Andy56

Hi, I know this is an old topic but I've just come across it. I have the WO ZS61 and find it to be a great 'scope. I think you may have been unlucky. Does the nylon piece look like the bit in the photo's below. It's for the clamping rings. First Light got me replacements from WO for this. Andy

So I've looked over my subs in great detail and found something very interesting. The reflection moves around with dithering so I thought probably a streetlight (no moon) or similar on the lens. Perhaps I forgot to slide the hood up. BUT it stays in area after a meridian flip. I would have expected it to move to the other side of the image if it was external to the telescope. Any one any ideas? Cheers Andy

I haven't tried without a filter because of light pollution. I now have a filter tray so I can try it out when Orion rises at a better time I used Pixinsight's WBPP. Just re-blinked the HHN subs and it's in one session of 57 subs. I can only see one artefact but the others could be visible after integration, possible on the other subs. On M42 it's in a couple of sets of subs at different positions. Wasn't looking for it originally. So it's a genuine artefact. I'll integrate the subs separately an see if/where it appears. The set up was the same for each night. I think I left the set up out over the day so no changes. Can't remember exactly because it was December last year Cheers Andy Snip from a single blue sub Snip from a single red sub

Hi, I have a WO ZS61EDII with it's flattener with the Optolong dual-band l-extreme filter and the the ASI2600MC pro. I have noticed (last winter) what appear to be internal reflections by bright stars. See pics. These appear in the Blue and Green channels but not in the red. I've seen it on the Horse Head nebula and M42. Any one any ideas what might cause this? Could be internal reflections in the filter but I thought this caused bloat. See attached photos. I've circle the artefacts. Cheers Andy

Hi, Thanks for your responses. This morning I set up Nina and 'scope to take images (with cap on) of Venus, Uranus, Mercury and Jupiter, slewing between them and then parking. I did this twice in various combinations and it did a camera warm and parked each time. I did not have guiding enabled (daylight) so the comms to the mount will be reduced. So I think EQMOD is falling over after a few hours of normal comms activity. I'm using a home made bluetooth interface using the EQDIRECT-BT cct. I've just found the EQMOD logs so after the next time this happens may be I can make sense of it. I may have to bite the bullet and buy 😲a pre made cable to eliminate my hardware build. Using BT is great because it reduces the cables. Cheers Andy

Many thanks. My park position is pointing to the pole. This morning I restarted eqmod and Nina and told it to park and it went to the polar position so I don't think it's encoders in the mount. Either eqmod is stopping and Nina is not reporting it or Nina is not giving the instruction. I'm going to try it many times this morning now I've found the message centre in eqmod. Cheers Andy

Hi, Edit: For EQMOD read "EQMOD ASCOM HEQ5" I've used NINA a few times and had trouble with parking. I last used it in January and last night. In January it wouldn't park. I left it overnight and in the morning it was point at the ground. On a previous session it was there at the end of the session and NINA showed that is was doing two instructions simultaneously ie parking and warming the camera except it was only warming the camera and it did not park. Last night it parked after my first session 20x5mins, but I stared another session (this morning) at 01:20, went to bed, but it did not park afterwards. The parking flag was set in the sequence. I've looked at the log (info level) and it doesn't show the instruction for parking only warming. I have another issue that could be related that I often find that the EQMOD window is scrunched up, if you know what I mean, in the morning. It was this morning. I know it's easy to say that this is the problem but if EQMOD <->Nina comms failed that surely there should be and indication in the Nina log. Is there a EQMOD log somewhere I can look at. I have searched and found some logs but they don't seem to be session logs only installation/set up. So in summary: Is there a issue parking with NINA. Should a NINA<-> EQMOD comms failure show up in the logs. Where is, or how do I turn on an EQMOD session log. Sorry for being all over the place with this, it's difficult remembering exactly what I did at 1am. CHeers Andy edit: changed Ascom to EQMOD

Hi, Thanks for the feedback. So assuming there is no such button, I have played with NINA a bit more and found a couple of features I had not noticed before. To match the previous images, I can plate solve one of them and note the rotation then use "Slew and centre". Then use the "Determine rotation from camera" to rotate my camera appropriately. I'll give this a try tonight. Clear Outside tells me I've got about 5hrs tonight. Barbulo: I have a Star Adventurer. I used a red dot finder to get the initial pointing correct and then had to do the same as you ie plate solve and view in a planetarium and adjust. I used APT for this and then bought a GoTo mount because I was spending far to much of the precious British clear skies just lining up the target. Many thanks Andy

Hi, I've been using APT for about a year or so and thought I'd give NINA a try. I've had a few successful nights but there's a feature in APT that I cannot find in NINA. With APT you can plate solve an image from the camera or a file and send the coordinates to Stellarium with the "Show" button in the "Point Craft" window. This shows a box in Stellarium representing the image with the location and rotation. This is after I've set the focal length and sensor size etc. in Stellarium. This allows me to check the coordinates and the rotation compared to an earlier session especially if I've rotated the camera wrt the telescope. Stellarium also shows the object and allows me to chose the rotation to get the best framing. Does such a button exist in NINA? I can plate solve images in the Imaging screen but the image is not good as its only one sub usually. Many thanks Andy

Hi, All those who brave the cold winter nights, I use APT and the other night I was using GoTo++ and the first images for plate-solving had streaky stars. The second and third didn't, so I'm assuming that there is flexing in the system and the cables are cold (-5deg) and stiff and taking some time to relax to tere new positions after moving the telescope. After a bit of fiddling I found there is play in the telescope in two places. For this post I would like opinion on one of these issues. The focuser appears to be flexing where it it secured onto the main part of the telescope. If I hold the body of the telescope and gently move the camera the focussing gear rotates slightly on the telescope body as shown by the red arrow. I have gently tightened the Alan screws circled in green and it has improved it a bit but there is still some movement. That has stiffened the focus but not to much. I don't want to strip down the telescope to find if there are any screws that could be tightened at this moment without further advice. So my question is whether this is normal and I should accept this, or is there something that could be done. I know I should tidy up my cabling but so far (during the summer) I've not had this issue. I have a 12v and USB 3 cable hanging off the end of the camera at the moment which I will correct the next time I use it. Many thanks Andy Edit: corrected typo

To close this with feedback, the change I made to use Saturation Via Star-profile worked. I think the multi-star guiding is selected but it only selects one star. I'll experiment with this on the next clear night. Many thanks for your assistance. Andy

Ah found a possible. The Star Saturation Detection is set to Max-ADU value. Would this be better using Saturation Via Star-profile as this is what seems to be the issue. Having said that I've not tried guiding using a flat topped star profile, I've just assumed that it would be poor. Cheers Andy

Hi, Looking for help on PHD2 guiding. Something has changed in my PHD2 setup and when it auto selects a star it chooses a relatively bright one with flat topped star profile. As I understand the flat top can lead to inaccuracies in guiding. It used to, by default, select a small star with a pointed top for the star profile. A difference between the manual and my set up is the Minimum star SNR for AutoFind. Mine is 6 the manual is 25. Is this likely to be the cause. I can experiment tonight as it's predicted to be clear for quite a few hours, but I would like to know if I'm going in the right direction. Many thanks, Andy

Now I've got I think. alacant: "Remove the camera to mount cable and connect the mount to the computer using this." I already have a bluetooth link. I'm already running ASCOM and EQASCOM for mount control through APT. "Rather than specify 'on camera' for the mount, choose 'HEQ5/6' or 'eqmod mount'." This presumably changes it to pulse guiding. I'd done a search on the PHD2 Help file for "pulse" but it returned no results so I'm assuming its not referred to as pulse guiding. I've had another look through and found it's referred as "pulseguide" so my original search did not find it. I'll hook up the mount and give it a try on the next clear evening. So maybe next year LOL. Many thanks Andy

OK. "So you must calibrate after each mount slew; new target and/or meridian flip." Is this what causes the reversal of the RA guiding or is it to ensure best guiding? I'm using ST4 because that's what I came across first and set it up this way. Also it's how I guide in RA only on a Star Adventurer. Losing the cable would be great. Currently I'm using a home made Blue Tooth connection to the HEQ5 control port. I guess this is the eqdir interface mentioned. How do I enable Pulse Guiding. Just looked through PHD2, can't find pulse guiding. Is there a guide to this somewhere I can read? Cheers Andy

Hi, knobby: Yes it's RA as shown by PHD2. I note that the calibration is at 45deg. I don't know if this plays a part. Also the Reverse Dec output after Meridian Flip is ticked. I've attached the log for anyone's perusal. Its at 2022-11-12 18:36:03 that shows the issue. This is just after moving from M31 to the Eastern Veil so crossing the meridian. See below: It's happened many times before but I want to use AMS and this will need to work if I leave it unattended. Newbie: I'm using 2.6.11 which does not appear to have that option. It's ST4 as I'm using a cable from the ASI120mm mini to the mount. Cheers Andy PHD2_GuideLog_2022-11-12_180035.txt

Hi The title says it all. I've Google'd this and searched forums but all I seem to find is Dec reversals. So I'm using an HEQ5+ Guide Scope PHD2 and APT and ASTAP. I calibrate PHD2 and it guides correctly. I if slew over the meridian or (using APT) do an automatic meridian flip, the RA guiding nudges it in the wrong direction. If I then do a re-calibrate then all is OK. I can't find anything that tells the system to compensate for this. I have read that some mounts have meridian side detection and I guess there's a simple tick box somewhere that compensates for this. So can someone point me in the right direction about this. TIA Andy

Hi, I'm having trouble with my HEQ5 graticule illumination. It seems to go from fully dark to over bright (may be maximum) at around level 10. Is this normal? Will the Star Adventurer graticule illuminator work in its place. I know I could try this myself but I'm on hols tomorrow and I'm itching to find out. Cheers Andy

Hi Stefan73, barbulo, alacant Many thanks for you replies. I see that it is just poor PA plus a possibly bit of RA tracking. Thanks for the suggestion of Astrometry.net. This seems to be a useful tool for this. Currently I have an issue doing manual PA using my HEQ5 because I have not focussed the PA 'scope, and the graticule illumination is either dark or too bright. Unlike the Star Adventurer which has a nice linear brightness adjustment. Now, if I can't resolve this I'll make a up a bracket for my guide scope and camera, then I can use Sharcap and PHD2. Alacant: I was experimenting to see what the RA drift was for 300secs to get some good wide angle shots. I'm using the L-Extreme so I need fairly long exposures to get good signal. I may be wrong about this but I'm experimenting. Cheers Andy

Hi, Last night I had an attempt to try wide field ie 50mm+ Optolong L-Extreme on an apsc sensor. This on an HEQ5. I did a crude polar alignment because of technical issues. I put the tripod back in it's marked positions on the ground. This normally give reasonable polar alignment when using Sharcap. Now I tried 300 seconds and got star trails. OK possible a poor polar alignment. Now my question is how can I work this out from the image. I'm guessing that if the polar alignment was good then this would be an RA tracking error. I've tried using Stellarium but can't get my head round which direction is which So are there any tools that I could throw an image out and let me know how the drift aligns with RA. Cheers Andy

Many thanks Clarkey. I now remember reading this somewhere but I couldn't find it again. Cheers Andy

HI, I have recently bought a 130PDS. I have a 2" Optolong L_Extreme filter and am planning to buy a TS Optic CC. But where do I fit the filter. I can't seen to find anywhere with the ASI2600 spacers. Does it fit in the end of the TYS Optic's CC? I see there is a ZWO 2" Filter Drawer (M42 / M48) available but this another £79. ( I know, just a drop in the ocean with this hobby) Any suggestions, I guess I'm not the first to do this. Kind regards Andy

Hi Thanks for you comments. I don't have space for the roll off shed or a pier, but the rain alarm and a BBQ cover or similar sounds good. I'd like to be able to leave it running and get some sleep while the session runs and then take it down in the morning. So use a rain alarm and make a cover with the 'scopes sticking through seems the best, although not in windy weather. If the forecast is rain later in the night then stay up and take it in. Also adding a bit of wax sound good. Also how resistant to dew is normal gear? The 'scopes should be OK but the mount (HEQ5) could get moisture inside. Last night the dew was heavy after the recent rain, perhaps a cover with a small heater should keep most dew at bay overnight. Cheers Andy

HI, Just getting into the swing of astrophotography and with the lengthening nights I want to collect as much light as possible. But given the humidity last night and the condensation (dripping wet)I don't feel good about leaving kit outside all night and then getting cooked in the sun in the morning. And what if it starts to rain. So I bring it all in when I start to flag ie about 3am so I'm missing and hour now but it'll be many hours later in the year. And in the UK clears skies are not that common. I seen a few YouTube videos where the guy leaves everything out overnight and goes out in the morning and the session has finished and it's all OK At the moment I put the laptop in a large plastic box in which I've fitted a mains extension lead and have a hole for the cable. I could make a ripstop cover for the telescope and mount. Apart from building a custom observatory what can I do, or, what do you guys do to protect your precious gear when/if you leave it out all night. Cheers Andy

Hi, I now have an ASAI2600mc and have used it on my WO ZS61. In the future I am looking to mount camera lenses on it. So I need a Canon EF adaptor and a support such as the ZWO90mm support ring. My question is what weight will the support ring take or will I need additional support. Initially the biggest lens will be a Pentax 135mm (with a PK to EOS adaptor) and at 300gms seems light enough. But if I move to something bigger ie Samyang 135 this is 880gms with the bracket/camera hold it without stress. Cheers Andy