AndrewRrrrrr

Not many clear nights these days it seems! This was taken on the 10th Jan. 47x 1 minute exposures at ISO 800 on modified Canon 60D plus 50mm lens with an Altair triband clip-in filter. Camera was on a Vixen GP mount with an Onstep setup. Processed in Astro Pixel Processor.

finally a clear (ish) night so gave the onstep on GP mount another trial with a better PA (2.4 arc-min) It's doing really well IMHO (this a C8 with a 0.63x reducer and a Canon 60D) guiding accuracy seems to be around 0.63" going as low as 0.42" at one point! onstep-guiding291223.tiff

yes - really easy. basic skills will be good enough!

I can confirm control of the onstep is good via Astro Photography Tool and PHD2. once a couple of platesolves and syncs have been done, it's very accurate at slewing to what you want. The guiding accuracy was not great, but it was really poor seeing, i have a polar alignement error of over a degree and had a fully loaded C8 on the GP mount (way over what you should have on a GP for photos). Although the guiding wasn't great it was a massive improvment over the GP mount with the SS2K on it, which basicallly wouldn't guide at all. I guess the SS2K motors and using spur gears compared to the belt drive and modern steppers for the onstep have helped here. I think I can get the guiding better with some decent seeing, a proper PA and may a bit more time spent on balancing. Certainly the poor guiding isn't down to the onstep, it's the amount of gear I have on the GP. We will see.......

hi bought this for my vixen GP mount and it works really well. looks like there's an eq3 version. they are quite responsive to email questions I've found. https://www.terransindustry.com/en-gb/collections/onstep-v4-kit/products/skywatcher-eq3?variant=42521248596161

thanks guys, i might be able to stretch to a samyang 14mm which looks pretty good, looks like I could pick one up for 180 ish. 300 too much for the 135 as I'm saving up for other more expensive stuff!!! yes the sponge is getting rinsed haha a nifty fifty does look good but think it turns into an nifty eighty on an aps-c sensor.

After some recommendations please..... I've just bought a astro-modded Canon 60D body. I don't have any lenses for it. Most of the camera's time will be on the back of a telescope but I might want to use it for very wide field or even "normal" daytime photography! I don't have a huge budget (up to £150 ish ) and happy to buy second hand. I think it needs to be an EF mount as I have a quad-band clip-in filter and EF-S lens protude backwards into the camera body and will hit the filter. What lens would you buy? thanks in advance 🙂

my belt-modded and regreased etc neq6 nearly always guides below 0.5" regular periods in the 0.3's. best ever was 0.22" which I had to do a screen grab of after my jaw had dropped..... guiding022.tiff

can recommend this: https://culturehustle.com/products/black-4-0 as long you are not associated with Anish Kapoor!

thank you, I know I'm going to enjoy reading those posts

looks like it clouded over at 03:04 and never cleared up. what time was your flip?

kudos! wow that is some setup Windjammer! 2 filter wheels in series is it? And a drill chuck in there?

hi, my onstep has pulleys with an offset which might help?

and if you're struggling for backfocus, it can be handy to not have to accomodate the OAG. but still prefer the oag for weight minimisation and keeping that weight as near as possible to the centre of rotation - to help with guiding performance. so far so good !!

i prefer an OAG due to the weight saving and differential flexure thing. the only downside I have with my setup is that to rotate the camera for framing purposes I have to rotate from the rear of the scope itself. this means I need to re-do a phd2 calibration whenever I do this. not too much of a faff but something to remember.

hello from just down the road in Felpham. wishing you (and me! haha) clear skies!

Just been thinking that I haven't really lavished much attention to what L filter I'm using. What do people use and do they rate them? I've got a mono camera (AA183M) and have the usual set of LRBGHSO filters in a 1.25" EFW. Am in a bortle 4/5 area. For the L filter i'm using Altair Astro UV/IR block filter. Not necessarily think it's underperforming but interested in other more experienced people's opinions 🙂 clear skies, Andrew ps I guess the same question for the RBG ones as well!

I left the scope to do it's autofocus routine and when returned, this was the last 15 second shot. Pointing near polaris at 20:07 BST. Weird!

Totally agree, one of the things I say to colleagues is that when Joseph Fourier was working on his theories in the 19th century there would have been no practical use for them. Now in the 21st century it underpins almost all digital video/photo compression and distribution technology!

yes that's a replacement polarscope illuminator as the connector to the motherboard is different. Like you, I recently put in a new motherboard on my neq6 but i didnt bother swapping out this part - I would have done for completeness but it would have meant moving the motors to the side and I didn't want to do that as I have my mount totally dialled in! 🙂

fairly clear down here near Bogor Regis. Got the 8" SCT out and saw Europa emerge from behind Jupiter which was low down to the East. A fab thing to watch over the course of an hour of so.

you could try the APT forum, I find that the owners are really responsive and helpful.

This will be worth a watch online and it’s free! https://www.gresham.ac.uk/whats-on/galaxies-beyond

grabbed some time between the scudding clouds tonight to try it out using sky safari on iphone connected to the onstep via our home wifi. ...... super-rough polar alignment and 2 star mount alignment. next object M31 was near the centre in the finder and eyepiece so all good. using the slew buttons while looking through the eyepiece (24mm in my C8 giving 84X) is a very smooth experience. looking forward to seeing how auto-guiding will work at some point. let it alone for 10 mins and when checked, the object under view was still in the eyepiece fov totally silent when just tracking, very quiet when slewing, I would say quieter than my belt-modded neq6. saw a few Perseids as well 🙂

Hi I’ve done that with an apple phone&ipad. Sounds like skybadger has done that with an android phone. haven’t used it in anger outside yet as weather terrible but looks like there may be an brief opportunity coming soon! Fingers crossed……