Ags

Now of course I have to babysit the setup through a few meridian flips as by attempting to fix the goto I might have broken the flips.

Thanks for that, I dug out and installed a button battery and set the time and location. The location was already right, the Air must update this somehow as I never configured this and without a battery the handset would not remember anyway. Time zone was also right but time was out by an hour. DST setting was also wrong.

I believe all the electronic stuff for the mount is in the handset… therefore you have to plug the air into the handset. But I’m pretty sure the handset isn’t feeding the Air any info. For example, the Air handles meridian flips perfectly, so it clearly knows where the scope is pointing relative to the ground. I’ll test @vlaiv theory about skipped steps first. If that doesn’t work I will relent and set the handset. 😃

I will try that!

Unless I’m mistaken, the handset is irrelevant, all the thinking is done by the Air? To answer the question, I haven’t set up the handset at all…

One thing that puzzles me is that the gotos require so much correction from plate solving. I am almost perfectly polar aligned, so why doesn’t the goto get close. With a regular go to, you expect the target to be somewhere in the field of a wide eyepiece, but the HEM15 and AIR are not even close. Plate solving papers over the errors, but it is puzzling.

Doing a mini Messier marathon tonight. I’m shooting 15 minuTes on a bunch of targets, just to see what I can get in a short time. With the full moon and a blustery breeze, it’s not the night for anything seriousI a, going for 30 second exposures so there will be more exposures and more benefit from dithering, and binning 2x to compensate for the short exposure time.

Thanks @Elp! Yet again you have set me on the right path. I raised the plate solving exposure for polar alignment and GoTo to 10 seconds and it is working smoothly now.

For polar aligning it is 5 seconds. Not sure where else to set it?

Yes, I have been setting to zero each time. The Air calculated 970 mm focal length when it eventually solved.

I got plate solving working last night at a focal length of 970 mm. The trick was to plate solve in the AsiAir Preview mode, and then sync to the target. Plate solving during polar aligning and during object selection still refuses to work.

I'm amazed by the detail picked up in just three minutes with city light pollution and a 95% Moon. The scope was reduced (using my trusty SCT 6.3 reducer) to 970 mm focal length, so it was operating around f6.4.

First light. I think the collimation can still be tweaked slightly but I am pretty happy with this result. It’s hard to judge the star shapes as there was a bit of a breeze, but the scope is clearly functional now. This is one unprocessed 3-minute sub.

There is a lovely group I was hoping to photograph, but my laptop won't boot 🤨 Still, a lovely view in the eyepiece.

The Moon is always worth a look! Another thing to chase down are double stars, they are good regardless of light pollution.

I am waiting for my grandson to fly over with an 8300 mono, so looking forward to finding out for myself if CMOS is really better. In my case the comparison is between and uncooled OSC CMOS with amp glow and a cooled CCD with three times the surface area. It will be strange to have a camera with a physical shutter!

No, you ideally adjust the primary, secondary and the focuser! But with a smaller chip like mine you can get away with mostly adjusting the primary.

I am having no luck plate solving with the ASI485MC and my RC6 (reduced to a focal length of about 900 mm. The short side of the chip should still span around 0.4 degrees so it should be possible.

I took the scope out to align the finder today, and gave it a bit of a bump… I hope the collimation is still ok 😐 TS sell the same thing, never seen it called a Reego before. It looks however that I can collimate both mirrors with my camera, and I strongly prefer collimating directly with the intended imaging device. The end result is the end result, if you see what I mean?

At this price I may very well include it with my next purchase… A few of these might make a nice outreach set.

Will I be disappointed? Thinking about getting this EP for max 1.25" FOV in an F9 scope, although I might use it at F6 too. https://www.firstlightoptics.com/ursa-major-eyepieces/ursa-major-fmc-flatfield-eyepiece-25mm.html

I think Spocks keep on trekking, surely?

I have thought about putting a hand warmer in my eyepiece case! I think the small size of eyepiece lenses is also relevant. Even the largest ones will be quite rigid compared a big floppy newt mirror for example.

Looks great1 Very Hubble-y What do you use to stitch the panes together?

After last night's photographic collimation, I stuck in the Cheshire again at lunch time to see if it agreed with the camera. The Cheshire is saying the scope is way out of collimation... I think the issue is the focusser is not square and it is joined to the primary mirror, so the Cheshire will always give a wrong answer. However, I think the Cheshire is useful for collimating the secondary at least.