LandyJon

Thanks Derek hope you're feeling better, shame people choose not to honour the deposit, perhaps it should be taken at booking and refunded if cancelled over a month before, but that could be more of a headache for Lesley I guess. Hope we get a better turn out this time, I'll be there for a break if nothing else, fingers crossed for clear skies, see you there.

Remember the corrector, primary and secondary are all matched at manufacture and oriented for best performance so try to use all 3 from the same scope and maintain their orientation through any dismantle and reassembly. Hope you get something that works well at the end, I liked mine, they're a good little scope.

I didnt think the secondary screwed in to a thread ? Is it held in place then ? I had a 6SE but don't recall removing the secondary, the Edge 9.25 has the same as pictured above, the secondary slots in with a peg to achieve correct rotation position, then the retaining ring screws down to hold it in place. A photo of what you've got would help, there may be earlier versions which were different to the above image, certainly fastar compatibility would have changed the way the secondary mounted if yours is pre-fastar. As for buying spares a quick Google found nothing, but a quick call to FLO or Rother Valley, one or other may help you find the part. Edit : Oh and collimation will need to be checked either way once you've sorted it, these SCTs hold collimation pretty well, I work on the idea mounting and dismounting and carefully packing away etc is all good but take it for a drive and you should check its still aligned. Also cleaning the corrector is easy enough, even if it needs removing, just be sure to mark the orientation so it goes back in exactly the way round it came out from.

Indeed, you need a finder scope of some sort ... Mine have cameras in there rather than eyepieces, but the small white scope (or a red dot) you'd use once aligned with the main scope to find the star you want, then looking through the main scope it shouldn't be too far out of your view, hopefully in it but if not you may see some glow that'll indicate which way you need to move. My main reason for comment tho ... Have you got your location set properly in the synscan handset ? using the right format, ie. decimal or deg:min:sec ... to be honest I forget, its been that long, software does it all for imaging so I haven't used the handset in a long time, but if your location is off your goto and star aligns will all be off. Just a thought.

Yes, I need to put some time in to learning the processing now I've got some good data collecting kit. Was at this point 2 years ago with the 6", now I've finally got everything I need for the 9.25 and got it working I can start concentrating on learning photoshop techniques.

Thanks Damien, something to work on, I'd forgot to remove the filter so should get something better next autumn, was thinking collimation would take all night but it went well, then I didnt fancy dismantling it all in the field to get the filter from inside the hyperstar. But happy with results 🙂

Got the caravan away back to storage finally and had chance to process my images. Think I had the screen brightness up so they looked faint once transferred to phone 🙄 Stu done a proper job for me ... Quite pleased with the collimation.

Yes, I've only had 1 opportunity to try it since and had trouble with it not reaching focus, so I had to wind it out a bit and forgot to not do it on the bright star I'd focused on. Just done it on a star field and happy with the result, maybe a little tweaking could be done but left it on M42 for an hour on live stack and this is the "save as seen" result. Its got an hour of horsehead now too, but we're in the warm room for a chat, I'll go pack it up shortly.

Indeed, we're getting some good clear skies with the occasional patch hazing up. Got my hyperstar collimated pretty good and some good data on M42 and now horsehead coming in. Would be good to see you but I'm hoping to get underway before lunchtime to get back home at a reasonable time since I'm back in work Monday. Glad to hear your friend is getting better, hope you're on the mend too.

Ment to include this in previous post, but the process of putting polaris in the crosshair then adjust alt only bolts to move it to the outer ring puts it at 00:00 ... then rotating RA so the circle is on polaris has set your polar scope to 00:00 which is where you need to be able to set these green rings to 00 ... if they can't be fixed to the axis, I dont see how you are supposed to accurately dial in a polaris time.

Those green rings should allow you to dial in the polar clock accurately, provided the RA ring rotates with the RA axis, which I'm not sure from reading above if that is happening properly on this mount or not. The way I've used it in the past, before laptop software took over the process, was to set polaris to the 00:00 position by centering the star on the crosshair using alt az bolts, then adjust just the alt bolts move polaris vertically to the top of the (clock face) ring. Then rotate the RA axis so the little polaris circle is centred on polaris and set your green ring to 00:00 Now your green ring can be used to dial in an accurate time from one of the polaris timing apps eg ... This shows a time of 08:31 but your dial has a 24 count ... no problem just double the 08:31 to 16:62 obviously we're on clock base numbers so 60 is an hour (just being clear for everyone) so we have 17:02 to dial in on the RA axis and we simply adjust the alt az bolts to put polaris back in its circle, now at the 08:31 position. Realistically by this method the 00:01 is impossible to pinpoint on the green dial where 1mm is about 00:06 The only way to do it more accurately is by having software make the rotation to exactly 08:31 Hopefully this mounts RA dial can be used this way as I understood it to be the most accurate way to polar align without computer control. Edit : just to warn, be sure these rotations aren't going to cause a clash between scope and tripod ! ... the process can be adapted to rotate from polaris at a 6 o'clock position only needing a <45° rotation to 08:31 ... 02:31 clockwise so 05:02 on the dial ... or you could go anticlockwise from a 9 o'clock position 00:29 or 00:58 anticlockwise on the dial ... which is why the ring counts in either direction. 3 and 9 o'clock require an az only adjustment to polaris from the crosshair obviously.

Is that an angry surcharge ! 🤣 Thought I'd try out the water top-up bits I got from Dads van, see how it works. I'm away Sunday, hopefully see you before I set off. Hope you're on the mend and got some good pain killers.

Setting off now too, see you 3 ish

Not something I've ever done but I believe drift alignment is what you need. Someone might be able to help further with it, or start researching it yourself. Its different to plate solving which just centres you on a target.

Get well soon Derek, be good to see you if you're in the area even for a drive through visit, if not see you in the autumn.