BCN_Sean

I've a Sigma 70-200, and it's not too bad up to the 180mm mark when stopped/masked down to F:/4. However with the design of the lens as the zoom element moves backwards in the barrel it can start throwing odd internal reflections if there are bright stars within the field of view with the light being reflected off the rear element leaving which appear like Newton's rings and can be quite a pain to clear up; maybe be different on other generations of the lens, but I'm not going to risk your money on recommending a "maybe". If I'd not bought the lens quite a few years before I started with astrophotography, I would have been disappointed with it, whilst it's handy to have a few focal lengths covered in the same optic (70, 135 & 180) something like the Samyang lenses which vlaiv mentions above, or something like the Nikon 180mm IF-ED with a mount convertor on it would rip it to shreds quality wise.

I was talking to a supplier the other day about equipment, and not as small market volume as astro gear, and they offered up a nugget of things becoming more widely available "about six months after the motor industry is back to full tilt". That's not really an answer though, but seems a reasonable assumption with the relative size of what that market consumes.

Probably not a good idea even though a lot of guitarists say to use pencil to lubricate the string slots in the nut (if they're a constant player and change the strings regularly and clean the slots each time it probably isn't as bad). A pencil lead is a composite of graphite and clay, which in the short term would provide some form of lubrication but as the clay part gets exposed to moisture and drying cycles, it'll harden out and bind up.

It's most likely the timer on the camera which is looking to see if the bulb mode is triggered or not. On a Nikon (which I use) it's only accurate down to about 1/10th a second (a hundred or so milli-seconds on an exposure of 30 + seconds is not going to break anything), and it's nothing really to worry about.

Not really any of them, my other half would say I'm a gear head as if I'm not outside I'm on the workbench building something, but as it is I'd say a "relaxational astronomer" because when it's time to get some calm it's certainly a more relaxing and enjoyable few hours than being plonked in front of the tv.

The more something frustrates, the more rewarding it is when it comes together. This summer I've had not a sniff of anything since June, not for the fact it's been cloudy as it hasn't... It's been so hot and dry that the haze looks like fog and the dust/fire ash is turning the sky an milky grey colour with about mag 3 - 3.5 being the limit of what can be seen (though the moon has chased the murk off now); it's not been a wasted time, though as spent a lot of time looking through some older threads on here, noodling some faults out on Astroberry, chasing down a couple of lenses for the astrograph and sucking up holiday cover.

Two in the space of about three hours, but at the same time with the weather it wasn't the sort of night where any observing exercise would have paid off.

The 14mm is pretty neat, I borrowed one off a pal of mine and nearly didn't give it him back; I've not bought one myself as I've already got a 16mm F:/2.8, but if I'd not got something at that sort of width I'd have one. If you do go for one of these, have a look at buying new (the manual focus one, last time I checked in the UK was about £330) as they can be a bit hit and miss on the quality control and sometimes have centring issues.

Now that's got me scratching the head. Aside from contacting Skywatcher (or their regional service centre) about it, the only thing I can think of would be to pull the batteries on the mount then try a different USB cable and port on the computer and seeing if the device is recognised by the computer's device manager and the updater application.

That looks like a nice bit of kit, if the enclosure for it is decent and can be integrated in instead of being tacked on (more like a Primaluce Eagle than a generic Pi box) then it'd be on the shopping list.

Not had that one as if I get something and the firmware works on it, in lieu of any massive feature addition, I leave it be. Only thing I can think of for that is give it a hard reset, then get on the Skywatcher site and download the firmware and updater again (the current seems to be the 3.11 version for the firmware) and connect it through the USB to the computer; then once connected up, turn the dial to app before firing up the firmware updater on the computer, and then when done give it another reset.

I've been quite interested in these cameras, probably not the 571 at the moment, but dithering towards the 183 more to it matching what optics I've got and with it being slightly wider more tolerant to the approximate DEC adjustments on the mount! Been keeping an eye in here, and gleaned some interesting info without having to ask the same question again in a few months. I ordered something a week before last and it went straight through without any issue.

The only thing I can think of now is if you've got your clutch tightened up enough. It could be slipping because the weight on it is greater than the friction of the clutch otherwise. If that's tight, then it may need a service. There is this quite good guide here -> https://nightskypix.com/star-adventurer-problems/ which goes through quite a few of the common issues with these mounts and how to fix them.

If the mount is the 2i version, connect it to the Pi with the USB, set the App mode on the control dial and then in EKOS/Indi, set the driver as the Skywatcher EQMod driver with a baud rate of 115200. The only thing that won't be available in the align module is anything that requires DEC alignment, but the polar align tool works, and it will slew to targets on the RA axis once the mount is synced to coordinates. I don't think it's officially supported in the driver, and also there are a few bugs which may or not present (biggest one I've found is when polar aligning, and if tracking is enabled it'll start a west slew but then cut back to tracking rate); but for guiding and polar alignment it works well.

There's probably more than a few! One thing that skywatcher are very good at is writing bad manuals and there's a lot of things with the mount that just aren't covered in the instructions.

Aside from what AstroNebulee says above, the only thing I could suggest here as I've fallen in to this one myself, is to do a hard reset on the mount. When I got mine, I played around a little with the app and then next time out with it not using the app, the tracking would suddenly stop. The odd thing with the 2i is that if there's been settings added by the app previously it will default to them even in "normal" mode.

In quite a way you've just described me there, due to the v-word finding myself having a lot more time to dedicate to things; it's not that one morning I'd woken up and thought "Right, let's do this" but more that I started building back in to it because with the stop I'd realised how much time I'd got because unimportant stuff had been knocked to the curb. Sure, 40-odd year old me has a bit more disposable income than 15 year old me did, and also a lot more access to resources and a lot more learned experiences but perhaps at the same time a lot more confusion in things which I'm sure is partially down to marketing departments than anything else. Then on the other side of it, what has changed in them > 25 years is how much technology has come on to make "technology assisted" observing a lot more accessible; first time around for me was two bits of wood, an AC drive motor and a 35mm film camera so not really that precise and the feedback loop was in the order of a week. Now it is a lot closer to real time and a bit more accessible with what is available on the market at any sort of price range now, the youngsters today won't understand how crippling it could be to any new pastime with being stuck with what was only available from the pages of a family member's home shopping catalogue, not when there's instant shopping and how much quality can be bought for the same sort of price as what a toilet roll tube and a bit of jam jar could be had from the big book of dreams.

It's an interesting question, I know a few guys who are solely visual but at the same time I don't think any of them would be found on a forum or social media to say "Yeah, I'm solely visual"; some folk just aren't counted because they don't want the complexity of technology in their past time.

I know what your saying, I'm in that mind as well; my current machine is a Nikon D810, but on a short length astrograph it's the wrong camera for the job. If you do go have a look at the 305, be aware that there are two different colour versions (a USB2 and a USB3) and I think the USB3 version has different purchase options based on what fixed optical filter it has on it though I'm not sure if that applies to the USB2 version, and there's also a mono USB3 as well.

I've got the SV305, and it's a nice little thing, it's a great guide camera though I've not tested it on anything deep sky yet though others have and got decent results (when the adapter I need gets here, then it will be, but that's more for testing a theory before a big spend). It does have a few issues with the drivers/sdk especially on Indi as it's still quite young, but those are being ironed out; you might run into a few issues, you might not but as time has gone on those issues have lessened somewhat but sometimes an update will break something. As for one of these or a 600D to replace a D7100 because of balance, now that's the bit that's niggling me as you're not going to be shaving off a lot of weight with a 600D, perhaps 150 grams not counting adapters or cables; the SV305 will save a bit more but I don't think that a slightly would solve your balancing issues, just offset them slightly.

Hello from another part of the province!

Another nice one! I've been following some of your threads on here for things as they throw up ideas on what is possible from the top end of the country and with an SLR; but I'll have to put this one on the long term list as I've not got enough reach for it at the moment.

I understand your level of frustration, I'm in that hole as well. I use the spiral wrap to group cables with mine, with two for power and one for data coming off the mount, yet the biggest issue I've got is finding sufficiently short good quality cables to connect everything. I keep trying to convince myself that it's a work in progress, it is really as it's going to get dew heaters in the tangle in the non-too-distant future; and then the circle will repeat as I don't think I'll be done there.

The Fabra Observatory on the hill overlooking Barcelona is a pretty nice little place; perhaps not a place to organise a whole visit to the city for, but more a place to organise a visit to if visiting the region. Then there's also the a couple of other observatories in the area which maybe worth a visit as well, but perhaps not as much of a draw as other, better known places.

That's some of the problem, last week the 1.9.1 version of Indi was pushed to the astroberry repo, and there's all sorts of broken with it at the moment in other areas. With the camera, stop indi, turn the camera off, unplug it and then reverse the process; that's something in the ptp control protocol which locks the camera in those situations. It is the same with my cameras, and not just on an astroberry. The lock ups of the SLR could be the memory card in the camera; I've had similar lockups when using slower SD cards, but after putting 170mbps cards in there it's not appeared and make sure the indi control panel has the images set to save in native format. Never managed a focus routine with artificial stars, either, real ones not usually an issue (usually when it is more down to me not tensioning the focuser correctly before starting!), though never tried it with the lens' built in focus motor always on an external. As for the other bits, if indi locks up, open terminal and type "killall indiserver", and that should shut it and the drivers down; the rest of it, I don't know as I don't have access to the same kit nor is the raspberry in the same configuration, so can't tell whether it is the configuration or you've got issues coming in somewhere else.