Hello from the UK

CaptMo · March 4

First of all thank you for letting me join

I'm a complete newbe to this, I took some advice from a guy online and decided to go in with both feet. I bought a Skywatcher 150 PDS with a 2 inch 28mm lens also can take 1.25 inch with converter

It looks quite well built and Im currently learning how to use it

I also bought other bits and pieces, so I could use a Digital Camera, Mobile Phone and a Collimation Laser

I went on line to learn how to Collimate the Telescope, I managed to get the laser nearly in the small ring of the rear mirror, and get the laser light in the center of the Laser Collimator

Armed with this I set up in the back garden to see if I could see the moon, although I found the moon moves quite fast, I was facinated to see the detail of the moon through the eye piece

I then decided to attach a Fuji x-t30 Digital Camera and take a few shots

I've attached a few below

I think the most difficult part was to focus the Telescope and keep track of the Moon using the control knobs

Over the last couple of month's our weather hasn't been very good

I'm currently trying out different Software to get the Base to work, so far that's been a problomatic

The Synscan controller operates the Telescope OK using the manual buttons on the hand set

Using a PC, I connected this to the Synscan unit using a wired USB connection, I have installed the ASCOM, EQMOD and Stellarium Software

I have managed to get this to work somewhat, but I need a clear night to set everything up

I managed to find the north star Polaris, but have yet to point the Telescope at it due to the weather

In the house the telescope moves around under the control of the Windows PC - laptop but sometimes not where you expect it to

Next decided to buy the WIFI dongle and plugged it in where the Synscan handset goes

I tried the Ipad first, I loaded Stellarium, SynScan Pro and also SynScan Link

This is where the fun started, I connected the Ipad to the Dongle, I chose to look at the moon and off the base it went, not sure if it was close, but at lease the telescope moved

I set up the scope to Point North to Polaris first as I new roughly where that was with the weights towards the ground

Since I was indoors, I asked the software to place the Telescope towards the Sun, this it did and was in the right direction, height was a bit off, however I then asked it to return to Polaris it also did this

But the base was now not as I started the weights were now horizontal? I manually reset this

Then I found a big problem. I started to play around with the manual control keys on the Ipad for some strange reason, after you pressed the screen control keys, they stayed locked IE white,I was unable to control the Telescope

in fact the Telescope was moving and I was unable to stop it. I resorted to a Synscan OFF then back ON to reset everything?

I then tried the Synscancan Link software this did control the Telescope direction OK? I can only assume its a software bug

After all that I also noticed that apparently the Stellarium software can't control the Telescope and I needed to put the Syscan software onto a different unit, so I installed this onto my Android Mobile Phone and that worked OK

Ill see if I can find solutions to these issues and keep you posted

Moon 3 70 images stacked.tif

Edited March 4 by CaptMo

Stuart1971 · March 4

Welcome, and lovely images, hope you find the forum very useful, they are a good bunch of knowledgeable people here…👍🏻

Floater · March 4

Welcome. Hope you have lots of fun. 🙂

CaptMo · March 4

Thank you much appreciated

CaptMo · March 4

Update 04.03.2014 - 11.29

Connect to Scope using the WIFI Dongle

I installed SynScan Pro onto my laptop, I left the Ascom and Eqmod installed so I can use the USB Wired connection if I want to, but I have disconnected the USB Cable for now

Connected the Laptop to the WIFI Dongle directly available in the WIFI, this has no internet connection

Connected to the telescope using SynScan pro

With that running in the background, In Stellarium telescope control, I created a new connection using External software or remote computer, j2000, local host, port 10001, then connected to the WIFI dongle

The Telescope is now controlled over WIFI, it moves Ok in SynScan using the software arrows, and using Stellarium, but I can't say how accurate that is at the moment.

One problem I hit was setting the time In Stellarium the time is set using the Laptop keys that are already allocated for volume controls. I have set the time to take the system time

Update 04.03.2024 - 13.57

I have installed Stellarium plus and Synscan pro onto my Ipad to see how that fairs

Initially when I pressed the arrow buttons in the Synscan Software the buttons stayed pressed down? causing havoc as the Telescope kept moving out of control. I'm not sure what has changed but it works now

I have enabled a password on the WIFI

The Telescope controls are found them in Observing tools, I turned the slider on to enable control

I set the Telescope up to Polaris roughly to test and then Aligned using the Ipad Stellarium Align

From the screen I selected a start and off it went

I'll set it up properly when the weather improves

Edited March 4 by CaptMo

PatrickO · March 5

Welcome! Great lunar images.

Ask as many questions as you want. Lots of very knowledgeable people here.

Sunshine · March 5

Those are great first images! you’re in the right place, have a great time and keep posting your progress.

bosun21 · March 5

You appear to be off to a flying start. A warm welcome to SGL.

CaptMo · March 7

Thank you

Just need some clear skys

Bugdozer · March 9

Welcome, have fun!

CaptMo · March 22

Well at last the Clouds cleared enough so I managed to try a few things out. I wanted take a video of the moon at 30 frames per second then export the video in frames and stack them

I couldn't see the North star, so I couldn't align the Telescope so I used the manual controls

Well I took a number of videos and some still shots during the evening also tried out using extender tubes and a close up lens

The additional close up lens caused a funny worm mark to appear on the moon L.O.L so they got ditched

The next day I went through the Videos and found out that some were a bit wobbly so they got ditched

So using Magix Movie Maker, I added a video of the moon and exported the frames, at 30 frames a second there were loads

Then I found out they were BMP and the stacking program Helecon Focus I use for Macro Photography couldn't see BMP

So next I ran Paint Shop Pro and converted the BMP to jpg

I seperated these into 2 separate folders

I then started to stack the Photos 30 at a time IE 1 seconds worth then 60 etc

I then noticed that as the Moon was moving, it gave a horizontal shift of the moon in the frames, the stacking program wasn't able to align them spot on, at around 60 frames all looked OK

I then stacked 60 frames at a time the results looked OK

I wondered if I could stack 2 x 60 frames, this worked as well

I kept doing this until 300 frames had been used ie 10 seconds worth

The Camera saved these as jpg at 1920 x 1080, not as good as it can for single shots as its a 24 mp camera

I had set the camera on manual for ISO 120 and dialed down the light levels and the moon was quite bright

I noticed on video the settings were a little different

I've uploaded the sequence I converted them to Black and White for some reason you see more detail