paraman

12 hours ago, Merlin said:

Vibration can be a problem in many ways. When my daughter was a child, she was in the habit, as many children are, of jumping from last few steps in the staircase onto the floor.

Alas, this habit ruined several LPs by making the stylus on the record player in the lounge jump across the vinyl, leaving pits and scratches on its surface.

Back in the day When I could afford decent hifi my wife did a double whammy on me.  She cleaned my pride and joy Linn sondek lp12 with silicon furniture polish, write off one expensive drive belt. New belt purchased and fitted only to discover even more expensive moving coil cartridge was minus a stylus, the light of my life cleaned a bit of lint "off the end" with a duster.  The new cartridge set me back £253 in 1983. Banned for life from even so much as breathing on it.

3 hours ago, LukeSkywatcher said:

I once rolled my wheelchair off of a roadside curb because I was too busy looking up at the night sky. Another time, I crashed into a lamppost, for the same reason.

I walked into a cow one night looking upwards at the Pleiades. There was an ancient right of grazing where we lived, we woke up one morning to cattle munching on our roses.

On 13/11/2020 at 08:07, valleyman said:

We don't need Weather Forecast here in Wales. It just Rains. 🤣

How funny I was about to say the same, its either raining or about to rain.

To this day I still have no idea how I managed to get it to look like this but ic 63 is my favorite dso so I don't mind.

Back in the day when I was single I spent a small fortune on what was then considered to be the definitive HiFi system. Linn sondek , Naim audio pre and power amps and Linn Isobarik speakers. When I moved in with my girlfriend we bought a puppy a lovely Golden retriever who proceeded to rip the grill off the bass driver and bite lumps out of it. Those speakers cost me £1200 in 1977 , I would have prefered him to carry on pulling the new wallpaper off the lounge wall to be honest.

The only time my mount went off on a little excursion of its own was when I had the "Append on Sync" box ticked on EQmod, unticked the box and normal operation since.

1 hour ago, bottletopburly said:

Works a dream for me so much less hassle than DSS 

I'm pleased that it works for you, to me its clunky and  not in the least bit intuitive. It reminds me of Neb3 which also suffered the same fate.

Tried it, hated it, binned it

I did it around 3 years ago, not too in depth but interesting nonetheless.

1 minute ago, dannybgoode said:

John is a top bloke . You still keep anything? I’ve got a few interesting bits but don’t have as many as I used to. 

When we moved to Wales I had to rehome all of my collection, most to where I used to work and some to Paradise wildlife park. I predominately kept rear fanged, lots of different Boigas......Mangroves,  green cats, dark headed cats,  jet black Sulawesi cat,  hognoses,  stroppy male and big soppy female Falsies, Barons racer, long nosed tree snakes and flying snakes. Plus the usual array of spiders and scorpions.   The spiders and scorpions came with us, easy to transport. as did my Raccoon dog,  my hand reared Raccoon Bonnie went to a friend till I could build her an escape proof home ,  she's back with me now along with Rascal who was my friends Raccoon but it  turned really mean so I agreed to take her when Bonnie came back.  I miss the snakes, some I'd had from hatchlings especially the falsy, she ended up over 7 feet long and as docile as a cornsnake, cant say that I miss the electricity bill though.😄

46 minutes ago, dannybgoode said:

The bulb I’m using is a 12% HO T5 and gives a uvi of around 10 at short distances - similar to midday in the Australian sun. 

They’ve got a lot more poke than they used to have particularly the HO T5’s  (High Output T5 tube). 

 Better than nothing but I’ll monitor it anyway. May investigate a pond black light. I know the sort of thing you mean.

I know the high output T5's well,  John Courtney-Smith from Arcadia was a regular visitor to us, some of the photos in his first books were from my set ups. 

If you do try the pond uv type light be very careful they're not in a quartz envelope and opaque enclosure without good reason.

 

The Uv lamps generally associated with snake keeping e.g. 2.0 and 5.0 are designed to replicate the uv output of the sun   for different species and locations.  Their primary purpose is to ensure calcium production is maintained   and thereby eliminating metabolic bone disease,  the actual output is unlikely to have any effect on spores.  We did once explore the idea of using pond uv lights in a fully blacked out viv to see if it would eliminate mites and the like by destroying their Dna. The pond Uv's have a really high output  and are not good for our eyes hence the blackout.    50 year snake keeper and as Grant will probably remember the  Head  of the Reptile dept at the JKK.  

15 hours ago, Xiga said:

 

 

Paraman that's an RMS of 0.57 arc secs (not 0.43) but that's still seriously good! I've no idea how much weight you're carrying, but the pier will no doubt be a big help here too. 

Pretty sweet though!

Yep your'e right, brain fade mode. I dont know what the weight is but its carrying megrez 90,  atik 314L+, Starlight express 7 way filter wheel, Sharpstar autofocusser, and its power supply,   finder guider with Qhy5 camera and a powered usb hub.  The scope was pointing to the wnw as it was the first time that I had ever been able to image in that direction.

 

I've just checked on a pic that I took of my graph after polar aligning.  Belt modded Heq5 pro pier mounted RMS error was 0.43 so I think yes there may well be more to get out of it. Sorry its a really poor pic had to use my phone to take the picture off my face book page then send it to myself and save it.

On 23/09/2019 at 09:31, pete_l said:

I was in Morocco earlier in the year. One of the street vendors had "Rolexes". Next time I'll ask if they can get me an Esprit 150 for €25

I do have a Rolex and I also have a £20 digital watch, no prizes for guessing which is the better timekeeper, a clue,  the Rolex has been in its box for the last 2 years.

In a very similar vein a number of my friends that use Co2 lasers have experienced multiple problems ranging from coraldraw crashing to laser control software refusing to connect.  Thankfully my lasers and astro programs are all on a win 7 machine that I have  long ago disabled auto updates after one bombed out my qhy guide camera.

Thank you for this tutorial I tried it tonight on one of my previous avi's and compared it to my first effort, to say there was an improvement would be an understatement.

Roger