Zakalwe

Im getting there. The weather, as usual, is stopping play as it seems horrible when I have free time and clear when I have commitments

A bit of duct tape or foam shoved into the gap would sort it.

Fill the cavity with pea gravel or shingle. Mice are more than happy to chew through wood if they really want to get in. Pea gravel will fill the void and still isolate the pier.

Sometimes the old adage "Buy cheap, buy twice" applies. ☺

There's plenty of imagers that plonk a tripod on grass and get on with making excellent images. Would you say that they are all incorrect? http://www.iankingimaging.com/show_article.php?id=32 As a "floating" paver? Well, it will move over time and require polar alignment ever now and then. But, unless it blows away in a breeze , it'll be more than substantial to support a mount and an OTA weighing less than 20Kg in total. Personally I think that there's a lot or garbage talked bout piers. Talk of "rat-cages" flexing and bending (ever tried to bend a 16mm studded rod?), huge diameter piers and tonnes of concrete being absolutely necessary is, IMHO, snake-oil. Sure, it won't do any harm to over-engineer, but at the same time, to insist on it isn't right.

It'd have to be secured to the ground. I would feel very, very nervous about a mount and OTA sitting on an unsecured pier. It'd be very top-heavy and the consequences of the lot getting knocked over would be horrendous.

Mortar is a very poor glue, when used in this application. It would fail very easily. A modern adhesive would probably rip the block apart before failing. You could also use a chemfixer to anchor a bolt into the base and bolt the bottom block down.

It looks like you are well out of focus. What looks like stars are hot pixels. The "smudge" is a massively de-focused star.

Very, very clever. It might be an idea to put some sort of guttering on the front edge of the lid. If there is any water on the edge then it might run down the overlap of felt and straight onto your scope? A piece of aluminium J-moulding would run it off to the side.

I'd use either Ethernet or an Ethernet-over-power cable. You will need power in the box (unless you are running DC to it?) and the Ethernet-over-power works very well. WiFi can be problematic and sometimes you just have to reboot it and fiddle about with it.

Your ingenuity amazes me! You should go into business making these remote micro-obervatories!!!

Look at post 4 and 6 in this thread: http://stargazerslounge.com/topic/219759-eqmod-through-eqdir-or-handset-pc-direct/#entry2361717

Doing this can introduce signalling delays. EQMOD is designed to work with a direct connection to the mount, not through the handset. When troubleshooting always try and remove as many variables as possible....perhaps the 20m cable and handset connection are part of the problem?

You have the DEC guiding output set the North. Change that to Auto and see what difference it makes. Setting it to North (or South) means that PHD can only issue guide commands in one direction.

Thanks for the reply. I've dropped him an email for a custom ERF cell.

Is this service still available?

£110! Meep Those Seagull viewfinders are £30 off eBay. A couple of quid, some superglue, a bit plastic tube and some ingenuity and you will be £70 richer. I am in the wrong business! http://www.amazon.co.uk/Seagull-Finder-Minolta-Olympus-cameras/dp/B004CGE90U Or search for a 2nd hand Nikon viewfinder: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Nikon-angle-finder/351432521897?_trksid=p2047675.c100005.m1851&_trkparms=aid%3D222007%26algo%3DSIC.MBE%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D30773%26meid%3D563eda21fa0a437e9ef22dd48c8d4c69%26pid%3D100005%26rk%3D3%26rkt%3D6%26sd%3D251819848975&rt=nc

:grin:

Great post Paul (and a good explanation of why the film Gravity is based on pure fiction). Orbital movements are very counter-intuitive and to change an orbit requires huge amounts of fuel, certainly to make a significant change. Changing an orbit to the extent that it would be visible to an observer on the ground would probably be impossible.

Speed in orbit will be determined by height and mass. Wikipedia gives its orbital speed as 28,000Km/h

And an imperial thread gauge. Celestron kit seems to have a mixed bag of metric and Imperial threads in their kit. Personally i would not use Allen keys. A good quality set of 3/8" or 1/4" hex socket tools tend to fit better and do less damage to the heads. Teng or Halfords Professional are very good value and last well. Allen keys, hex heads and screwdrivers are all considered consumable items. They wear out in a surprisingly short time and will start to round. You usually discover this late at night when the last bolt to be opened for that "10 minute job" rounds off.

I wouldn't use Regi for handling OSC data at all. It uses the Nearest Neighbour algorithm for de-Bayering. Autostakkert uses a superior algorithm that uses drift in the image to interpolate the data.

Don't bother with Registax for stacking. In the majority of cases, AS!2 will be faster, much easier to use and generate better results 9especially if using a OSC camera). Just stack in AS!2 and then drop the stacked, un-sharpened image into Regi6 for wavelet sharpening.

There'd be a hell of a sonic boom if that was the case.

Unless it is powered, then it can only orbit as fast as orbital mechanics will allow. No faster, no slower.