LongJohn54

I began reading this thread without noticing the first post date. I got a shock at seeing the second post and had to have a close look at the post dates. Alberio380 (Dr Tom Clackson) passed away on 27 Sept 2015 whilst cycling to help at an outreach event run by The Astronomical Society of Glasgow of which he was Treasurer. https://www.theasg.org.uk/index.php/all-articles/21-dr-tom-clackson I bought my first refractor (TS 127 as seen in my profile picture) from Tom and after spending a couple of hours at his home chatting about all things astro left with my new scope and another hundred quids worth of 'bits n pieces' that he threw in for free. He was also generous with his time and knowledge and I learnt a lot from him. A real character and still missed.

If you use a site like www.latlon.net and zoom right into your location you can be really geeky and nail your position right to the spot. Seconds with 2 decimal places gets you into your garden.

It's sometimes easier to watch a short video where someone explains why a good home position is required whilst showing you how to do it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fO6hyYtPwM

Excellent image. I'll be using that as my reference image when I process my M51. 👍

It's the afternoon after the night before and I've discovered why my limits were on but not apparently working. They were working but using the limit file I had set for my visual scope. With no cameras to worry about the limits were set quite wide. All fixed now. 😳

Guess who's been reading too much SGL and not paying enough attention the where the scope is going tonight. 6mm from the nut. 😱 I think I'll spend some time exploring mount limits and how to set them better.

That's insane. I hope the rest of your subs are way better. Perhaps send that sub to a newspaper. They love a good illustration of problems like this. Sky at Night and Astronomy Now as well.

We've had no flights for a few weeks now. It seems really quiet and the skies are clearer as there are no aircraft overhead using Glasgow as a waypoint for transatlantic flights. Yaay!

It might do. I'll bet it can't fix 1 easyJet though. Satellites may be a pain but to properly ruin a sub you need an Airbus A319 at 3,700ft on it's descent into Glasgow airport. The joys of living under a flight path. 🙄

I haven't missed out after all. Not Musk's but a couple of interlopers anyway. 🤣

I'm getting back into imaging after 18 months off. The secret is lots of subs then the processing software can eliminate them.

Ahh, missed them. I started at 22:45. Still light twilight before 22:00

Ooh, I'm on M51. I'll have to check my subs carefully.

Nice case and well adapted. Sadly it was not available all those years ago or I would have saved some cash and bought it too.

On astronomytools select imaging and enter your details there. Leave it on custom scope and enter your lens size like this. Choose a large object like M31 and see how you get on.

I used a Pele 1600 case when I transported my NEQ6 around. Other similar cases were just a bit too small. Take a look at this old thread, last couple of posts at the bottom -

I ran the guiding assistant a couple of days ago and have still to work out what's going on. I don't like 12 seconds backlash but everything else seem ok. Can you post a screenshot of you result?

I have an Anker 10 port powered usb3 hub in the obsy. There are 3 metre cables from the hub to the mount, cameras etc and a 5 metre lead from the hub to my PC in the warm room. Currently plugged in are - Mount NEQ6 x-box game controller for when I'm visual and want to slew around. Atik 314L camera Atik filter wheel QHY5 camera BT WiFi dongle The dongle is plugged here as there is a direct line of sight through the patio doors into the kitchen where one of my MESH WiFi hubs is located. If it were to be plugged into the PC the signal would have to pass through two brick walls and is too weak to use. I run everything and can be online (like this) at the same time with no connection problems at all. My observatory is only 10 ft from the house and the distance between the WiFi hub and the usb hub is 25 ft with a great signal. Yes, before you ask, it was 2:00am and I'm drinking beer and eating an Easter egg whilst capturing M51 and reading SGL. 😁

I really hope something 15Km in diameter made of iron and traveling at 80Kms/s doesn't hit my house or Scotland's had it! What did you say about kids (even old ones) 🤣🤣

I tried the UK on Jupiters Red Spot but it was tiny so here's the land down under instead. 😁 Still tiny though!

Yes, Set up the mount on the tripod and tighten everything up, once it's all stable and solidly positioned loosen the central bolt, do your polar alignment and retighten the central bolt.

My obsy is heated to 7c above ambient by the dehumidifier which runs 24/7 set at 60%. It's only switched off when I open the roof. Here you can see when I entered the obsy and had the light on while I switched the dehumidifier off and opened up. The temperature drops from 7c to -0.5c over three hours and the humidity rises to 89%. The outside temp was 2c at the start and -1c when I finished and humidity rose from 84% to 96%. Without dew bands I wouldn't have lasted more than an hour but even at midnight the optics were clear when everything around me was soaking. Heating the optics (and the diagonal if I'm visual) by a degree or two the whole time the obsy is open is pretty much essential for me. 17 Jan to 25 Jan

My existing Elitech Temperature/Humidity monitor is pretty simple and requires me to go and fetch it and plug it into my PC to extract the data then return it to the observatory afterwards. To fully encourage my laziness I wanted something which had the ability to connect via WiFi to my network and run unattended for a long time. After a bit of Googling and Amazoning I settled on the UBIBOT WS1 as its features met my requirements and had a lot else to offer as well. Plus at £65 it wasn't unduly expensive. https://www.ubibot.io/ubibot-ws1/ Its sensors are - Temperature Humidity Light Vibration Knock (can tell if its been dropped) Battery level WiFi signal strength External Temperature Probe I've got a couple of normal AA batteries installed but it can also use rechargable batteries and be recharged via the usb port. Data is sent via WiFi through your network and on to the Ubibot cloud server and saved in your account. This is free for up to 200Mb storage. Once full you can delete the data and continue on the free service. You can download up to 1Gb of data per month on the free service. This storage is per device, if you have two sensors you get 400mb storage and 2Gb download. The UbiBot data server connects with IFTTT (If This Then That) so you can set up any alerts or functions as you might require. I've tested a standard alert by switching off the nearest WiFi hub and seeing what happens. I soon received an email telling me that my device was no longer in contact and I got another email when service was resumed. So far (two weeks) it's been a perfect device for my observatory. Using the default settings I get Temperature, Humidity and Light reading every 5 minutes, WiFi readings every 15 minutes and battery level every 2 hours. These are uploaded every 15 minutes. So far I'm using less than 2Mb per week so my 200Mb storage will last a couple of years. The UbiBot control panel is well designed and simple to use. The charts can be set to any time scale and the latest readings are shown at the top left of the screen. From the control panel I download a .csv data file which can be set to any date range so you don't need to download all the data each time. This file is ok as it is but I've written an import function in Excel VBA. This imports the latest data and appends it to data I've already got. The next step is to write something that will create Excel charts of data similar to what is shown online. I can happily recommend the WS1 to anyone who wants to monitor the climate in their observatory or anywhere else. UbiBot recommend that it is not kept in a environment where the humidity is over 90% for long periods but other than that it's all good as far as I can see. I'll post updates with any changes. Just sitting on the pier at the moment. It has a slot for hanging and comes with double sided tape for sticking anywhere. You can see where I switched off the dehumidifier for a while and where I turned on the light too. I've set the default date/time to ISO format (yyyy-mm-dd hh:mm:ss) which leads to the charts being Month-Day. Note the columns J-Q which appear to be for future expansion unless there's a gps sensor that I'm unaware of. During the import I've converted Ubi's date string into a real date/time format. Also note rows 3142 and 3143 where the times are separated by 1 second. This happens occasionally so I'll add some code to the import macro to fix it and close the gaps. I'm sure someone can make use of reading down to a millionth of a volt. Plenty of detail as to what has happened. With a delay of 1 hour 15 minutes it has waited for 5 missed connections before emailing me. I think this can be customised if required. If not then you can create your own alerts with IFTTT.