bosun21

I have two EQ5 mounts and the noise he's describing is what happens when one of the motors moves out of alignment of the drive cogs. It probably occurred when he was transporting it home. It's very easily rectified.

Yes the extension is the correct way round 👇

Better prepared for tonights observing session. Using the MBII's with the Starfield on the planets. Roll on the dark.

I myself had a badly pulled muscle in my neck which was very painful with movement. However it was raining heavy here up until 7.45pm and then the skies magically cleared. Despite being in pain I couldn’t resist getting my new 150 Maksutov its first light. This turned into a comedy of errors as I hastily assembled my set up. Polar aligning was agony using the polar scope and I settled on a rough alignment. Neither the 9x50 RACI or the telrad was aligned due to never being used caused me more headache and neck ache. My biggest boo boo was in my haste I had aligned my home position in DEC on the wrong mark I had placed on the mount. As I always start up from the home position that was the go to rendered useless. I only realised my error after I got back indoors after this disaster. By this time the Mak was well cooled so I manually found Jupiter which wasn’t that easy with a Maksutov and no finder. I found and centered it with the help from my 30mm UFF. I then aligned both finders on Jupiter whilst it was being tracked. Finally some eyepiece time. The rains had cleared the sky allowing decent transparency but the seeing itself was poor. The planet itself was looking good with the 30mm probably due to the 1800mm f/l of the scope. The bands were clearly visible along with the GRS despite a watery image. Three Jovian moons were almost in a straight line with Io behind the planetary disc. I then increased the magnification with a 17.5mm Morpheus and the planetary details were still clear. After a minute or two I started to see Io peeping out from the disc of Jupiter. I believe this was the first occultation of Io I’ve observed. I sat and observed Io emerge from behind the disc for a while. Despite having a standard dew shield fitted dew was starting to settle on the meniscus lens bringing the first light to an end. The RACI and telrad were already obscured by dew. I did check the collimation of the scope and found it to be bang on, on both sides of focus. My neck collided with the counterweight bar while picking up an eyepiece cap causing an outburst of profanities. All in all a night to forget apart from Jupiter and Io. This has reinforced my need for a small G&G for nights like this. It’s supposed to be clear tonight as well so I’ll be out there way before darkness descends. Sorry for the ramble gentlemen/women.

Nice sketch Jose. The seeing conditions are a bit of a lottery. All we can do is to try and avoid the jet stream but trying to get this to coincide with clear nights can be frustrating.

I also would leave out the diagonal and insert a flip mirror to enable you to easily position the planet in your camera. Most planetary cameras have a small chip size.

You’re not alone John. I’ve done this multiple times and I now place them on my eyepiece due to this.

You can either power it directly with the 12v output from the eagle but it will be running at 100% all the time. I would place a dew controller into the circuit to allow the ON/OFF of the heater to be controlled by the Eagle and the power supplied to the ring controlled by the dew controller setting. I wouldn’t splice it with the power cable supplying the mount. If you have a spare 12v output on the Eagle use that.

Guiding can either be done with an actual guide scope and camera or an off axis guider and camera installed in your imaging train. Both these methods will require some form of computer be it a laptop, Asiair etc.

The dew heater ring is designed to be used with the Celestron electronic controller via your laptop. The controller is expensive and not essential to use the dew ring. All you need to do is either use a standard 12v dew controller to control the power supplied to the ring. Some folk just connect a 12v DC supply to the ring and run it on maximum. Either of these methods work fine however personally I opted for a 2 channel dew controller.

Welcome to SGL 👋.

The enhanced version also has sidereal, lunar and solar tracking.

I can’t even get the opportunity to cash in never mind out.

Isn’t that atmospheric dispersion as there should be no coma in the centre of the field? I’m just starting out with planetary imaging and still trying to get a grasp of it all.

No not at all. It's just at the time the OP was trying to find out the polarity not the continuity for which he would need a multimeter.

I don’t understand how collimating with the imaging train in place is correct. If you collimate the SCT perfectly without the train attached then attach it and have to adjust the collimation again you are surely knocking the scope out of its actual collimation point. My thinking says you should ensure that your train is not inducing any tilt and if it is rectify that instead of compensating for it by moving the scope out of its good collimation. Making the train all screw on fittings would be advisable.

Still won’t show whether the polarity is correct.

I echo the above sentiments as well. I am an Electrical/Electronics engineer and I bowed out very early in the thread once I saw what was occurring. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing being proven once again.

Don't you get any reflections from the metal walls caused by lights from the neighbouring houses? Lovely observatory by the way.

If you are looking at the Celestron 25x100 then if you can get the pro version as they are better quality.

I can definitely tell the difference between the FPL51 and FPL53 refractors especially at high magnification. However the larger aperture wins out for me as well.

You have already asked this in the DIY thread.

I forgot, what's a clear sky again?

I thought so. I am originally from Glasgow and spent the first 29 years of my life there. I can remember jumping on a bus with my friends to try fishing in all the nearest rivers. The Luggie jogged my memory of those long gone days.

The Luggie? Is that in the Kirkintiloch area?