AndrewRrrrrr

hi there, thanks for the reply. yes I tried a different power supply, was the same.

Hi, I think something has gone awry with the cooling on my 183M pro tec camera. The camera takes longer than usual to cool down to the set temp (-10 in my case) The TEC light does not come on at all (and the SYS light is flashing slowly) Usually as soon as I plug in the camera, the fan comes on, but the fan no longer seems to ever come on. I noticed this a couple of nights ago while re-doing my flats because the temperature starts to rise once the exposures on the camera start , and keeps rising. I stopped APT which I use to drive things and started up Altair capture to see if there's anything else I can look at to get the fan running. It shows the fan as 100% and the TEC cooling as on with power at about 75%. I quit altair capture and started APT back up which showed the camera sitting at about 38C! Anyone got any ideas or recommendations please? thanks in advance Andrew

interested to know what people's opinions are on what is an ideal modern camera that would be suited to the edge8HD?

looking forward to this!

glad you're pleased, sorry for delay but got there in the end

isn't it that a pair of particles is created, one inside the event horizon and the other outside. they cannot get back together so the one on the outside "becomes" real and the mass of the BH becomes smaller. anyway we digress. I don't know what nothing looks like although I did watch a certain ex-PMs speech in the USA yesterday which was very close to nothing.

isn't this the vacuum energy that is everywhere in the Universe? spontaneous creation and subsequent anihilation of particle/antiparticle pairs results in no net change to the vacuum energy. and it's what allows Hawkings theory that black holes evaporate

M42 in LRGBHa. Only 3 mins each for the RGB and Ha. 27 mins for the L. Weather has been terrible for ages, and just managed this short time...... was quite chuffed with the colour from such a short amount of time, but it is a bright object I suppose. altair wave 80 with 0.8x, Altair 183MM pro tec

I'm quite enjoying "The Observatory" - http://www.multivax.de/obsmag/

using APT, not sure what the cool down settings are , I think they are the defaults. will have a look at slowing things down and seeing how that goes. cheers!

will take it apart next time it happens and see what's going on. thanks Symmetal

thanks Grant, think taking the cooling a bit slower and not as cold a target temp.

hi there, yes a plain old L filter for my mono camera. i don't keep my camera outside either. will take the camera off to take a closer look next time it happens......

thanks Stefan, next time i will take the camera off and have a look and yes will try at zero degrees also

Evening All, Just got a new pegasus power box and moved to "proper" dew control. Also got a heater for the front of the AA 183M camera. Have the camera cooled to -10C. (also got a new 0.8 reducer as well - haven't done my flats yet.) The scope is an AA Wave 80. This is a 15% stretch of one of the lights. I have the dew heaters on maximum and there is no dew at all on the front of the objective lens. The humidity is really high at the moment down here in West Sussex (powerbox says 99%), everything is dripping! Does it ever get too bad and just not worth bothering trying to take subs? Any ideas what this is? Ice on the sensor? Any handy tips on troubleshooting would be welcomed. yours Andrew

agree the oresentation was terrible, but the image - holy smoley it's amazing. just 12.5 hours, wait until they zero in with a couple of weeks long exposure!

thinking of doing this myself. reason being is that I have recently added a pegasus focuscube and i'm no longer able to use the rotator on the focuser for more than ~45 degrees as it fouls the guidescope one way and the dovetail the other way. i'm 99% decided to get a Baader T2 heavy duty quick change unit and place that in front of the FW. picture should explain it........ (budget won't stretch to an electronic rotator! )

looks right. sometimes you need to slightly lenghten the hole in the pcb https://groups.io/g/vixen-ss2k/photo/245750/2906954?p=Created%2C%2C%2C20%2C2%2C0%2C0

thanks Rickwayne, I like your point about nothing wrong with just doing Ha to start and building up. Makes sense!

thanks again discardeastro, yes am currently guiding: with a ZWO 120MM mini in a guidescope on the wave 80 and an OAG on the C8, seems to work well enough. I have a 1X flattener on the 80. Am getting 0.5" RMS. Using APT which looks like it will cope OK with the new kit. pixinsight - i can see it happening at some point for sure. good shout about the autofocuser, best put one on the shopping list!!!

Thanks for the reply, DSOs primarily. If I have to choose a scope to be the one that the camera is best suited for, it would be the wave 80. I was hoping I'd be able to image "smaller" objects (M13, M1, galaxies etc) successfully using the C8, maybe using 2x2 binning on the camera if necessary?

Hi there, I did the rowan belt mod to my neq6 about 3 months ago. Before the mod I was getting about 0.7-0.8" total RMS and after the mod regularly get 0.5" or better. It's a bit hit and miss tbh depending on how carefully I balance things and polar align. I also installed new bearings on the worms. I would say I found the post-mod tuning was incredibly difficult (for me) to get right and I spent weeks fiddling around, at one point I nearly gave up and was going to try and find professional help!!!! but got there in the end. There's some great walk throughs on youtube so you can see what you think about doing it before giving it a go. ps I do sometimes wonder what improvement I could have made by simply tuning it up - regrease, new bearings for the dec and ra worms, fiddling with the backlash. good luck with whichever way you go.

Hi All, I've been using my modded Canon 40D for a year or so now and really enjoying the whole astroimaging thing after being visual only for many years. I have a C8 with a 6.3 FR and also an Altair Astro Wave 80, with an NEQ6 mount. I'm looking to upgrade my camera and have been given war office clearance to invest about a £1000 plus whatever I can get for selling my Canon plus the bits and bobs (l-enhance clip-in, lens etc) I have with it. I'll be happy to get just the camera and a wheel initially and then get the filters as I can save up for them - will get there in the end. I think I would like to go mono as I love the techy side of it all and this seems to be more down that rabbit hole...... I'm looking at a QHY294M Mono which is on offer at Astrograph for 874 (with the wheel for 207) or maybe a Altair hypercam 183M pro tec or the equivalent ZWO 183 which is almost the same price. I'm also not averse to buying 2nd hand at all, just doesn't seem to be a lot out there at the moment. Both cameras look reasonably well matched on the CCD suitability calculator web tool. Would be really interested to hear people's opinions please? thanks Andrew

Hi there The risingcam 571 looks really tempting. Currently showing as £967.04 on the AliExpress store. I'm trying to work out if this is the final price or will there be VAT added on once it arrives at UK customs? What has been the final price paid by UK buyers over the last couple of months please? thanks in advance AR

Hi All, Looking for some ideas/help as to what might have gone on here please..... Set up for M33 a couple of nights ago. Took approx 100x 3min subs with a flip in the middle. When I put all the lights into APP, I got a very unsatisfactory stacked picture (never had this before), loads of banding. I've never had to separately stack the 2 sets of lights before but on a hunch tried stacking the pre and post flip sets of lights separately. The stacked picture on the pre-flip lights is fine but the post-flip one is weird. Have attached the two stacks. The camera is modded Canon 40D. Flats, bias. No darks, but dithered. I used the same master flat, master bias and bad pixel map for both stacks. Haven't done processing in particular with the 2 pictures. I seemingly have developed a dodgy usb connection to the camera and it did unplug/plug itself quite a few times during the flip, and I had to reset things to carry on with the imaging run. Am aware of the good ol canon banding thing, but a bit weird appearing like this. Maybe the camera went on the fritz after being connected/reconnected multiple times. If thats the case, I hope it's a temporary thing! thanks in advance for any comments Andrew