LandyJon

Ahh I see, I misunderstood, yeah it doesn't seem to let you discount subfolders from the search, just tried some of the options but no joy, thought maybe adding the header text would only show results from it, but it doesn't work. 

I guess you're stuck scrolling through picking out the ones from the right header.

In the 'app' version, when you start typing in the search box there's a drop down appears where you can select "this forum" or "everywhere" etc.

Just go in to the section you want to search and select "this forum".

In the pre 'app' mobile version the option was there somewhere too and I'm sure the full browser version will have it somewhere too, maybe in some advanced search options, but usually searching while already in a section would just search that section I think.

HTH

56 minutes ago, michael8554 said:

But you may have damp air inside the OTA.

I agree it could only be damp inside the tube, but I'm not sure how a cooler would help, surely that would just speed up the foging.

I'm not sure a dew band round the base of the ota would get enough heat on to the primary to prevent it either, although they work on newtonians so it could be worth a try.

The ideal solution would be to remove the moisture from inside the tube.  To do that you need to get it indoors warmed up with some desicant in there.  Obviously carefully, hopefully its an SCT without a lens at the back and you could stand it up near a radiator with a net bag filled with silica gel packets tied to string and dropped down from the visual back.

It could take a while, perhaps blowing a hairdryer in occasionally to speed things up, warm the air a little more and stir it up.  You also want a fairly dry atmosphere in the room, if you have a room dehumidifier run that too so its in a dry atmosphere when you seal it back up.

The other thing, it doesn't have any vents on the side like the EdgeHD does ? I'm not sure these SCTs are quite the 'sealed unit' like a camera lens is when left attached to the body. The vents aid cooling but would also allow humidity to enter. Maybe worth considering storing the OTA indoors and then a cooler could be employed to speed up use each time.

Hope you get it solved.

7 minutes ago, Mr Spock said:

I've gone to the (great) expense of ordering a Feathertouch

They are well known as the best money can buy, precision engineering and beautifully crafted.

Dena will do her best to get one to you as quick as possible, drop her an email.

https://www.starlightinstruments.com/product/mpa-tak2-5-micro-pinion-assembly-takahashi-retrofit-2-5-diameter-focusers-fits-takahashi-sky-90-fcl-90-and-fc-100-telescopes/

Glad everyone's finding the forum as helpful as I did starting out a few years ago, now I'm able to offer help and advice where I can, keep up the good work admin/mods.

Edit: thought this was a new thread, missed the page numbers at the bottom, maybe there's an improvement, highlight the page numbering a bit in the 'app' version

11 hours ago, Live_Steam_Mad said:

Which thermoelectric cooler box is that? Brand? Model?

Its the cheap one from Aldi, AdventureRidge was the brand years ago, this one is Mobicool, I've had a few over the years in the truck, the double ended fan starts to fail after 24 hr use 5 days a week for 3-4 years, but for £40 ish they last pretty well.

Just had a quick search and it might be out of season, spring might be best time to look.

22 hours ago, wookie1965 said:

I'm looking to buy one after Christmas as I sold my Berghaus 6 air earlier this year but I kept all the heavy duty tent pegs I had for that. 

I can recommend the Vango 350 Omega, several of us have or have had them and they're a sturdy tent big enough for 1 with space and to sit on a camp chair in the porch.

1st try ...

Then I learnt about airbeds being a big volume of trapped air that never warms up so either insulate yourself from it or get a proper camp bed ...

Much better with a down sleeping bag too.

I have a caravan now so I might sell the camp bed, only used a couple times, I'll double check how much it cost if your interested ?

Had a 2nd attempt at Jupiter last night.  Not sure if its focus or seeing or what but its a vast improvement on my 1st ever planetary attempt a few days ago.

Just squint and look from a distance 🤣

Had an hour of reasonably clear so far, managed to setup, check PA, focus imager but clouded up as I was focusing guide so didn't get chance to test by backlash adjustment. 

Possible clear spell coming in another hour or so, hopefully get it tested then.

Heres my Cocoon Nebula, 3 hrs processed from Friday night ...

12 minutes ago, Swillis said:

I would turn it off. As you point out it will double exposure time, and you are losing control of the process. It may do something to the images which is not ideal, and you would not be able to retrieve the 'original' non-NR image (if that makes sense?)

Try @LandyJon's suggestion of stacking with and without darks and see how much difference it makes. 

 

Indeed, not knowing anything about it, but I'm guessing its a Noise Reduction thing, to do it 'properly' you want your lights as RAW as you can get them, then deal with the noise in stacking (with calibration frames) and post processing in photoshop (or other).

This way you can trial and error removing the noise, but always go back to the beginning.  If the camera has adjusted the image before saving you'll never be able to undo that step if its not helped or worse has removed data from your image.

3 hours ago, Swillis said:

2) darks are difficult with a DSLR. As you mention the temperature should be matches to the lights. This is almost impossible to achieve without a cooled astro cam. I use a canon and for that it is recommended NOT to use darks as the canons do something in the background to account for dark signal. I don't know about Nikon's but you could try with and without darks and see what the results are like. Or maybe just forget about this but for not and keep it simpler. (one less thing to get the mandolin out for)

Some great advice for you there so far, just to add some thoughts while reading through ...

The darks you could do fresh for each session, thus achieving the (close enough to) same temperature conditions as you light frames.  The advice so far seems to be 30-60s exposures, you'll want a good half to one hour min total exposure time to see some good detail so adding 5 mins worth of lens cap on for 5-10 dark frames could be worth it.

You can then stack (I was going to suggest DSS but its been mentioned, it can stack just lights with a warning box suggesting adding calibration frames but will stack none the less) ... but do a stack with the darks, flats, bias and stack again just flats and bias, see if the darks make enough difference to be worth including in your sessions or not. They likely will but not knowing your sensor or expectations etc. you can make the decision if the added work load is worth the result.

1 hour ago, Simone_DB said:

And do I want to put the histogram centered, as the article that I linked says, or should I put it like the light frames?

Flats you want the histogram centred, its giving the sensor a complete coverage of mid level illumination, not max brightness (full well) not zero illumination but right in the middle, where it can best differentiate the differences in brightness.  Stacking will then gradient eliminates that from your light frames to even out the sky background, getting rid of that central glow as well as any dark dust spots.

1 hour ago, Simone_DB said:

As a matter of fact I was contemplating a cooled cam as next purchase

Yes, hold off on big investments like that till you understand whats going on within sensors (the book suggested will help, theres also a good YouTube of a lecture I'll try find) and how both sensor and pixel sizes affect your field of view and sampling rate and you can get the right astro camera for your scope and target interests.

Robin Glover Lecture on imaging with CMOS ...

I learnt a lot about sensors from this.

Have you got an M42 thread on the back of the scope yet ?

Depending which SCT you have, you may need to remove the visual back and get/find in the box an SCT thread to M42 adapter.  Some its just a matter of unscrewing the 1.25" adapter and its there.

Also be sure there's no corrector/flattener lens built in to the scope, the EdgeHD have this, SE don't (that I'm aware of)

Hope that helps

1 minute ago, mapstar said:

Derek, Calvin, Steve, Ian and Jonathon here already. Think John is on his way? 

Me ? No I'm working tomorrow, hoping to finish early, vans all packed and hooked up, going to work in the merc so I can just jump in and set off.

Hopefully be there before its too dark, although the really clear spell has shifted in forecast to Saturday daytime 🙄

See you tomorrow.

6 hours ago, Lucas M said:

Hi all, never having been to this (or any other) star party before, I'm trying to figure out some of the practicalities and was hoping anyone that's been before could shed some light on a couple of things for me...

At this campsite do you park at your tent pitch or in a separate car park?

Do we set up our scopes next to our tent pitches, or is there a separate "observation field" where everyone sets up their gear?

Thanks 👍

Park and setup on the pitch next to your tent Lucas, theres plenty of space and good visibility all round.

Look forward to meeting you, when are you arriving?

Edit : just realised this is the spring camp you're posting on, is it spring you're attending or the autumn one this weekend ? 

2 hours ago, Physopto said:

     

           4

We playing golf now !

Hoping to get finished work and up there before it goes dark, Friday night is actually looking promising 🤞 

2 hours ago, Nikolai De Silva said:

Hi Landy! I got a reply from them. They have told the same thing as earlier.

I think it's good for me to do like I did so far, till I'm getting a offset or a pier. Because this is for visual astronomy.

Really, I thank you a lot for you kind replies and for the time you spent on this! Respect!

Thanks again and have a great time!

Nikolai.

You're more than welcome, I like problem solving.

You said earlier your bolt was too short to push the head all the way horizontal and the clamp wouldn't tighten down to hold it.  Is there not any tightening that can be done on this side ...

So the other side clamps down tighter.

Otherwise I guess using it as close to horizontal as it'll go and just get used to the way it moves with the slow motion controls to keep your target centred until you can find (or get made) a cheap pillar type tripod.

Best of luck, enjoy the hobby.

Just to collate and add to advice you've been given here and other thread.

1. Take outside, setup as is in your photo, weights down scope up.

2. Orientate tripod to point scope roughly at Polaris / North. 

3. Remove caps, insert your 25mm eyepiece without Barlow or any filters.

4. Release clutches (red highlighted above) and swing scope to the moon, re-tighten clutches.

5. With the moon in your finder, adjust the focuser through its full range while looking through the 25mm eyepiece.  If the moon is not within view you should at least see the defocused glow of it at some point indicating which direction to move your slow motion controls to find it, focus it and centre it.

6. Once focused and centred on the moon, adjust your finder so it is also best centred.

7. The moon is a big object, repeat the procedure on a bright star to fine tune the finders centering with the telescopes.  You should be close enough and focused to find the star in the telescope after centering in the finder tho.

8. Tighten down that finder and be very careful not to knock it EVER also lock off the focuser when packing away so it remains for next time.

9. Have some fun looking round at the wonders of the night sky, pick an object, point with the finder best you can and start spiralling round with the slow motion cables till you see it, 1 bit up, 1 bit right, 2 bits down, 2 bits left, 3 bits up, 3 bits right, 4 bits down, 4 bits left (where a 'bit' is about the field of view in the eyepiece movement on the cable) if that makes sense, say quarter turn moves a faint star from one side to the other, move quarter up, quarter right, half down, half left, 3 quarter up etc. So you're spiraling round in a grid of field of view size sections.

Hope that helps get you started.

1 hour ago, Nikolai De Silva said:

Thank you very much for your support!

I can understand what you are saying.  I'll think for a solution.

We don't have astronomers here to talk with like y'all and still astronomy is not familiar among people here! 😐 Even we don't have a subject relating to astronomy in our education. 

To tell you, I asked for a Barlow lens from shops in Colombo and they told "there are none, and it's no use to keep stocks!"

I hope you figure something out.

I just had a quick Google for 'equatorial mount low latitude adapter' ... not a lot useful, some expensive William Optics adapter that says 7° to 20° but you'd be on the limit of that and some Avalon £4000 mount that goes to 0° but that unrealistic.

I did find a thread

https://www.singastro.org/forum2/viewtopic.php?t=4597

They're at 1.35° lat and talk about making an adapter and link a photo, but it fails to load, you could try joining that forum to message people, see if you can find out how they do it.

You've got an advantage on them if you can see polaris, but there's obviously a community there that could offer alternative solutions.

Best of luck, let us know how you get on.

5 hours ago, Nikolai De Silva said:

Here I have attached how it is when Polar aligned. I tried going through the Internet, but didn't see a solution.

Tilting the tripod isn't going to get you where you need to be

Those tripod legs will be too vertical for my liking with all of your weight sitting way out in front of it.

All it really needs is an extension bar in here

With the mount head attached on the green end and some added weight to compensate for the shift in centre of gravity, not necessarily hanging as drawn but this end should be weighty. Perhaps a local fabricator could make something.  You'd think thered be an off the shelf solution for you but other than spending a fortune on a bigger mount.

There's these £30 pier extensions on FLO but I'm unsure they'd fit yours, some of the comments imply other mounts but none are the ones you've mentioned, but at 21 cm I think your weights would still clash the top of the tripod there.  More weight higher up the bar could then work, but for the cost I'd look to fabricate a bar as above.

There must be other astronomers at your latitude, surely someone has a better solution !?

11 hours ago, uhb1966 said:

i want a hacienda in vilaflor!!! 😇

 

I had a friend with a finca there, I should try get back in touch with him for a visit.

54 minutes ago, ollypenrice said:

I disagree with most of the advice above.  7 degrees above the horizon is not going to work for any kind of Polaris-dependent PA routine. You'd need a fantastically low horizon and minimal light pollution to see it at all. No design of pier is going to get around this, so forget it. You can Polar align by other means, quite successfully.

...

Forget Polaris. It will not help you.

Olly

I think we were all working around this

7 hours ago, Nikolai De Silva said:

When I do so, the counterweight knocks the tripod.

Which implies they can see polaris.

I agree the tripod doesn't need to be level, the only important factor is the polar axis is aligned, but I wouldn't recommend anyone to hang expensive optical equipment off an unstable platform.

How about you try tilting your rig to get 7° off horizontal without weights clashing tripod and post us a pic.

Nicolai, until you see olly proving this possible with his own rig, I'd stick to a stable platform and try to raise the mount head from the legs.

Not for your mount or budget necessarily but a pillar tripod of this type will give you more clearance for the weight bar.

I've just thought, you haven't got the tripod oriented with a single leg sticking out at the weight bar, there's obviously slightly more clearance if the weight bar is in line with a flat (between 2 legs).

I think you need a pillar extension between the tripod and mount head.  Should lift the weights up enough to clear the tripod legs.

Perhaps someone from a similar latitude will come on with a more experienced opinion, but that'd be my guess.

Good luck 

I haven't been back since getting in to astronomy properly, but having lived there for many years (albeit 15+ years ago) I'd suggest looking in the Vilaflor area for accommodations / campsites, its the highest altitude settlement and is on the south side of Teide, a short drive from the Las Canadas ridge where the big observatories are.

Got me wanting to go back now !

10 hours ago, petevasey said:

Anyway, here is my latest photo for inspection 🤪

Focus is a little off, I'm guessing unguided ? not bad for a beginner 🤣

Speedy recovery Peter, try to keep active, some sitting exercises to keep the muscles fit and the blood flowing to fuel the repair.

Hope its not too sore, best wishes, see you soon.