M40

All sorted, many thanks for your help Elp 👍 Plan D gives me the dslr and gs pointing as would a telescope on the azgti, tried it with the synscan app, all good, switched to the asiair and again all good. With the seestar tripod legs fully extended there are no balance problems. 

Next step pa with the asiair when the clouds part😁

Hello FPM and welcome to the site. Have you found the astronomy tools in the resources menu at the top of the page? If you look in the fov calculator, you can put your telescope in and then a variety of eyepieces and a target just to give you a vague idea of what may be possible. The calculator will give you the exit pupil and if you look at the flo website for eyepieces the descriptor gives some info on eye relief.

I have one of the explore scientific eyepieces together with a few baader hyperion eyepieces and I am more than happy with them. The brighter dso stuff should be good with your telescope so use the calculator on M13. I tend to start with a very low power eyepiece, explore scientific 52' 40mm, helping me find the target then move up from there and with M13, a 10mm will work well. All the best. 

Ok we are into plan C

Few mods to the camera mount and the zwo camera acts as a counterweight to the canon. Piece of 12mm stud in place of the standard counterweight bar and it all balances and drives with no issues.

Challenge I have or hopefully had is getting it to point in the right direction. I have found that using the asiair to connect to the mount via the eqmod cable, regardless of what type of mount I say it is, it could go anywhere. So I went back to the synscan app, connected and it went where it was supposed to go. Without switching it off, I then connected to it via the asiair, told asiair that it was connected to an eqmod mount and away it went. Is that how you guys do it? It does seem a trifle long winded.

1 hour ago, Elp said:

I very much hope you've tested the east west heavy balance as my experience trying to make the smallest tripod for compactness taught me the tripod can't be too short or it'll fall over.

Good call 👍 it fell almost immediately and even worse when I stuck the counterweight on. Works fine on the heq5 tripod but not exactly the backpack arrangement I was after. I will give it a go on the larger tripod tonight, clouds willing, and if all is good I will have a mess around tomorrow to see if I can work out a plan C. Plan F involves a lump hammer 🤣 lets hope I don't get that far.

Plan B has landed in the form of a camera cold shoe adapter. The 85mm telescope was a little too heavy for the tripod with the counterweights so going to give this a go. Can't wait to try it out now,  got it all lined up with the laser, next step focus the guidescope, pa then see what the lens gives me 😃. It's sitting on a seestar tripod so with the seestar and this little setup should make for a great grab n go. Wouldn't be the same without a birds nest of wiring 😉

I got one of these 😁

Which enabled me to do this.......

And yes that is the seestar tripod, cant wait to try it out now

1 hour ago, paulastro said:

M40.  That's very much all l could manage this morning - but even more hazy.  😊

Another once in a lifetime thing so had to try 😁

Had to give todays sunspot a go even though there is a layer of cloud 

And zoomed in.....

Oh, you did it like that then......muppet

I suppose it would be boring if it was easy 🤣 I have a wedge but only the 1kg counterweight which isn't enough. I think I will throw a few pieces of metal together to see what weight I need for it to work. Thanks for the help guys.

Looks like I need another 1Kg counterweight. It's a bit too wibbly wobbly for the tripod now,  time for plan B 🤔

Hello all, I am trying to sort out a portable setup using the az gti and asiair.  The az gti is alt az and eq mode updated. I can access both modes using either the handset or the phone app, but I can't find a method of connecting to the mount with the asiair and use alt az mode. Am I missing something or is it not possible?

I link between mount and asiair with an eqmod cable and I have tried selecting both eqmod mount and az mount in the asiair software, both drive the mount but it seems to be expecting the mount to be on the wedge. Any pointers would be most welcome, I am up to page 30 in the thread and havent spotted anything. Ta much.

17 minutes ago, cloudyweather said:

Yes you are right. I will need to move occasionally. Dare I ask how the Stellamira 125mm compares to the Starfield 102mm? I have to admit to seeing it on FLO... Thanks

I've never used the starfield but I can say that I have absolutely no regrets on the sm125. M45 positively sparkles in visual, solar system objects are surprisingly good and much as I dont do astrophotography, I do have a go at eeva and I will not run out of targets any time soon. Just to thicken the plot just a little, flo have an open box sm125 at a very good price because of a blemish in the carbon fibre. Enjoy 🤣

A couple of extras to think on, a dew shield should be first on your list and a moon filter, it's surprising just how bright the moon is. Eyepieces are a very personal thing so have a good read on what people use. Personally I like baader stuff and my goto is the zoom. Might add that baader eyepieces have a screw thread at the eyepiece to enable the direct connection of cameras. I rarely use a barlow. All the best.

I note earlier you mentioned moving your setup to different places, the heq5 is heavy, likely twice the weight of the eq5, but, the heq5 can handle a stellamira 125mm with ease. The sm125 ota and the starfield 102 ota are similar weights so food for thought. All the best.

Clear night so a couple taken. All using stellamira 125mm, asi290mm, heq5 and asiair. All simple screen grabs. 

This is M58, 40 x 10 seconds. Approximately 68 million light years away 

This is M86, 30 x 10 seconds. Approximately 52 million light years away. 

And this is M99, 35 x 10 seconds, approximately 49 million light years away. 

10 hours ago, Raulvdzande said:

i keep it at home and i have a big enough space to storage it and use it and i want to use to to see stars, deep sky and planets

I am going to suggest something slightly outside of the box. You have a very healthy budget and you would like goto. How about this, the skywatcher skymax 127 az gti and the seestar s50.

Slightly over budget but you don't have to get them both at once.

The skymax, using a good eyepiece can be used on the planets and moon with the seestar giving you deep sky stuff. With the skymax, you will need to buy a few extras, like eyepieces and a dew shield and the seestar is an excellent all in one piece of kit that you can buy a couple of low cost extras for such as a dew shield and quick levelling device. 

Food for thought and hopefully others will offer a few alternatives. All the best. 

Hello Raulvdzande and welcome to the site. You have a good budget there so a couple of questions for you. Do you need to transport the telescope or can you use it where you live? Some telescopes are rather large and heavy, do you have a storage space? Do you have any thoughts on what you would like to see i.e. Solar system stuff or deep sky stuff? 

All the best. 

Another option you could look at is an hdmi switch. There are lots out there that use a handheld remote and some that have a pc interface. I have a bluestream 4k hdmi switch with push buttons, never tried a pc operated device but a quick check found a bluestream device with pc interface, they are not cheap though. By switching off the hdmi input to the monitor it would go to standby mode. Food for though anyway. All the best.

Are you looking to completely power off the monitor? The monitor we have on the pc goes to a power off mode when the pc is off, is that what's in your thoughts?

Took this the other night as I thought I would try and keep a record over the year,  but because I am good, I completely forgot to take the star info 🤦‍♂️

Apparently the star has an 80 year cycle and this year is the year that it glows at its brightest before dimming again. 

I don't think I've ever done a reset on the seestar, I have had to restart the phone after a seestar update though. @GasGiant keep us to speed on how it goes

If I have it right, the binoculars clamp into this bit?

If so, there hopefully is the way forward. Remove that top clamp from the tripod base and then it would be a case of finding a tripod that the clamp can be fitted to. This is where a few more bits of info would help us, like budget, type of tripod you are looking for etc. I know I am happy drilling a few holes in metal, is that something you could take on? All the best.

What happens if you press and hold the seestar on/off button?

At last,a clear night so had to have a go at M87. This is using a stellamira 125, heq5 with a zwo asi290mm, 30 x 10 seconds and a simple screen grab.

2 hours ago, squipper said:

Taken before the clouds took over

Nice target 👌 added to my getting longer all the time list of targets 😁