tarkanyigabor

Thank you for all of you for the usefull answers and help. I think I will try imaging without the flattener and see what happens to figure out what part has the problem.

Dear Everybody,

I have just started astrophotography and I have noticed some diffraction spikes in my images despite I use a Skywatcher 80ED. This is primarily present in corners, especially the upper right corner of the image (picture enclosed).  Their placement was similar during two different occasions with different camera angles. I have nice round stars without spikes in the middle. My imaging train is the following: SW 80ED, Altair Lightwave 0.8x flattener, T2/Canon ring, Canos Eos 450D.

Could you please help me with what the problem might be. I have read that it can be pinched optics, but I am not really sure.

Thank you,

Gabor

diffraction.tif

14 hours ago, Tenor Viol said:

What are you using to power it? Mains?

I am using an 50 AH deep cycle AGM battery, I have double checked voltage and current values, but no issue there.

14 hours ago, newbie alert said:

The quack noise at the end is from the stepper motors... without the belt mod it will sound like a rumble( bag of spanners)

Thank your for the reply. I was aware of this quack noise, the work of the motors was the suprise for me.

No, it is the original one. 

I have just bought a brand new HEQ5-Pro Goto mount, and I was suprised when I first tried it.

The behaviour of the stepper motors and the sound of them was completely different than I expected. They have started and stopped slowly and the pitch of the motors was different.

The sound I expected was like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WRNKh5xMFg

What I experienced was like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqHAKXCrbMA (just the sound, not the slewing issue).

What would be the reason for this difference? new firmware, new type of stepper motors, manufacturing issue, etc?

Thank you for your answers.