jacko61

Spent an hour yesterday clearing snow and ice off the roof and runners as the sky looked like it might stay clear. WRONG! I managed about an hour viewing before it clouded over completely. Woke this morning to another three inches of snow. I did manage to get a couple of shots of the moon using my canon DSLR. No laptop yet so they're just snaps.

I'm in a similar situation to you - when I built my shed the pier is now too low - so I've bought extra lengths of threaded bar and some long nuts. I plan to extend the existing pier bolts with bent bar and pour another foot of concrete, sinking a new set of bent pier bolts when it's poured. I had a discussion with a builder friend and he's of the opinion that the bent bars I put in will suffice to keep the new concrete stable although I may take a few three inch chunks out of top of the existing concrete for an extra 'key'. graeme

I'd be out tonight but there's still 4 inches of snow on my observatory roof and the runners are full of ice. A real shame as it's been pretty clear the last couple of nights. I'm going to make time to clear all the snow off tomorrow so if it's clear again I may get out. Graeme

As the title says. I've been looking into adding a guidescope to my Celestron C8 as I'm going to be trying out my hand at imaging once the snow clears and I can get the roof off my observatory. In my searching, I keep coming across statements e.g. Guidescope XXX won't work with a long focal length primary. The question I have is 'why not'? Surely if the guidescope is focussed on a star and whatever software is controlling the mount, the object will stay where it is in the primary's camera. Graeme

Sorted. There's a very slight ripple in the threads on the clicklock. Ran a thread cleaning tool round it a few times and rubbed a 4B pencil into the threads. Ran the reducer into the click lock a few times to check it's threading the full length now and cleaned it all up again. There's still a tiny bit of binding in a couple of spots on each rotation but at least I don't have to shell out for an adaptor.

Does that hold true for one shot colour CMOS/CCD too ? e.g. ZWO ASI183MC pro? (or any other zwo 'MC' for that matter). Graeme

Thanks for that. Very interesting read. All sets of threads measure at 24 TPI with my gauge so I'm not sure what's going on. The Baader website states a 2" -24 thread on the clicklock, the celestron thread is 2" -24 and the meade has a standard male 2"-24 sct thread on one side and a standard sct female thread on the other so there shouldn't be an issue with the fit. Graeme

I wasn't sure where to put this but here goes anyway. I have a Celestron C8 that I've been using a Meade focal reducer on for a couple of years. Never had a problem threading it to the scope or threading the celestron visual back to the reducer. I've just acquired a 2inch baader clicklock which screws to the scope with no issues. However, when I try to screw it onto the focal reducer, the threads bind up after no more than a turn and a half. I've inspected the threads on the scope, FR and clicklock and none are damaged in any way. Can anyone explain why they're so tight when the threads must be the same? Would a smear of grease on the clicklock threads help?

Managed my first evening observing since well before Christmas today. Also the first since I got the roof on - it's had 6 inches of snow sitting on top for a week but it thawed sunday night. This was primarily a session to check polar alignment and make sure the mount was slewing properly - had an issue where the right ascension controls would stick while the scope was slewing meaning I had to keep switching it off. This was due to the mount getting damp under the waterproof cover before the observatory roof went on. Stripping the circuit boards out and drying them on a radiator seems to have solved the problem for now. Anyway, after a rough polar align and even rougher 2 star align the scope was slewing reasonably close to the chosen targets. Mars, Uranus, the Plaeides, Aldeberan, Capella and M31 all ended up within the eyepiece although not dead centre. Some more fine tuning needed but I'm reasonably happy that everything is working as it should. I had to cut the session short due to a combination of clouding over and frost forming on the corrector plate. I have a dew strap on order Next job will be to strip it all down and add a foot of concrete to the pillar to raise it up enough to see over the side of the shed then I'll be insulating and panelling inside. Graeme

Sorry Malcolm. I only joined last week Graeme

After several years of carrying a tripod / mount / OTA in and out of the house on observing nights I got fed up so we moved to a house in the country a few years ago and I've finally got round to building a permanent observatory. Once the boss and I agreed where it was going, I invested in an Altair Astro pier and sunk a huge concrete block into the ground (more on this later) then stuck my 8 inch Celestron Advance GT on top. (pic attached). Once that was done I built a 4 x 5 metre deck around it so I could play while I planned the shed itself. I ended up buying an 8x4 pent roof shed for the warm room and as luck would have it my next door neighbour was dismantling his shed so I've used the walls from that to build an 8*12 telescope room. Surprisingly, the only company that would deliver 6 metre lengths of timber to scotland during lockdown was a company in Wigan! The roof is corrugated clear fibreglass but it took quite a while to get that delivered so the inside of the shed got soaked in heavy rains several times. First frost, the underside of the roof was dripping so I need to think about insulation. I still have the electrics to sort out and I've found that the pier doesn't sit high enough so I will be adding another foot of concrete sometime soon. Once I'm up and running I'll be upgrading the mount to a skywatcher eq6-r pro and eventually I hope to add an 11 inch OTA. Graeme

To get a rough Polar alignment, set up your mount as per Syncronicity's post then add your OTA and look through that. So long as the scope is in it's starting position you can centre Polaris in your main scope using the Altitude and Azimuth screws then check it's in your polar finder and fine tune from there. This of course assumes you can see Polaris in the sky in the first place.

Hi. Thought I'd introduce myself. I've been interested in all things 'space' since watching the moon landings on our very fuzzy black and white telly in 1969. My interest in Astronomy took a back burner when I hit my teens and girls, rock&roll and beer took over but my interest was rekindled when I bought my son a cheap alt/az refractor about 20 years ago. Shortly after, I invested in a Meade LX55 10" SNT that served reasonably well for a few years until I 'upgraded' to a Celestron advance GT / C8 SCT. Around 5 1/2 years ago we moved out of town to a rural location with no street lighting so I could observe in near pitch black but I wasn't happy dragging the tripod out of the garage so I've been building a roll off roof observatory with an Altair astro Pier so I now have a more permanent set up. - Just got the roof on and thinking about power and insulation. I'm also planning to upgrade the mount to a Skywatcher EQ6-R pro early in the new year so I can then get a bigger OTA and start figuring out how to use a cmos camera for imaging. As I'm in Scotland, dry, clear nights are few and far between so I also spend weekends playing Bass in a hard rock band and do a bit of gardening during the day although I still work for a living. Graeme