AndrewRrrrrr

Seen from West Sussex coast at 22:01 a massive at least 3 part fireball passed travelling from west to east and ending up in  Cygnus. I didn't have my distance glasses with as was peering through a telescope so a bit fuzzy! covered a good 60 degrees of the sky. was an orange-yellow colour and maybe was visible for 5 seconds. Wow! was absolutely amazing, never seen one like that before. 

Any else see it?

5 minutes ago, Deadlake said:

One question I have is how well does OneStep integrate with SkySafari?

Any body used the combination?

I was just using it earlier, it works fine. Onstep(X) is running on a FYSETC E4 board and skysafari on iphone, communicating with the onstepx smart web server via wifi

i get this when I've forgotten to tell APT to "track".  or when the system has had a meltdown and still has some old alignment points in eqmod. I clear them out and am usually good to go.

like bosun21 says, no there isn't. if you're struggling (like I have in the past) you might find this useful, it sorted me out.......

https://astromart.com/reviews-and-articles/reviews/beginners/show/eds-guide-to-sct-collimation

the brackets came with the kit Hermann_S.  If I were you I would email Terrans and explain what you want to do, see if they will sell you the brackets. You might need different bolts, pulleys and wheels as well though.  Although you can get the pulleys and belts on line easlily enough. e.g. https://www.gearsandsprockets.co.uk/6mm-wide-gt2-belts/

The onstep support group is a treasure trove of information although a lot of it is for self-built onstep rather than purchased kits like the terrans. 

18 hours ago, Sunshine said:

Love it, a wonderful image!

thank you!

Had a rare few clear nights late June and got approx 7 hours each in H, S and O. 

Edge 8HD with 0.7x reducer. Altair Astro 26M cam with Altair 3nm filters. Sitting on a belt modified NEQ6,

Scope is quite new to me and still sorting out the backfocus, seems to be longer that Celestron specify, slowly increasing it night by night.......

thank you! yes I agree about the apex, would help with horizons. 

Finished now. (the spuds have gone bonkers!) Will give it a coat of clear wood preserver at some point. 

Definitely appreciating not carting it all out and back in every time an imaging opportunity comes along.  Along with reducing the risk of dropping it, it's pretty heavy!
 

8 hours ago, skybadger said:

Out of interest, why did you bother with the Tyvek ?

Also, did you consider reducing the height of the front wall to get better horizon access, resulting in a sloping roof ? 

 

hi skybadger,

The cladding has quite a lot of holes and splits in it plus my joinery isn't the best, so wanted a bit more insurance to stop water getting in.  It wasn't a lot of money either so thought why not?

You're probably right that I could have improved my horizons but generally try and image stuff that's not too near the horizon anyway. 

It's all screwed together so never say never that it won't get reconfigured in the future if that's what's needed!

starting on the front...

cladding complete....

one side cladded

the parliament hinges.......

barrier attached all round

1st piece of cedar cladding attached..... 

nice big door made.

when i put the cladding on later, i had to change the hinges to "parliament hinges" othewise the door wouldn't open! doh!

roof with shallow pitch on and then covered in pond liner.

sliders attached and rolling nice and smoothly. 

one side of tyvek attached also.

I set the scope up and slewed it around to try and work out the bare minimum size I could get away with. Seemed I would get away with 1.2m x 1.2m and 1.5m high.

One of the reasons to make it as small as possible is that the smaller sliders are cheaper!

So ordered up some 1200mm sliders from Amazon (https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B08TBFLWX7?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details&th=1) for £145 and built the basic cube. Left the sliders in the box they arrived in case they had to go back.......

Then tried a test fit.......was looking a bit tight!

unfortunately when i'd done the test slewing to determine the size needed, I hadn't had the dew shield on and the cube wasn't big enough, oops. 

No matter, bit of rejigging to make the cube 1.4m x 1.4m with same height and all was well.

The very convenient returns system on Amazon meant a courier picked up the 1200mm rails the next day and some 1400mm ones were winging their way.

Getting the frame square and level was a real pain, what with the wonky timber and wonky crazy paving to sit it on, but got there in the end. 

this is what will going in there, not going to build a pier as a requirement is that it can be dismantled when we (eventually) downsize at some point in the future. 

I find guiding results are great with the tripod sitting on the hardstanding and since it will be a remote astrophotography obsy, won't need the extra room a pier will offer.

not got much of a plan other than roughly a cube, uses sliders and uses as much of the recyled tree house as possible. going to make it up as I go along......

Evening All!

I've always really enjoyed reading other people's obsy builds so I thought i'd post some photos of my modest mini obsy that is currently under construction, hopefully will be of interest.

Earlier this year, we took down the treehouse in our garden which has been there for 8 years (ish) and not not being used by the children anymore. 

It's not a great photo of it, but you can see it through the trampoline netting (just).

So ended up with a good sized stack of 2x4, 2x2, 2x3, decking planks and a fair quantity of 6" cedar cladding.  Most of it quite wonky and some of it a bit shabby!!

Inspired by a few others on this forum:

Domain105 https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/379823-new-sliding-roof-mini-garden-observatory-build/

Skipper Billy https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/419808-converting-my-clamshell-obsy-roof-to-slide-off/

and Turbocoo https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/378345-metal-shed-sliding-roof-observatory/

- the common thread here is the use of heavy duty drawer sliders.

Along with this inspiration is the fact that my astrophotography rig is getting quite heavy to move in and out of the house.

The idea is to build a mini-obsy as I won't get away with building a big one with a warm room/mini bar etc. 

Just big enough to hold an NEQ6 with an edge8 on it. I'll clad it with the cedar cladding and hopefully it will look like a large beehive 🙂

Markarians chain and friends.

This is 1 hour 45 mins worth of 30 second subs taken with a Canon 60D and a Samyang 135mm f2. Taken a few days ago during a rare gap in the cloudy nights. 

There's quite a few objects in here 🙂

thanks for the advice guys, looks like i best get saving up lol. 

Evening All,

Looking for some advice:

I recently upgraded my camera from a 183M to a 26M. But using the same EFW with 1.25" inch filters. This is with a "wave 80" scope (80mm aperture, f6 with a 0.8x reducer so 384mm focal length) 

Sensor to filter distance is 28.5mm.

I thought I might get away with it: according to the "CCD Filter Size" on astronomy.tools website which specifies a minimum filter size of 32mm (1.25" = 31.75mm) 

Attached is the integrated LUM channel and it's corresponding flat. (I might re-do the flats to see if anything has changed, I'm still in the "shake down" phase of the new camera I guess......)

Or maybe it's something else altogether? I haven't attached the heater yet but it wasn't a cold or humid night

.

Opinions welcome, thanks in advance!
 

https://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/slac-completes-construction-of-the-largest-digital-camera-ever-built-for-astronomy

!!!!

i'm thinking of getting one of these to go with my edge 8 and 80mm triplet, seems to fit the bill pretty well.

Does anyone have any experience with this camera or similar IMX492 based camera? 

i think from reading around that the difficulty in creating flats is now understood with a workaround? or is that not the case?

any info gratefully received.....thanks loads!

regards

AR

looks good! i've nearly finished one using a FYSETC E4 board for my Vixen GP mount. Very impressed with the whole thing. I'm finding the hardest bit is mounting it inside a case with cable plugs etc!