Ouroboros

7 minutes ago, Vroobel said:

Haha, should I understand that I guessed properly (2600MC, not 6200MC) ?

Well guessed.  So the “waist” are the vents. 

It’s a violin with a folding neck. 

You can tell I’m not much of an observational astronomer by my saying I’ve really only got three - low mag, middling mag and highest mag. I start off at low mag and widefield.  Then progress through middling to high. Then I usually think that’s too much and go back to middling. I’m easily satisfied. 😊 

This sounds a bit like some of the quirkiness I have experienced with my AZ EQ6 mount. Quirks which have been widely reported on.  The mount pointing the wrong way seemed to occur after polar alignment.  A working solution was to first do the polar alignment, return the mount to the home position - weights down, telescope pointing towards the celestial pole - then switch off the mount and then switch back on again.  Skip polar alignment and move straight on to star alignment etc. 

With my mount the alignment was so far out that I could play with this during the day until I’d worked out how to stop it doing daft things. I no longer have this problem using the ASIair to control the mount. But occasionally I use the handset for visual only and I still have to do the switch off/switch on thing. 

18 minutes ago, John_D said:

I'm afraid that website, as well as all the ones reporting his death, look very dodgy to me ☹️ As far as I can see there's no video refuting it on his Instagram page despite what the article says ( although I'm no Instagram expert so I'd be happy to be proved wrong )

Yes. I immediately got pop ups saying my system was infected with viruses on all the sites reporting the death of Alyn.

If it’s true I should add that I too am sorry to hear the news. 

Very nice sketches, @josefk.  I managed to track it down through bins this evening … along with Mercury just above the horizon. 

Just to follow up on my fairly negative comments earlier, I do hope the show was a success for the organisers and the vendors. It’s only by having shows like this can we see kit in person and discuss them with sellers, and maybe meet familiar faces too. Basically I’m saying thanks to those who organise the shows and long may they continue doing so. 😃

6 hours ago, mikeDnight said:

I think it's telling that no-one has bothered to post any pic's as yet.

I didn’t post any because I didn’t take any ‘wide field’  pics of the whole show .. only a couple of specific items that interested me. As here …

Something I noticed very starkly, although I realised this already, how refractors now dominate the telescope scene - albeit probably made by the same few manufacturers. All Chinese of course. Kit from companies like Skywatcher barely get a look in amongst all the red. Their stuff is also looking somewhat dated too. 

Just got back. I have to say I was slightly underwhelmed. Seemed smaller than last time, but maybe it was a bigger hall. I am glad I got there reasonably early. By 11 o’clock it was getting so you couldn’t easily get to see the sellers’ displays.  I decided I’d bail out a tad early. A plus was that  I bought  a small scope cover, so saved myself  10% on that plus postage, and a couple of 2nd hand 50p books on the history of astronomy stall.  

23 minutes ago, Elp said:

Instead of downloading the update, download the app directly from zwos website. At least this way you can kind of control your rollbacks in case you get issues, because currently once an update comes out, zwo remove that prior version for download.

Sounds good but I think Apple don’t allow an app to be downloaded to an iPad or iPhone except from the Apple App Store. 

2 minutes ago, saac said:

Thank. I have the app running on my iPhone and iPad, but mainly use my laptop vi bluestacks. None are flagging up a new update available. I think it's possible to disable auto updates and I wonder if that is what I have done. I can download the latest version from the App Store then. 

Jim 

Interesting. I don’t allow my iPad to update automatically, but the App Store app flags up the number of apps needing updating.  I find I have to do this every few days.

I see what you mean about people reporting USB port failures. 

I think I’ll give it a miss for the moment particularly because I recently  installed a ZWO EAF to my ASKAR. I’ll wait until I’ve tested that in use before updating the software.  

8 hours ago, saac said:

A few of the updates like fuzzy search and new LDN catalogue will be good. Much of the rest looks like support for additional cameras.  I've just turned my app on and there's no message to update the firmware. How do you do it?  There is a rest firmware function back that only rolls it back to either factory  or previous settings far as I can see.  If I can find up how to update I'll give it a go.  

Edited - just checked the forum - some users reporting usb port failures after update! 

Jim 

Mmmm. I’ll look into that.  I don’t know what you’re running ASIair app on but on the iPad the App Store lets you know when apps need updating. 

Anyone updated yet? How is it performing. 

I noticed this update flagged in my iPad but haven’t yet pressed the button to install.  I am wary of doing so after the recent updates. Hopefully they’ve improved things, but once bitten twice shy and all that. 

Yes. GHS.  I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with it.  I often have to have several goes before I’m even vaguely satisfied. Although admittedly it’s a better tool than what was available before.  It can sometimes leave an image looking a bit flat ie lacking contrast. It’s not the final stage of course.  There are other tools to apply after GHS. But part of me has a feeling that there’s got to be a better way of doing this than GHS …. it’s just that no one has come up with it yet.  

4 hours ago, mightymonoped said:

There certainly is! 😊 Took a few goes to bring it out though. 

I can well imagine because the crescent nebula is very bright and bringing up the surrounding hydrogen must be a challenge. 

Marvellous wide field view. There’s a lot there isn’t there? 

@Tomatobro  Hadn’t thought of that. 🤔

I believe clutches are available to disengage the ZWO focuser to enable manual focus.  I don’t know where to buy them from. Maybe something for a homemade solution? 

Oh, and you wanted to know how to input coordinates into the ASIair.  I know I can do this but unless software is open in front of me I can’t recall how to do it.  Someone else will have to describe that for you. It’s quite easy. I hope to fire up my telescope  later and if no one else has posted I’ll let you know. 

You ask a perfectly sensible question.   

There are probably lots of ways of doing this. In safari you can click on the object of interest - star, comet etc - and then select Info. It will give you the position in RA and Dec as part of the information listed on the left hand side. You can also change the the coordinates to equatorial in Settings.  Safari then shows the coordinates of the centre of the screen in RA and Dec as you scan around. 

I wonder whether this is one of the many philosophical questions which are interesting but actually have no material importance. You could argue it’s just the way the universe is ie. there are certain things we can’t know for sure like we can’t know the universe wasn’t created 5 minutes ago, along with all our memories, or that we can’t simultaneously know both the  velocity and position of a particle with unlimited precision. 

2 minutes ago, Mr Spock said:

It feels like I'm in Bortle 95 minimum...

I think you should try observing after the sun goes down.  

Coffee for me, usually decaf but not always. It depends how late it is.  If it involves baby sitting an imaging session (because of possible rain) into the wee hours I will keep going on coffee. Talking of the wee hours …. the trouble with shipping all this liquid …… 

1 hour ago, Mr H in Yorkshire said:

I failed the test, they suggested I try Densa. (98% bigger membership)

That is genuinely laugh out loud funny. Thanks! 😀