So I decided to set myself a challenge, Capture all messier space objects Options

[michael.jenkin]

Argh :( It will happen far too often that you look up at the sky and wish you could go out with the scope.. Or setup the scope only to have clouds roll in..

Tonight was pretty reasonable, I got out for a few hours though didn't get far. Alignment is still slightly out, and I think that the repairs done to my mount are still not 100%..

I have a new problem. They shipped my autoguider with a pair of imperial bolts and the Tube rings are Metric.
I tried to screw them in. The soft cheap Chinease bolt just simply snapped. Now I have no autoguider and a bum tube ring.

I must say, Bintel have been excellent. They identified incorrect parts they sent me, sent me the right parts. Found items they left out ofthe shipment by accident. And now with this issue, they said it was their fault and a new tube ring is on the way.
I wish the screwups did not happen in the first place but at least they are doing something about the issues !!

[michael.jenkin]

I started documenting my journey

My Astrophotography Journey

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 !

[Chancellor]

Thus begins a very fun learning curve :) Stick with it and have some fun :)

I've also got a spare 5kg counterweight if you need it.. I'm a tad surprised you need so much weight to balance out the scope though, I thought you'd get 10kg with the mount?

[michael.jenkin]

Thus begins a very fun learning curve :) Stick with it and have some fun :)

I've also got a spare 5kg counterweight if you need it.. I'm a tad surprised you need so much weight to balance out the scope though, I thought you'd get 10kg with the mount?

Thanks, I have a 2.5 kg on back order and a 5kg waiting for me, in Sydney. Should have both at the end of next week.

I was surprised about the weight as well.

I don't have an accurate weight measurement for the BT200 /f 8" Reflector. I found one in pounds somewhere for the Orion Autoguider.
I think it is more the fact that the autoguider changes the centre of balance as it reaches out further from the centre.

I don't know what came with the mount as they are not marked. I am googling about now ....

[edit]
Suspect is came with 2x 5.1 kgs

The autoguider tube is 1.1 kgs
The Autoguider is 0.12 kgs

Approx weight of a 200 /f 8" OTA is about 9 - 10 kgs (Averaging what I can find online from various brands).

Not including
Tube rings, dovetail mounts, finder, eye peices, bolts etc



This post has been edited by michael.jenkin: Sep 8 2012, 12:43 PM

[michael.jenkin]

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

Case link

[michael.jenkin]

This is a low res iPhone image (afocal) of the sun. I could see Prominences, Flares and Sunspots in my scope today. The only things I did not see was a Spicule or Filment.

12 mm eyepeice - 40mm Coronado pst

[Antraman]

very nice for an iphone shot mate.

Try some at sunset/sunrise, see if you can't capture a glimpse of that new planet that people have been observing floating around the sun...

eg: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxy8Zu4asCM

[michael.jenkin]

very nice for an iphone shot mate.

Try some at sunset/sunrise, see if you can't capture a glimpse of that new planet that people have been observing floating around the sun...

eg: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxy8Zu4asCM

Wow, thanks for the idea.

I am currently home with tendinitis and can't walk. That means I can't spend too much time with the PST :(
It also means whilst I have a T Piece, barlow and camera ready for some real photos, as it is at work and I can't drive, I can't get them.
I am trying my best with an iPhone and that is really hard.

Trying to get focus on an iPhone and line it up is very time consuming and frustrating.

I am just glad I got to see some activity with my eye and have to be happy with that.

[Chancellor]

Very cool photo Michael!

It'll be interesting to see what you get once connecting a different camera :)
If you're not in work by the weekend, let me know and I'll see if I can drop off a few bits and pieces for you :)

[michael.jenkin]

Very cool photo Michael!

It'll be interesting to see what you get once connecting a different camera :)
If you're not in work by the weekend, let me know and I'll see if I can drop off a few bits and pieces for you :)

Thanks. Looks like it will be rainy and no sun for a few days. I think I overdid it as well. My leg is killing me.
I will have to site here looking at other peoples images on Flickr.

If you want to give the PST a try yourself, let me know. It is a very unusual device to use and takes patience to get any images !

I am currently using it on my camera Manfrotto tripod. I tried a cheap and nasty saxon but it kept drifting. I might try it on my heq5 when I can walk !

[michael.jenkin]

I stepped it up a notch last night

2nd attempt to take a photo of the sun.

Coronado PST (Personal Solar Telescope), 9mm eyepiece, Canon 550 Full spectrum modified camera, held manually over the eye piece with lens eye cup pulled backwards, no DSLR lens, trying to avoid mirror but also attempting to acheive rough focus.
(Standard T adaptors do not allow the DSLR to come to focus)

Hydrogen Alpha image edited to highlight the prominences.

[michael.jenkin]

First time use of Registax

Coronado pst (40mm), Plossl 9 mm eye piece. Manfrotto tripod (no eq or autoguider) Canon 500D manually held over eye piece (eye piece is protruding into the camera and avoiding the mirror). Recorded 580 frames MOV video. Converted to Apple images in AVI using free MPEG_Streamclip.

Used RegiStax 6 to stack photos in monochrome.

Colourised in photoshop.

Not sure how much of some of the white spikes are from the stacking and my movement in the video (Hand held).

Not sure if there are any filaments. No obvious sun spots at the time of taking this.
Some of the lines might be Spicule.

Surface detail looks good in Hydrogen Alpha.

[michael.jenkin]

Created a blog about modifying a T adaptor to work with a Personal Solar Telescope and DSLR
Blog about Canon EOS to PST

This is in the hope that I can make this easier for those that try this kind of thing as there is very little info available online.

[michael.jenkin]

After all this time, I finally got first light with my telescope. It has been in a box for months.


(Crappy image thanks to my iPhone).

First the counterweights did not arrive, then days of rain, then I hurt my leg and then I got sick ... Grrrr.

So my aim for first light it just to test everything. I did not polar align, my photos were not the best, took me ages to get the Autouider to respond and then I had to pack up due to the mozzies biting.


Sun using a solar filter. Not as good as a Hydrogen alpha image and the Video did not produce anything in Registax.
Many of the other photos were out of focus and the donut of the mirror appeared as a black fuzzy circle.


Blury quick shot of the moon.

15 kg counterweight, Heq5 Pro EQ mount with Synscan, BT200 8" Newtonian reflector (1000mm F/5), Solar filter, Fan cooled mirror, 80mm Guidescope and Orion Autoguider, finderscope, Canon EOS 500d and Orion extension tubes and T Adaptors.All attached to a laptop for Autoguiding and Canon remote Shutter.

Now I just need to learn to make this gear work for me.

This post has been edited by michael.jenkin: Nov 18 2012, 12:43 PM