Astronomik, Canon and astro-imaging. Anyone tried Clip-Filters ?

[ameerat42]

Can you get them out? There's a method using "eze-outs".
Am.

[mickyj]

Happily, a pair of multigrips got what was left in the rings, out.
I rang Bintel who appologised and are sending the correct bolts and new tube rings.

I also got the ND filter and camera mount they forgot to send me. I think that Bintel are awesome and this has just been one of those complicated orders that got a little messy.

[mickyj]

I started documenting my journey

http://www.mickyj.com/astrophotography.htm

Now I have my next expeariances to talk about .. for all those who want to travel this path.


Well, the learning journey so far has been rough. First there was the huge delay in getting the gear. Then the ND Moon filter and Camera mount is somehow not shipped to me and I had to chase them up. The wrong Canon EOS filters were sent to me. Finally everything arrived and I started assembling and ran into more issues.

Firstly the assembly instructions are not very good. Some sections are excellent, others leave large gaps which is hard for a newbie to work with. I had to guess a little with placing the mount onto the tripod legs. I had no idea about the Azimuth Adjustment Knobs and Altitude Adjustment T-bolts. I had no idea how to mate the top of the tripod and the mount. The first time I tried to put the two together, it did not go in straight due to the Azimuth Adjustment Knobs being in the way. I tried to line up the cavity with the bulk of the mount (Align metal dowel on the tripod head with the gap
between the azimuth adjustment knobs) but it was not square. The bolt on the underside seemed to screw in easily however, I was in danger of cross threading and had to pull it all out and start again. Then I had this little packet with Altitude Adjustment T-bolts, not mentioned anywhere in the assembly manual. I saw an image with them in place and took a guess (correctly) and got them into place.

Now I faced my next issue. I had a SkyWatcher 8" V Style Dovetail Bar supplied loosely and some form of Dovetail bar that came with the tube rings.
Which one goes on the mount? There are no instructions. To make things worse, I have an Orion Autoguider, with another Dovetail bar.
The one that comes with the tube rings seems to go into the mount fine. The rings go on but do not 100% fit at the bolt site. I then scrap that idea and use the 8" V Style Dovetail Bar. It has two grub screws at each end and a hole to put a bolt through. Again, being a first timer, I have no idea how this works.

Do I pull out the grub screws ? Do they attach to something? They are on a slant, they don't go in straight. I later worked out that they were for making small changes to the telescope alignment. They were not for fixing and connecting things. I finally get the SkyWatcher 8" V Style Dovetail Bar onto the mount and the tube rings on. I put in the telescope and it finally looks to be taking shape. The bar that comes with the tube rings goes on top and then I realise, the Autoguider will not work with this bar. I swap over for another V Style Dovetail Bar and start bolting in the soft metal bolts. The head on one snaps off. They are imperial bolts for a metric hole. That ruins one Tube ring. I had to use a pair of multigrips to pull out the remainder of the bolt. The thread in the tube ring is wrecked. I rang the supplier who apologised and sent me another tube ring and the correct bolts.

Finally I bolt the Orion Autoguider on. I realise that the finder scope is going to interfere with the Autoguider. Again, there are no instructions so I work out how to attach the finder to the Autoguider instead. This is great as the original position of the finder was awful.

Now I need to balance. I was smart enough to find the instructions that recommended I add the weights when I added the tube. The issue I now find, I can't balance the tube. The weight of the tube vs. weights is not correct. I need another 6 kg's ?

I don't have another 6 kgs. How did I get to this figure ? I found an old UPS with transformer and battery still intact and put it in a bag, dangling it from the weight bar. I weighed it, it was 6.5 kgs. With the UPS, RA balance was fine. Without, the tube wants to swing wildly and could make contact with the tripod legs. I don't want that !!!

Looks like I need to order yet more things to make this kit work. It worries me how heavy this setup is now getting. I know the mount can handle 15 kg's but I have no idea how much this is at. I can't find the 8" 200 F/5 OTA or Autoguider weights easily online.

All I want to do, after so many false starts, is see this darn thing work.

I plugged in the Synscan, turned it on (press enter/enter to bypass the warning message), did a rushed setup and then told it to align with the 3 star alignment. The scope moved, it looked excellent. The system works!

I must admit, at first I could not find the Synscan handset and the finder tube. The foam used to pack the mount had a hole for the handset formed in it and when I lifted it off and put it to one side, the handset remained fixed in place and went with the foam. The finder was in a white box the same colour as the foam holding the OTA in place. I almost over looked that.

The scope clocks are wrong as the screws are loose. I will figure that one out later. I have yet to check collimation and I am positive the Cone balance is wrong. Not sure what I can do there as the view assembly, finder and Autoguider are all off centre to the one side of the tube.

The polar scope Reticule seems best suited to the Northern Hemisphere but apparently I scan use it to locate the SCP.
With the latitude scale and longitude/latitude, I downloaded an app for my iPhone.

The only big win I have had is I now have a slightly damaged spare tube ring. It makes an excellent weight to move up and down the tube to balance it.
I can also balance for the eyepiece or DSLR really easy. I saw someone online fit such a spare for another purpose. They left the supporting tube rings loose so that the telescope could rotate. They then put the third tube ring on tight at the top so it rested against the loose rings. This meant they had a balanced scope that they could easily rotate.

It does mean it has added more weight to my scope. Not sure I like that.

Whilst trying to balance, I also released a tube ring when I did not mean to (I was tired I guess) and scratched the telescope body.
Whoops.

Anyway, this has been an interesting journey and I am learning lots. I have a long road to travel yet

I still have yet to actually look through the telescope and see a star !

[SteveInNZ]

It's all part of the adventure but it will seem worthwhile when you see/get your first faint fuzzie.

Steve.

[mickyj]

I totally agree. I must admit, it took me ages to balance the telescope. As I work in IT, I was wandering around our technical area trying various bits to weigh the telescope down. at one point I had 6 DVD rom drives, then 6 hard drives, then an LCD screen and ended up with perfect balance with a UPS battery

It was interesting !

[SteveInNZ]

Sometimes you have to be adaptable

balance.jpg
Note the approved solar filter.

Steve.

[ameerat42]

Yes..................
Am.

[mickyj]

That is an awesome photo. Works a treat up until someone needs a drink!

[mickyj]

Bought 2x Kincrome Large Safe Case's today.
One fits the heq5pro mount head, the other fits the autoguider and some bits

http://www.bunnings.com.au/products_...case_2622.aspx

[mickyj]

Bumping and old topic (Sorry).

Finally, after getting the scope in late 2012, I have found time and had a play. I am the MD for my business and it means I don't take holidays. I sometimes get Weekends and Public Holidays
(Hence my long gap in communications and not playing much with the telescope... no I am not dead nor have I lost interest).

So, first light was unpacking in 2012 (Bintel BT200 200mm x 1000mm f/5 Newtonian on Heq5 mount with Synscan Goto), discovering my vantage point had very little sky available for
viewing, repacking. Waiting on Second light.

Second light over 1 year later was very disappointing (Last night, 4 Jan 2014). I know I have a lot to learn but my results were terrible.

I was well prepared. I had no moon (it passed from the sky early), no wind, no clouds, perfect temperture to be outside. 120+ degrees of view (at least). (I was at the beach so if I could get power cords long enough, I could have had close to 180 degrees .. big flat area) I had heaps of stars. I had my aeroguard, put a tarp down, had power, warm clothes if needed, my red torch, autoguider and finder scope aligned ... the darn scope would not correctly polar align using the Synscan and when trying to manually seek stars, I could not see anything. Just all black.

I saw more with my eyes and DSLR camera with a wide (24mm) Lens. I saw a perfect sharp pockmarked crescent moon through the scope (When it was in the sky) which seems to
indicate it was collimated ok (I took a photo and zoomed in, looked over the whole image, all looked good). I know I could better estimate the collimation looking at the stars and
checking out the light pattern surrounding them, but I could not see any. That is my big issue. Maybe I am pointing the scope at empty space (with stars to dim to see)?

Grrr. Only a few moonshots for my efforts (took hours to setup). Wanted some horse head nebula using a Ha enhanced DSLR Canon camera. The rest of the time I am here (At the
beach), it will be too windy .... grrr ...... . Orion is in the perfect position in the sky and I can see the southern Cross so I could find SCP easily enough.

I know I need patience for this but I had hoped to get somewhere after playing about. I know each time I take it out, I will learn more and it will take many outings to learn to use this gear correctly.

So, let's see if anyone on this thread can point out anything I missed or my mistakes (Which will be many). Any help, advice, ways to make it easier, appreciated.

I had the Orion Starshoot autoguider and Orion Shorttube 80 all working and aligned with the scope (Attached to a laptop). I had the finder all lined up.
I could see the moon in the PHD guiding software from the guide scope and through the telescope/finder.

I had a compass, so worked out where the magnetic south pole was. I started up stellarium and saw that the southern cross was slightly to the left of South. I estimated where the SCP
was and pointed the North leg of the tripod towards it. (HEQ5). I then waited for the sun to go down so I could see the southern cross and hence estimate better where the real SCP would be. (With the head/mount in place etc it is hard to shift the scope in the dark so I tried to get it fairly close in the light).

I balanced the Scope on the Dec and RA axis. As I was fitting a DSLR, I also balanced the tube as the Orion Shorttube and Autoguider had to offset the weight of the DSLR.

I had a bubble level tool so I checked everything was level (At the mount).

I set the altitude T bolts to the correct altitude. (latitude).
I tried setting the Dec scale/RA scale and Latitude scale correctly (This might be where I went wrong as the Synscan's home position likely got messed up?).

Instead of looking through the polar scope, I then tried to use the Synscan alignment process. I guess I tried to cheat the system and did not look at the reticule. I think that this is why my results were so weird. I had the RA axis pointing roughly at the SCP and the Telescope was also pointed at the SCP.

When I started the Synscan, I put in the time, longitude/Latitude and time zone. I started with the 3 star alignment, First star Sirius, The scope orientated to look at the ground.
The second star Acrux (in Crux, the Southern Cross), it pointed in completely the wrong direction. I wondered if I had the tube on upside down but the opposite end of the scope was
also nowhere near pointing in the correct place.

I see in the manual for the Synscan that you leave the settings on the mount alone, set the scope to home and then use the Synscan to align. Do I have this correct ?
Or, manually align and forget using the Synscan except for quick pointing to objects in its database. Don't align with it.
Or Drift align and again, forget using the Synscan except for quick pointing to objects in its database.

I see many people commenting to point the tube (OTA) at the SCP before turning on the mount and then do the Synscan align. I did do this but I suspect I lost power when the scope
was in the wrong position and the power came back (I kicked the plug). Maybe this messed up the home position.
Does the Synscan need to be told it is Southern? How would the goto know that you are pointing home at SCP and not NCP or does it not matter due to some cosmic symmetry?

Anyway, I can handle that I need to learn more about aligning. I can accept that something I did, must have created a false home position and when I went to align, the system was
never going to point correctly. At least I have learnt what needs to be done. Just need to do it.

The issue really comes down to not seeing anything. I could find no stars. I tried for ages with plossal 8mm/25mm and others. I saw nothing. I could see with the guidescope and finder
but just dark black through the scope. I attached the DSLR and it also picked up nothing. I tried focusing, nothing.

I realise that there can't be any faults as the telescope is nothing more than a few mirrors and tube of metal. Any major faults, I would not have seen the moon.

I waited for hours after sun down, only used a red torch and I could see a huge amount of stars so the issue was not me, getting used to the dark.

I am glad that I got prime focus with my DSLR for the moon however, I really wanted to use the scope to see some stars, even if only with my own eyes.

So, have I covered my bases in my setup? Am I correct that I likely upset my home possition and hence could not Align?
Any ideas why I can't find stars ? Maybe I did not try hard enough and look in enough places ?

[SteveInNZ]

Have you made any progress on this Micky ?
I don't have a Synscan mount but the principles are common across mounts and there are a lot of things that you can do during the day to make life easier in the dark.

Steve.

[mickyj]

I am sorry to say no. Where I was staying was windy for about 5 days and I could not setup the scope. I only had the one night so I packed it all up.

Unfortunatly where I live, I can't see much sky. I need to visit my parents more They live by the beach.
I am making my next plans.

I have updated the Synscan to the latest firmware and I used my PST on the eq5 and that seems to have worked ok.
I saw some big sun spots and know that it must have simply come done to leaning to use the equipment correctly.

I just got myself a beauty dish so at least I have that to play with for a while

[mickyj]

Hello,

One of my staff is bugging me (motivating me) to get back out for my third attempt. So, did anyone have feedback for me?

Does the Synscan need to be told it is Southern? How would the goto know that you are pointing home at SCP and not NCP?

By manually setting the Dec scale/RA scale and Latitude scale correctly, would this have messed up the Synscan's home position?
As I mentioned, I sew in the manual for the Synscan that you leave the settings on the mount alone, set the scope to home and then use the Synscan to align. Do I have this correct ?

I guess not using the polar scope before I use the Synscan alignment process, is a bad idea? As the Reticule is for NCP I thought it would be painful to use.

Would it be recommended to manually align and forget using the Synscan except for quick pointing to objects in its database. (Don't align with it.)
Or Drift align and again, forget using the Synscan except for quick pointing to objects in its database.

Thanks for any comments. I want to have more success this time