LaurenceT

Really excellent image.

Where have you seen that one?

I had two AzGti some time ago and used them in exactly the way you intend. I sold one thinking it was superfluous and have regretted it ever since. PS you don't look 50, must be the air in Cornwall, happy birthday.

I bought a 3d printed kit from a chap in Portugal, works very well and possibly the same as yours.

My upgrades for that kit: Skywatcher electronic focuser, zoom eyepiece, in my case the Baader but cheaper ones will do the job. A dew shield, a Telrad with heater element and a Trifibre case, it weighs a ton but it holds everything. Last but not least is the battery pack/brick mentioned by @AstroNebulee, I use the smaller Talentcell from Amazon and it lasts for ages.

We're going to France next week in our motorhome for 4 weeks and I'm looking to travel to dark(ish) sites in the Western half of France ie to the west of the River Rhone. Be grateful for any recommendations.

Haven't been able to do much recently but spent the last week struggling to get anything using my Startravel 102/ASI224mc combination with the Stellarmate. Can't seem to get any image but it works with Sharpcap. Anyway, last night reverted to the original Evoguide 50ED setup and got a simple screen grab of the Globular Cluster.

It seems that I've finally almost tamed the very unruly Stellarmate app. The first few times it was extremely slow to show the different targets available, so slow in fact that I'd thought it had frozen but it hadn't. Someone had suggested that I tried a USB SSD for the Stellarmate OS so I bought one but that was just as buggy. Reverting to the micro SD card as if by magic the bugginess had gone and it worked almost perfectly. Last night I had about 45 minutes of clear skies and I was able to observe the Iris nebula, Bodes Galaxy, both very small and faint, but spent a long time looking at the Hercules Globular cluster. The Hercules seems to be the best target from my garden at the moment and it's beautiful. At the moment I'm not taking images for processing, the observing is satisfying enough but I will perhaps try and get a screen grab on my Ipad.

Yep, that's it.

I'll have a look later.

The question came up when I was having some problems with my Askar FM180 and spacers were discussed, I don't use a filter wheel. I then did some research and saw this YT video which explained things more clearly for me. https://youtu.be/iyDECOauzew

One thing that simply didn't occur to me when I recently started astrophotography was the use of spacers when including filters in the optical train. Would the use of such a spacer improve the visual quality of EEA observation or is this not so critical?

Being an absolute novice at astronomy and an elderly one at that I think that this will revolutionise my observing and learning where stuff is in the sky. I'll now be able to observe distant objects that normally could only be viewed with large, heavy and in some cases very expensive telescopes and eyepieces. I was struck how easy it was last night to get going, levelling the mount and scope and pointing north took a couple of minutes and the Stellarmate app was taking me to targets within another couple of minutes. The app can be a bit flaky and getting the app to control the mount by WiFi was an exercise in futility. I've got no plans to use EEVA as a crossover to astrophotography, I already have gear for that but it's interesting to see how controversial that can be.

I decided to follow the YT video on a simple home made so-called "smart telescope" by Cuiv and after faffing about for a few days with wifi I abandoned that and last night finally got to test the rig using stacking in Stellarmate. I already had most of the gear, all I needed was a Raspberry Pi and some cables. The setup consisted of an Evoguide 50ED, a ZWO ASI224mc camera mounted on an Az GTi controlled by the Pi. Although the moon was already washing out my light polluted skies I saw the Whale galaxy, Bodes galaxy and the Beehive cluster. I also saw various globular clusters. I'm pleased with this so far and I will use some different scopes and a different camera soon.

I've been looking at the development of these so-called smart telescopes for some time with a degree of envy and this Dwarf II certainly looks excellent value for money. However, if I buy anything new in the next few years I would face some serious problems domestically😄 so I've started to cobble together my own DIY version with existing gear. This setup is also covered by Cuiv on YT https://youtu.be/0JdtL950RjQ I managed to get it working yesterday using my Android phone but my Ipad wouldn't play ball.

Yes, I should have been clearer. I shouldn't have said "it seems that the item you have is this one". I'll leave this to the experts.

I'm also a relative newbie to all this but looking at the image and doing a search it seems that the item you have is this one: Motor Drive Celestron | Celestron Motor Dual | Motor Drive Cg-4 | Motor Drive Kit - Astronomical Accessary - Aliexpress Dual Axis Electric Motor Drive Kit for Celestron CG-4 SkyWatcher EQ3-D EQ3-W | eBay which doesn't appear to suitable for your EQ5 mount. I also have this mount as a GOTO and it's excellent. I'm sure somebody with infinitely more knowledge than me will come along soon to help you.

When opening the app there was an immediate update screen, was this to update the app or the Asiair firmware? I had some weird problems too, slewing to the opposite direction both for return to home position and also pointing to target. Demands to input guide camera specs despite there being no guide camera present and inability to select and slew to target from "tonight's best".

I had this identical scenario 2 nights ago. I've only been using the Az GTi in EQ mode for imaging for a few weeks since my back injury when I decided that moving my heavier mount around would not be a good idea. Two nights ago I was prompted to update the app as soon as I turned the Asiair on. PA was done fairly easily, I also like to return the mount to the home position using the app before selecting my target, I had read elsewhere it made things more accurate, but when I did so this time it slewed to a crazy position. I decided to start again so turned off the mount and manually returned the mount by loosening clutches to the home position and powered on. PA was done very quickly but when I searched for M42 in "tonights best" it would not slew when the green arrow was pressed so I selected it in the "slide out bit" in Preview mode . It responded but just like for @MonsterMagnet it pointed away from the target. So I started again but this time returned the mount to the home position by loosening clutches without turning off the power. Didn't do PA again but selected M42 as above and it slewed perfectly and I was able to get 80+ minutes of imaging. This behaviour must be update related as @Elp says so I must do some reading and try to roll ,the update back.

I imaged M42 last night for the first time (imaging novice). 41 lights only each 120secs before I began to image trees! ASI533mcpro, Asiair Pro, no guiding. so after some quick processing (APP and Photolab DXO3) here it is, there is blue fringing around stars so this needs to be addressed, the moon was very bright and quite close. There is another image with the sky not so darkened which shows an odd anomaly but I'll show that later.

That's quite some engineering Lee. Looks amazing, hope for great success.

Many people use the ZWO Asi224mc.

I knew you were joking😀. Focussing is a bit of a pain as the helical focuser has a massive travel but you get there in the end. A diagonal can't be used so it's a straight through job, not ideal although I didn't find it a problem the first time I tried it.

What did I use? What didn't I use!! I started with standard photo lens cleaner which left a smear so I followed that with camera sensor cleaning fluid which left more of a smear so I then tried isopropyl alcohol which left a smear so I breathed on it which made the smearing worse😢. The last two attempts were following information I got on the web which as we know is never wrong. Luckily for me someone I know locally who knows infinitely more than I do about all things astro has kindly offered to clean it for me. @Franklin I will try Jif, what could possibly go wrong......

I bought a used Evoguide 50ED some time ago with a view to using it as a lightweight imaging scope but almost immediately had the good fortune to acquire a WO ZS61 so the 50ED was never used for imaging, I have used it a few times for guiding. My recent back problems have led me to experimenting with ultra light setups again and I decided to sell on the the 50ED in favour of a mini guidescope I already had. Yesterday I decided to give the 50ED a bit of a spruce up before advertising it so I started by cleaning the lens. What a disaster, no matter what method I used the smears just kept piling up. I've been cleaning camera lenses most of my life so I thought I knew what I was doing, I should have read first that telescope lenses are quite different, so I have deemed this 50ED as not saleable. But what to do with it? I had a look at Andre Minoia's reviews of the 50ED and he had suggested it's possible use for observing and apart from one other fleeting mention elsewhere that was it! So I set about putting some gear together. From the ground up: my somewhat ancient but superb and incredibly light Gitzo G1227 reporter mountaineer carbon fibre tripod, topped with a small Manfrotto video head from my vast and embarrassing collection of unused photo accessories together with an Arca Swiss clamp. I had a WO dovetail bar lying around which has an Arca Swiss connection on the reverse side so I mounted the 50ED in it's 3d printed bracket onto the dovetail bar which then neatly seated on the video head. For eyepiece I selected my Svbony zoom. About 10pm yesterday I noticed the sky was extremely clear with some clouds threatening so I set up the new gear and quickly located M42. Not expecting very much at all from this I was amazed at how clear the viewing was. At the highest magnification I had a brilliant view of M42 with the nebulosity clearly visible. The clouds rolled in so I packed up and can't wait for the moon to show up. The whole thing is as light as a feather and I'd have no compunction in packing this (not including the tripod) in my standard photo back pack with room for still cameras etc.