powerlord

yeh, but when it's OFF and stable, it shouldn't be drifting massively off to south, when calibrating by doing east or west steps - it should just be going east or west.

thanks - I'll try those exact settings then. mine were 0.5, 2000, 50/50 so maybe that was it. I was shooting with DSLR and 135mm last night, so not exactly overloaded. So hopefully my settings were just terrible. But it shouldn't affect calibration - watching calibration: - east should go one way, then back to star, north, then back to star. mine was going east and south at same time.. so when it tried west, it just kept going more and more south as well as west and ended up miles from star.. it completed calibration, but clearly was b0llocks. trying to guide, just saw DEC disappearing for holiday somewhere. andi its not the AP - as turning guiding off, got me 180sec unguided subs fine - I'd APed to about 1.5" error. god knows. maybe I NEED to overload it with a couple of bags of sand ? 😜

well no difference for me with asiair pro - dec going for a walk. tried lots of recalibrating - even during recalibrating, its going further and further south - had to turn guiding off to image. used to work, so they've screwed something up.

Here's mine - shot last night with a gopro 8 to see how that would fair as an allsky job. It was shot in 'nightmode' iso 800 max, 30 second exposure, one frame every minute. I've done a few edits - first is a stretch/process in lightroom per raw frame, combined into a video. and then a close up, then next is just the raw jps in video. Anyway, 12mp stills, edited into 4k video. Quite noisy, but main issue is because it's a 180 lens, I should have put a bit of bog roll or summit around it, to block out light from my house, neighbours, etc - as that coming in from sides has swamped things. Not much dynamic range really. will try it again next clear night.

Also, try nasa remote telescopes - it's free ! https://mo-www.cfa.harvard.edu/OWN/ stu

thats normal really. camping, you tend to get up when the sun comes up, go to bed when it goes down. And most people really do not realise how far sound travels when everyone is quiet and they are in a tent. general campsite rules really - shutup after 10. expect to hear folk when the sun comes up

Slightly ambitious setup for tonight.. 4 mounts - Big boy : eq6, c8, Asi1600 guided. Target m27 Junior: azgti, guided. experiment with Sw 180mm guidescope and Asi224 to image ! Target packman or bubble. Then swapping to 6d/135mm and trying L-extreme on milky-way. Tripod 1: 6d/14mm. Milky-way mosaic Tripod 2: gopro 8. All sky video. Whew. Be a miracle if I get all that done.

oh ok, it's 2 layer, so I thought it would do me. I don't intend to use it much, just might save taking stuff in at 3am when I'm done till I get up at normal time, etc - sort of insurance 'just in case' rather than an expectation of it raining. It's quite 'slippy' so I don't expect it to wear much for the use it gets - and for same reasons, didn't warrant paying 40 quid. I grant you I might end of regretting that if it does rain and stuff gets wet though 😞

https://letmegooglethat.com/?q=beginners+guide+to+astronomy I can't comment on scope choice, as no experience with dobs, sorry. stu

I clearly remember being able to focus to about 4-5cm when I was 5 or 6. Now it's about 20cm without my contacts in. With them in (short sighted), I'm the one with my arms outstretched to read a book! age is cruel 😞

you need to meet my neices... 🙄

to be fair, I think you could be confusing the op @vlaiv ? - your 96 dpi is fine for monitors, but can be tiny on a mobile screen for example - hell, a 100 pixel horizontal image would be miniscule viewed 100% on my huwaei p30 pro for example. Now, mobile view on this forum is actually good, so if you view this thread on my phone, both original 96 and 300dpi image are EXACTLY the same size on it, but not all apps work that way. And many native apps, especially ones on windoze do a terrible job of resizing - so if you post someone a pic of your wonderful 100x100 pixel image - see it as tiny on your 1920x1080 screen, and use that app to zoom in, you very often get a pixelated mess, since all it does is a basic basic nearest neighbour resize. Another good reason to enlarge is for printing, since software resizing, especially the latest algorithms in affinity and ps do a damn site better job than a printer driver will do.

quite.. how much you earn an hour calculation @mikemarotta? And you criticise @Tiny Clanger response ? Who on earth does calculation like that before trying something new ?? I agree with @Tiny Clanger - and thought her responses were spot on. - @TheTeenThatLovesAstronomy - I'm glad you love astronomy. We do too. And we are here to help. But, mostly we will point you are places you can read and learn stuff for yourself. If you don't know one end of a telescope from the other - we all started there. I did 7 months ago. I read up on tutorials, I watched vidoes. When I got confused the good people of here answered my questions and pointed me in the right directions. But there is an expectation that you will follow links, and read advice given. I think that's fair ? So for example, the link posted about what you can expect to see is really important info. Similarly, if still interested we can link you to tutorials on what all the bits do , etc. When the thread started, I think there was an expectation that if you'd made it this far to this forum you have some of that, but were confused as to scope choice. But I think you need to take the advice the friendly folk in here have given - learn what the stuff does and what its called a bit, learn what you will be able to see with different kit. Then, maybe it's time to chose a telescope and we can help with that ? Or don't and just buy something, it might be right, you might like it - but until you learn some of those terms and lingo, we are not going to be able to help much I doubt. all the best stu

Ill give it a go tonight too with the gopro.

I know that astro equipment is about 20 years behind current tech (handsets , wifi still mostly optional, companies still advertising 'computer controlled' as if its the 1980s, etc), but I wonder if there is any extra benefits from the higher baud rate I get on my EQ6 ? 9600 is abysmally slow. I imagine it only matters much for guiding, and even then, since the protocol has no feedback on slew rate, and you are only sending pulses every second or so, I doubt it matters, but it does feel kinda pathetic that in 2021, we are still controlling kit with an ancient serial protocol, with no feedback, albiet at a protocol that now allows for a massive 14Kbytes per second. stu

wow, is that all you need ? 250 secs of subs. I'll give that a go tonight - from garden right enough so won't have as nice foreground. what camera, iso, aperture ?

200p:

Here it is fitted over my Eq6r-pro with a Celestron C8 and camera, etc. With shape of it I think it would fit my 200p too.

🤣 At the start - time left before I lost my mind - no. Now after lots of practice the big boys gets setup, and APed in around 20 mins. And starts shooting. Then I do the smaller one in another 20. So not too bad 🤪

2nd hand manfrotto every time.

If yer happy with its 0.5 sec max shutter limitation, you can pick up svbony sv105s for 18 quid when they have a sale on ebay. that's what I got mine for. Though at present they are 35 quid https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/283491837763?epid=16030617321&hash=item42016e2743:g:lNAAAOSwzntgtEak For planets/moon its actually not bad. And day stuff is fine. But the max 0.5sec exposure limits what else you can do with it and afaik there is no way of extending it. I see the official svbony seller is using @AstroRuz video - which he might not be too happy about. As an all sky - I'm not sure if it'd work well or not tbh, and you don't get a fisheye/all sky lens with it so it would be assuming you could modify what you have to fit. But you did ask for cheap... stu

hmm. yes.. think I'll leave uprgading for a bit then until it settles down. I mean, top marks for SW still updating it - considering they could as easily just not bother, especially as EQ mode is a free bonus. Just seems like perhaps a bit of testing before releases might help. 3.32: "AZ-GTi motor controller firmware version 3.32: Version 3.32: 1. Adjust maximum slewing speed automatically. 2. Try to solve declination axis run-away issue while using 3rd party application for autoguiding." Try ? er.. ok I'll wait until you actually HAVE solved it thanks all the same...

just got one of these: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/333752835870 It has silver lining which should keep it reasonably cool, and waterproof outer. It's big enough to go over my 2" tripod, EQ6-R AND a decent sized OTA. Has zip up it. Thought I'd share as seemed ideal and cheaper than astro covers.

" 3. Solve declination axis run-away issue while using 3rd party applications for autoguiding. " aha! exactly the issue I have !!!