anything, the link is for the 20MP IMX183 version of the camera but is on the same page as the IMX571.

As @alacant has said; loose the PIPP processes, these can all be done in DSS. Also, the image files out of the camera need to be FITS format to perform the debayer but you can save the final stacked image out of DSS in TIFF format to allow you to stretch in post-processing. If you save them as PNG files then the post-processing won't work correctly. First off, Debayer settings in DSS: Open DSS, in the menu down the left hand side go to Options > RAW/FITS DDP Settings to open a new window. Click the FITS Files tab Make sure there's a tick in the box for "Monochrome 16 bit FITS files are RAW files created by a DSLR or a colour CMOS camera". In the drop-down menu below the tick box, choose "Generic RGGB" for the camera and leave everything else as default. Click "Apply" at the bottom of the window to save these settings. Now to get shot of the green cast on the final image: Click Options > Settings > Stacking Settings to open a new window. On the "Light" tab, click on the "RGB Channels Background Calibration" link and make sure there's a tick next to "RGB Channels Background Calibration". Now click "Options" under "RGB Channels Background Calibration" and choose Calibration Method = Rational and RGB Background Calibration Method = Minimum. It looks complicated because I've described each click but it won't take you long to change these settings.