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- Today
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That's quite a load on the EQ6. How close to limit are you mate? Shane
- Yesterday
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Here's the gear I am currently using. The pics above are done with the big blue scope on the bottom Cheers, Ken
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Not me mate. In fact the fast scope are quite handy for a bunch of stuff. I like M83. I'll have to revisit that one later this year (once the cloud moves away). Ray
- Last week
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Thanks Shane and Ray Here's 2 more from last night. These two were taken with the 6" f5 Achromat Focal reduced 0.7x Who says fast Achromats are crap? Cheers, Ken
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I have been very impressed with absolutely every facet of the Moravian cameras. I would certainly get another if the need arose. Shane
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Cheers Shane - sounds great from the cooling alone!! Greg
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Moravian G2 2000 Greg. Great little camera and a good fit for what I want. Shane
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Dragon Man! Where have you been hiding! Good to see you are getting some photons my friend. 19 cameras is a bit steep, my missus would kill me. Welcome back. Ray
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I have a water cooler for it but I have never used it. I sometimes put the aircon on inside the obs to cool it down from the day time heat, but that's about it. Ray
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Which camera Shane?? Greg
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Nice work Captain Slack. Glad to see you back Ken. Shane
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I seem to have no trouble getting to -20 summer or winter. Shane
- Earlier
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Yeah Yeah, I know! 5 years since my last post. Just call me Captain Slack OK, here's where I am up to currently with Video Astronomy, apart from running a Video Astronomy Forum with a bloke called Davy in Scotland: I now currently have 19 cameras I have advanced through the Camera range waaayyy past the Mallincams, and into the latest CMOS high resolution cameras that are pretty much as fast as the Mallincams (Xtreme & Xterminator) but in much higher resolution giving far superior results. Gone are the ugly giant Mallincam blocky square stars. The 4 cameras I use simultaneously now are a Revolution Imager RI2 Analogue as an all-sky finderscope, a RisingSky 224 CMOS in my 50mm Finder/Guidescope, a Revolution Touptek 224 CMOS in the ED80 which is piggybacked on top of my 6" f5 Achromat with a RisingSky 6.5mp G3 CMOS. My scopes and Mount haven't changed much over the last 15 years, only the cameras. I'm still using much the same gear as last time I posted 5 years ago, just better cameras. Here's a sample of what I now get with these better cameras, in seconds: (remember, in Video Astronomy these are all single screen grabs of Live views with absolutely NO post-processing. Straight off the camera) Enjoy! Cheers, Ken CARINA NEBULA OMEGA CENTAURI M4 GLOB
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Dragon Man changed their profile photo
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I'm near bayswater on that map. Ouch. Ray
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Yes on cold nights -25C is no problem - but during the summer -15C is the best I can do. Greg
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At least your camera can get nice and cold. I struggle to coolmine to minus 20. Ray
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Yeah Micron and Paramounts, also very good. Ray
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Yep clouds here as well. super annoying, still have to polar align and calibrate the guiding before doing a test run. Shane
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Finger crossed mate. Cloud here at the moment, very annoying during new moons, I have a ton of data to process after a long drought. Ray
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I thought I kept the subs but alas not. Instead of a point source of light it was like many in a rectangle shape approx 1 inch x 3/4 inch all of the same star. It was like it guided for 10 sec or so made an adjustment, guided for another 10 sec another adjustment of 50 ish pixels. and so on. I did find 2 issues, first, the counterweight bar had come loose, not sure how that happened but an easy fix, second, a couple of main axis bearings were not in great shape (one on RA and one on Dec), also rather easy fix. Just to be safe while replacing 2 dud bearings I replaced all 6 main axis bearings. Mount is now back on pier, all gear mounted, balanced, and daytime tested. Now I just need a clear night to assess it all. At this point the only adjustment I can foresee is a small backlash adjustment on the RA but I wont know until I can try it out. Shane
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Cheers mate, going to order one tomorrow. Ray
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What was the mount doing? Ray
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I know this pain and feeling well mate. Ray
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Alright, procrastination is over. Mount has been removed from pier and ready for a service and check up. There is something not quite right inside and it's time to find out what. Tomorrow I will start the disassembly. Hopefully I find an easy to fix problem that will reinstate decent guiding, and allow me to get back to imaging. I have missed quite a few good nights trying to solve the guiding issue and then procrastinating over stripping the mount and servicing it. I'll report back any findings. Ideally I would like to upgrade the NEQ6 but alas funds (read Minister of Finance and War) wont allow it at this time. Shane
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Thanks for the info mate. Now the hard part convince the boss.lol. Shane
