Zakalwe

Here you go: Center (RA, Dec): (218.862, 59.638) Center (RA, hms): 14h 35m 26.907s Center (Dec, dms): +59° 38' 18.381" Size: 25 x 16.7 deg Radius: 15.006 deg Pixel scale: 87.8 arcsec/pixel Orientation: Up is 121 degrees E of N

Load it up to Astrometry.net and it will plate solve it for you.

35 nanometre https://www.firstlightoptics.com/narrowband/baader-narrowband-ccd-emission-line-h-alpha-filters-2.html https://www.baader-planetarium.com/en/baader-h-alpha-35nm-ccd-filter.html

Daystar now say that energy-rejection is required on all systems that track the Sun. Even a small 80mm will focus a lot of heat onto the Quark, and whilst it has has some ERF in the unit I'm of the belief that extra filtering will stop that heat load having to be dealt with by the Quark. it's certainly easier to use an ERF than having to return the Quark for servicing. http://www.daystarfilters.com/downloads/QuarkFlyer.pdf

No, you do not use the field flatteners. Also, a Baader 35Nm hydrogen alpha filter makes a better ERF than a UV/IR filter. It blocks a LOT more heat than the UV/IR filter.

The amount of data gathered in a 1 minute exposure at f4 will need 16 minutes at f11. This is why trying deep sky imaging at long focal lengths is an exercise in frustration. Your guiding will have to be spot on. You will need great weather...imagine the frustration of a cloud appearing at minute 14 of a 15 minute exposure and causing the guiding system to lose the guide star. 😡 Add to that an already noisy DSLR camera where the noise increases as the imaging sensor gradually warms up during the exposure. You may find that short sub-exposures on such a long focal system gathers virtually no data that's visible over the noise floor in the image. I'm not saying that it can't be done. Likewise, you can do your morning commute on a pogo-stick. You'll get there eventually, but it'll be so painful that you're unlikely to do it again. Certainly not as a hobby. Save a few quid up, get a second-hand 80mm refractor or a 130P Newt.

I always keep gain at zero (or as close as) for Lunar. The higher the gain, the higher the noise.

Just a red long-pass.

https://www.easyzoom.com/imageaccess/7386026e8343420f94cc81882fba451b Make it full screen and then zoom in and out with the mouse wheel 12 pane mosaic. Best 900 of 2000 frames stacked per pane. Camera: ASI 174MM Scope: Celestron C11 Mount: Mesu 200 Software: Captured in Firecapture. Stacked in Autostakkert. Sharpened in IMPPG. Mosaic stitched in Microsoft Image Composite Editor Final processing in Photoshop Not the best quality as the Moon was just coming over the houses and the sky was still bright blue. Still, not too bad.

If it was my decision, then I'd go for the Mesu as it is more of a "known" quantity. I was in a similar position when I was choosing my mount and I went through a similar thought process. I short-listed a Gemini, but decided on the Mesu as I couldn't find many user experiences of the Gemini.

The DDM85 is a £12k mount. For that I'd expect it to wake me in the morning with a cup of tea and a cooked breakfast! 😄

Personally, I'd take the JTW vapourware off the list.

Don't get hung up on low PE and encoders would be my advice. PE is fine as long as it's low and slow. Guiding will cope with that with very few issues. Ditto for encoders. You can plate-solve within seconds now, so a super-duper sky model is a bit redundant. Who cares if the mount hasn't the foggiest clue where it is when you can just point it skywards and have an accurate solve & sync done in 30 seconds? Encoders come with their own problems too...the setup needs to be very, very stiff. Yes, with a good setup you can do unguided imaging, but to be honest, guiding is not that difficult and it pretty much just works. You'd be fine with a Mesu, though less so if yo are setting up each night. It's a heavy lump of a thing. The newer version can be broken down, but get in the gym if you want to be humping it about the place.

Its on here, but I'm not interested in mud-slinging. I will call it as I see it though. I'm delighted that my problem has been solved as I believe that I was probably the first to experience the problem. I know of at least four other people that had the same problem, some of whom were invaluable in diagnosing and testing possible solutions. I also know of at another few people that have other problems that took a while to resolve (one took many months where the individual was without their mount). Any man-made object can and will have problems. That's just a fact of life. I was unfortunate to experience a very difficult-to-resolve problem which was not unique to me. Given the work that was done by the makers of SiTech (kudos to Dan Gray, he was absolutely brilliant). Lucas Mesu took extreme exception to me posting my experience on here and his approach went from sporadic attempts to offer advice to "send it back and you'll get your money back". My counter offer was sure- arrange collection or pay for delivery from Lancashire to London after which there was no contact. Bern at MA was better, but had no resolution. It's easy to swing when you are winning. The real measure is how you respond when things are not working. In this regard the Mesu experience was appalling.

Nope, and neither am I interested in seeing them. What I want is when I spend £5K on a product is support. Not a shirty email because someone's ego has been wounded. Nor do I want to spend months trawling the Internet trying to get fixes. My experience has massively dented my interest in this hobby.

Of course we can. He is the one taking people's money and delivering nothing but broken promises. That's probably the smartest thing that you did. Section 75 protections means that the credit card company is jointly and severally liable. This means that the credit card provider is as liable as JTW for the failure to deliver. You have waited for over a year for the item. At this stage I would ignore JTW and go straight to the CC provider and make a claim for a full refund, including the interest paid. I and others that I have spoken to have had to spend months trying to diagnose and fix problems with mesu mounts with poor support from the supplier and manufacturer. Buyer beware in all situations, but personally I will never buy another item of this value from a one-man-band bloke in a shed. These people are enthusiasts and cannot seperate their personal pride and can often see justified criticism as some sort of personal slight. I know that it's not a done thing to criticise Mesu's products, but I have months of emails and PMs from people in the UK and in Europe that were left struggling to find fixes. Caveat Emptor.

Long focal lengths, go for the biggest pixel size and fastest frame rate that you can get. The ASI 174 is great for Lunar as it has large pixels and a screaming fast FPS. It's also very good for Solar when using a Quark, as the Quark has a built in Barlow. It's a lot more expensive though,. Don't forget to make sure that your USB and disc subsystem is up to muster. You will need a SSD in the PC/laptop and good quality USB3 cables. My ASI174 will drop it's framerate significantly if I use even a 7200PRM hard disc...it absolutely demands SSD. Likewise, USB3 is very sensitive to cable length and quality. I run short cables from the camera to a quality powered USB3 hub on the mount, and then a high quality cable back to the PC. I also don't put any other devices on that line, especially USB2 (yes, USB3 can segregate USB2 traffic without slowing down the USB port, but I find it works better in practice if the camera is on it's own able and hub).

Id go with the one with the fastest framerate. All things being equal, a faster framrate captures more data in the same time and has a much better chance of "freezing" the seeing.

Starlink is much more visible in the days after launch, when they are in their lower orbits and before their engines lift them higher and into the correct orbital plane. Once they spread out then they won't be as observable.

The link doesnt appear to be working

That powerbank is exactly what I am after! Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Chunzehui-Connector-Splitter-Distributor-Output/dp/B074Z1J1BY eBay: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/NEW-Aluminium-AP-8-8port-40A-ANDERSON-POWERPOLE-CONNECTOR-POWER-SPLITTER-SOURCE/392379672194?hash=item5b5ba6a682:g:x44AAOSwPMpdURKe

Send it back as it's not fit for purpose. You have legal rights regardless of what the vendor/manufacturer tries to bamboozle you with. Any production made device can have errors. You don't want to hear about the issues that I and others have had with Mesu mounts and the dreadful after-sales "support".

It's not performing as expected. Send it back. It's a mass produced object and any manufactured object will have a failure rate.

The FW is normally mounted to the camera or very near it, especially if you are using a focal reducer or field flattener. If it is too far away from the camera, and especially if you are using 1.25" filters then the filters may act as a field stop and intrude into the light cone. Get it mounted as close to the camera as possible. There's no requirement to have it "hanging" down...you can mount the FW in any orientation. Just rotate it 180 degrees and it will solve your problems.

Why have you got the filterwheel so far from the camera? Mount it nearer the camera for a start and rotate it 189 degrees so it points up.