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Help with the breeze


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Hiya,

I was out the other night with my telescope and looking at saturn, had alot of problem with the wind every time i would look through the eyepece the wind would pick up and the image would be shaking all over the place untill it stopped, has anybody got any ideas or sollution that could stop this.

Thanks

Nicholas

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It mostly has to do with a too lightweight mount/tripod.

The heavier the mount, the more stable your scope will be.

That's why a lot of people invest in the more expensive heavier mounts like the EQ5 and EQ6 type.

But with very strong winds tho. No mount is going to help you.

The only thing that will help then, is a windshield.

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I had this problem last week when out with my 12" Flextube - very blustery. My charts were OK as I use elastic bands, clips etc. to hold pages down (though the music stand that holds my Uranometria blew over a couple of times). But the scope was literally being blown around on its base, and I was very tempted to give up. Still, I'd come a long way - and I'm not a quitter! First thing was to remove the shroud, which was acting like a sail in the wind. Also left off the dewshield (you don't get dewing in breezy conditions). The scope was still swinging in the wind and I didn't have a pair of spanners with which to tighten the dob base (duh!) so I put whatever heavy stuff I could fit in there in an attempt to keep it a bit more steady - this meant I could only aim the scope low, but that was all I'd planned on doing anyway. There were some calmish periods which made observing more pleasant but I had to re-aim the scope pretty much every time I took my eye away from it (star-hopping all over again). Given the near-impossibility of having a steady image for any length of time I stuck to observing bright galaxies at low to medium power and ended up viewing more than 20 in the sparkling mag 6.3 sky, so it was well worth the effort.

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This can help a bit with lighter tripods:

Get three sandbags, and hang them on the legs. This will weigh down the tripod, and make it stick to the ground a tad better. Also dampens a lot of vibrations...

If ya can't get sandbags, and your tripod has a tray between the legs, stick a couple big bags of sugar, flour, or whatever else you've got in your cupboards on it. It does make a difference!

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I have 3 tarpaulins threaded on a washing line running the length of my garden.

this is to block the street lights that are right outside my house, it also acts as a breeze blocker but can act as a sail when the wind picks up.

cost approx 4 pounds each from B&Q they are rather thin so I doubled them up.

THey have eyes every metre so I leave them up and it takes less than a minute to unfurl them and secure with weights and bungy cords.

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A bit off topic, but may be of use to anyone reading this and considering a new scope: This is one of the reasons I usually recommend a dob for budgets under 250£. They are much more resistant to wind and at this price range it's hard to get even a decent photography tripod and scope, and much harder for an EQ mount. Some things are just expensive to make.

Still adding weight to the mount may solve your problem. On the last astro meeting I been to, a guy had a 5L water "bottle" hanging from his EQ tray and it seamed to help.

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