A Minimalist Setup

[Thalestris24]

Although it wasn't actually clear after midnight last night I could just about see one or two stars... So I set up my Super Multicoated Takumar F4 plus a qhy5l-ii mono on my eq3 pro. This gives quite a decent fov and, though lacking in aperture, it should be quite fast. I did a drift align with PHD2 but will run unguided:

 

The blue rectangle is a cheap Li battery that I'm using to power the eq3 pro

I managed a few test shots. There were no dso targets around but here are some stars centred on HIP79885 (24 x 15s):

It really was murky! Oh, I don't understand why, but the qhy5l-ii is more sensitive than the cooled Minicam5s which is the same sensor. Maybe it's something in qhy's firmware.

Louise

ps Live Stacked in SharpCap Pro with master darks and flat

[carastro]

You do marvelously from your flat Louise, but just wondering how you manage to drift align from indoors, I thought you have to be able to see two horizons either side of the Meridian.  Or do you have windows both sides?

Carole 

[Thalestris24]

1 minute ago, carastro said:

You do marvelously from your flat Louise, but just wondering how you manage to drift align from indoors, I thought you have to be able to see two horizons either side of the Meridian.  Or do you have windows both sides?

Carole 

Hi Carole

I think I mentioned before that I only drift align in Alt to the East. I just use a compass to point my mounts approximately true north. Since I only image to the East, the Az adjustment isn't so important as it has little effect on the behaviour of the mount, providing I'm not too far out. If everything seems to work ok I just leave the mounts setup as they are. They don't move - unless I knock them... The main problem I have is that at this time of the year there are few targets to the East after dark. However, I reckon I might be able to get the above setup down the stairs and outside one of these days, and before I get too doddery! That could open up a whole new outlook - ha ha. The great outside is so near yet so far.

Louise

[carastro]

Yes it would be great to use the light weight set up outside somewhere.

Carole 

[Thalestris24]

3 minutes ago, carastro said:

Yes it would be great to use the light weight set up outside somewhere.

Carole 

Only two cables too! I think I can probably just about manage to get it up and down the stairs, with laptop in my backpack .  I'm hopefully going to give the qhy5l-ii + lens a decent tryout tonight. I really need a UV/IR filter for it but I'll manage for now (I don't know if standard UV cut camera lens filters also happen to cut IR?). I just need it to be a tad warmer before venturing outside. Well, quite a bit warmer, really! Anywhere just outside on hard ground should do. There is a small communal green behind the flats which would be nice to use but the ground is too soft.

Louise

[RobertI]

That is a nice minimalist setup, should yield some good things, fingers crossed. The mount seems huge compared to the scope, I thought it was an NEQ6 at first!