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billhinge

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Everything posted by billhinge

  1. Check out the definitive page for weird telescopes http://spider.seds.org/scopes/dstevick/weird.html This is the original page your pic was taken from http://spider.seds.org/scopes/dstevick/trischi.html Buchroeder design Tri-Schiefspiegler on this provisional structure. The optics for the 300mm Tri-Schief .... I always wanted a Stevick Paul
  2. Any reason not to pull it from the image metadata, thats what I normally do?
  3. I think after a while it just clicks and becomes second nature without have to follow a prescriptive workflow - best book I found was Mastering Pixinsight by Rogelio Bernal Andreo. It explains why PI tool settings are not what you may assume when tweaking . Well explained with a second reference volume Also try the monthly competitions from last year, they have virtually perfect data to experiment on The starnet app is good but my gripe is it seems to get fooled by really bright stars etc
  4. Something I wanted to try from when I made a 8.5" mirror in the 70's. My concern is about getting the chemicals (through customs). A few years ago I bought some distilled water and acetone from local chemists. Boots refused to sell acetone and gave me a hard time over distilled water! Next local chemist made me sign the poison register for small bottle of acetone. (I know you can get them by the gallon on ebay now). They used to have instructions in the old ATM vol 1 to 3 I believe you also need nitric acid, I'd be worried about it getting stopped at customs but in principle it sounds cool. I guess not many folk have tried it given its easy enough to aluminise Don't you have to burnish it as well? Potential downside risk sounds high in relation to any upside benefit unless you are after the 'experience' of having done it in which case the cost shouldn't matter
  5. I bought the parts for a CG5 DIY belt mod from here several years ago https://www.beltingonline.com/to-suit-9mm-wide-belt-c-272_284_479/36-tooth-htd3-pulley-363m09f-p-7728.html ------------------------------------------------------ 2 x 15 Tooth HTD3 Pulley (15-3M-09F) (HP15-3M-09F) = £14.23 Modify Bore? 5mm Grubscrew Holes? 2off M3 2 x 3mm HTD® Timing Belts (4573) = £3.91 Width in mm 9 Belt Length in mm 111 Tension Cords Glass Fibre Material Neoprene Black Rubber 2 x 24 Tooth HTD3 Pulley (24-3M-09F) (HP24-3M-09F) = £11.43 Modify Bore? Not Required Grubscrew Holes? 2off M3 Keyway? Not Required I believe the parts can be customised is some way if you find the right one, they also do different belt qualities - I went with high torque drive = HTD (google timing belt pulleys)
  6. That's pretty cool, something I had always wondered. For a long time I kept an eye open for a used one with the intention to add goto etc (I think I have the know how and I had a mk III which I completely stripped, cleaned and put back together so I appreciate the workmanship 🙂 ).
  7. I notice there are 2 Fullerscopes mark iv's in the for sale section, a bit like buses you never see one and then 2 turn up at once! Seriously though I always wondered what the weight capacity of those things were? Any ideas, what would be the modern equivalent
  8. I had a CG5, got a skywatcher now - prefer the skywatcher, better and cheaper wifi dongle as well Noise on CG5 is due to the plastic case amplifying motor noise, taking it off greatly reduces sound Get a berlebach and sell the tripod
  9. Kind of funny, I did a project on iodine 138 decay many years ago as part of my university third year astrophysics project. One of the products is a positron and a neutrino. It's quite easy to measure neutrino mass squared, it always comes out negative but there is an error bar which could could just make it positive. Convention is always to take extreme positive value as it can't possibly be negative 🤣 many unwanted things seem to get explained away in physics
  10. Not specifically this model but I have done many Panasonics inc de-bayering plus one Canon - I had loads of £50 burners from ebay Those ribbons and connectors are real easy to break, bent pins, plus static frying things - buy a mat and cable!
  11. Photoshop is less than £10pm and includes lightroom, seems reasonable to me, why object on principle? Its easier than PI and very useful, especially if you buy plugins I have PI from when it first came out, I haven't found it requires any heavy duty hardware (2018 macbook pro) as Martin said, get the trial to see if you can get your head around it, requires you to think about what you want to do and change default settings rather than follow a strict workflow . Its one of those things that seems mysterious then after a while it just clicks
  12. I'm getting rid of my kruppax 😇
  13. Would be nice but mine is second hand dating back to about 2005 or earlier, it seems to have a custom made 2.5" ST, trouble is I want to fit the 82mm Riccardi.
  14. I have the 115mm TMB LZOS and was looking to change to a 3.5" ST focuser to fit the Riccardi reducer/flattener, I have been in touch with Markus at APM and Wayne at Starlight and it seems those old tubes are slightly the wrong size to fit the new ST focusers without an adapter, unfortunately they wanted me to ship the scope out to Germany or US to fit a bespoke adapter 😬 If I do replace the tube I may go the moonraker route, I can get a shiny silver 3.5" ST to match the tube 😄
  15. now reported as 4.1 sigma https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/56643677 or https://phys.org/news/2021-04-tantalizing-results-defy-physics-rulebook.html There is currently a one in a 40,000 chance that the result could be a statistical fluke - equating to a statistical level of confidence described as 4.1 sigma.
  16. You have to use your imagination , eg something like this https://www.skf.com/group/products/rolling-bearings/roller-bearings/needle-roller-thrust-bearings Where could they go?
  17. APM seem to supply some objectives for DIY https://www.apm-telescopes.de/en/apm-products/lenses-cell.html D&G do them in usa or you could get moonraker to build it for you (looking to get my LZOS done) http://moonrakertelescopes.co.uk/telescope-range.html (not cheap option) Probably cheaper to buy new/2nd hand, seems a faff getting a new cell and objective of exactly same spec, hard enough getting a focuser to fit specific tube diameter (looking to replace 2.5" custom featherlite with a custom 3.5" silver featherlite)
  18. ebay? For what its worth, I think replacing the worm bearings and 6007RZ RA bearing will make more difference, the teflon bearings seem to be just gap fillers If you are going to re-engineer it, I would suggest looking at the problem Celestron are trying to solve on a tight budget and see if you can do better with better/different components which may be slightly different size eg needle bearings (you may need to do some exact measuring) rather than copying their components, try different grease But remember it wont turn into a Paramount ... I replaced every bearing and added custom belt drive, yes it was interesting and a learning experience and I then bought an EQ6! (but at least I know how everything works)
  19. Given the Suez ship is blocking traffic to the tune of $10bn per day it wouldn't surprise me if there were further price rises, someone is going to have to be out of pocket, I guess it won't be shipping companies and suppliers ...
  20. I blame TV or lack of now. Back in the 70's they did good educational tv, one of the unsung goodies was Weekend World on Sunday 12.00 lunchtime with Peter Jay and Brian Walden https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weekend_World Even as kid I was interested in velocity of money, M0 to M4 money supply, Keynesian economics models vs gold standard, and rising costs of materials at the factory gates, domino theory etc 🙂 guess it influenced me to expect price rises - never let a good crisis go to waste (they even put prices up when they changed from old money to decimal ;-(
  21. Hardly without warning, I think it was pretty obvious that with Brexit tarrifs and covid supply chain issues that prices would go up. I'm surprised they didn't go up sooner, I assume they will go up more next year as the post covid financial hangover rumbles on. I'm not averse to spreading out large purchases on credit cards over 3 or 4 months but I generally pay them off, bought everything I thought I may need before December I bought a lot of new stuff last year as I hope to retire in a year or two Maybe it's an age thing? back in the 70's and 80's you expected rising prices and high interest rates, from the 90's onward people had it "lucky", cheap quality imports and relatively low inflation/interest rates ?
  22. I bought a second hand artograph off ebay, paid half normal price (well made, variable lux and colour temp, good quality leds - not cheap but assuming you get what you pay for) https://www.artograph.com/lightpad-series/lightpad-lx-950/
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