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  #21  
Old 30-07-2020, 05:34 PM
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You could get away with the ASI6200MM and do 3x3 bins which would leave you with a 6.7MP full frame camera. With a 12” you could get away with 2x2 bins which would leave you with a 15MP and a wider FOV.

I guess the question is whether or not there is something you believe a 16” will do that a 12” can’t?
Thinking it thru Colin it is just plain appfever.
I am going to pull back finish what I have to do to the roll off and just learn more.
I really just need to learn more.
I need to motorised the roll off, build a ramp, place furniture start the pier and bring it up to a certain level.
Being able to devote uninterrupted time has me wanting to get it all happening.
In the last two hours I even wonder if the eq8 is the best idea...thanks for helping I appreciate your help and the others a great deal..
Alex

Last edited by xelasnave; 30-07-2020 at 09:05 PM.
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  #22  
Old 30-07-2020, 08:54 PM
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Logieberra (Logan)
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Thinking it thru Colin it is just plain approved.

... In the last two hours I even wonder if the eq8 is the best idea...
Alex
Suggest you take a close look at the iOptron CEM70... https://www.siderealtrading.com.au/p...70-mount-head/
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  #23  
Old 30-07-2020, 09:08 PM
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Suggest you take a close look at the iOptron CEM70... https://www.siderealtrading.com.au/p...70-mount-head/
Thanks I have always liked their design... and please note my edit..I typed in appfever but approved was substituted.

Edit by way of addition.
That sounds a great mount for the money. I am surprised..lots of nice features..do you have one?
Alex
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  #24  
Old 31-07-2020, 07:49 AM
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I don't think anyone has one in Aus yet. I am waiting for mine to arrive from hopefully the first batch into the country.
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  #25  
Old 31-07-2020, 08:16 AM
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I don't think anyone has one in Aus yet. I am waiting for mine to arrive from hopefully the first batch into the country.
Same. You and I both!
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  #26  
Old 31-07-2020, 08:47 AM
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any thoughts..to go on a 12 or 16 inch GSO RC.
Alex
I had an GSO 12” RC for a few years, sold it and “upgraded” to their 16”. I don’t wish to go into the full details here; but suffice to say I only had it for a few weeks before returning for a full refund. It was no upgrade.
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  #27  
Old 31-07-2020, 09:48 AM
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Aperture fever is a nice thing to have if you can afford to feed it, but I have seen too many horror stories about collimating the RC design to ever go near one myself.

I see stories of woe from people on Facebook with RC scopes (Particularly big ones) where they have all the appropriate tools and do iteration after iteration of collimation, they reckon they have it right, but a star test still says otherwise.
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  #28  
Old 31-07-2020, 11:26 AM
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Aperture fever is a nice thing to have if you can afford to feed it, but I have seen too many horror stories about collimating the RC design to ever go near one myself.

I see stories of woe from people on Facebook with RC scopes (Particularly big ones) where they have all the appropriate tools and do iteration after iteration of collimation, they reckon they have it right, but a star test still says otherwise.
To be fair, that sounds exactly like my story with my newt... collimation is hard... and yeah, I know, lots of people think it's easy and have no trouble at all, but for some of us it's not that easy. I only wish I could afford an 8" F5 triplet APO ;-)
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  #29  
Old 31-07-2020, 12:53 PM
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To be fair, that sounds exactly like my story with my newt... collimation is hard... and yeah, I know, lots of people think it's easy and have no trouble at all, but for some of us it's not that easy. I only wish I could afford an 8" F5 triplet APO ;-)
There is that too, but I have seen people who can collimate a fast newt in a snap, struggle endlessly trying to make an RC behave itself despite having every required or suggested device and modification to the scopes.

Dont (Almost) all of us dream of a great 8" fast APO! I would love one myself.
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  #30  
Old 31-07-2020, 12:55 PM
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Today's thoughts.
150 Espirit, eq6 8 or maybe the ioptron.

The Ioptron seems to good to be true.

Funny only recently I said mounts should come with built in guiding yet now that is available I wonder if it is a good idea given the benefit of minimising flex with an oag.

And back to thinking zwo for a camera, I just like their colour and service seems really great, although I still need to understand pixel size. But it would seem my two 1600 mono would be ok. until I figer what to get...

I had a crazy moment this morning whilst looking at a 16 inch dob and thinking to add decent structure to the tube and use it..it was f4.5. Doable I am not sure.

The 150 Espirit has the appeal of just working out of the box it would seem and maybe the focuser would be ok.

It's seems all zwo cameras have small pixel size. Mine seems small but it is ok to my untrained eye...plus I have the benefit of rather dark sky if that helps.

Maybe the 150 mm would work without an OAG.

Anyways got out this morning and pulled one winch out of the box and played around to work out where to put it and pulleys etc and think I have a good plan..I won't get bolts etc until Monday so I will think and look at it over the week end but it's looking good. Be good if I could rewire to use only one controller..that should work.

Figured to build an enclosed desk ..a desk with some sort of lid to protect from mice and water etc..but the roll off had heaps of moisture on the ceiling which is a worry. ..must check the size off the gift desks.

The ioptron is very appealing I presume it works with accom.. or does it?

The guide scope is only 120 mm ( I presume they meant FL and not app) ... it seems to have heaps of ports so will look into that. Plus a polar aligment scope...The design is so sensible I would have one in a flash except I like to follow the croud in new tech.

I suppose it's the unknown thing that worries me with it but really the new eq8 is an unknown also it seems.

Put my crystals in the small observatory and ran the little heater fan under the covers at 4 am until day break..I plan a routine of getting up early putting the genny on to make the batteries happy and run a room heater in the van...zero again in the van but although the heater hardly raised the temp the beautiful glow made you feel warm..I have a little one to bring up that has an artificial fire in it that would be nice here.so when that is a habit having a dehumidifier will work for me.

So current idea is to order a mount after the observatory is fit to take it..maybe just use my eight inch for a while before deciding on the next scope and camera.

Thanks again for all the help..after sorting the winch plan I feel that I am making progress at least...good thing the winches appear to have enough cable although I have some rigging left from boat days and more importantly the swagging tool which will be real handy I expect.Also I realised why I am in a rush..if I don't buy astronomy gear something else will come along and, well you all know how it goes, someone will want a car or a horse or a hot water service.
Alex

Last edited by xelasnave; 31-07-2020 at 01:09 PM.
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  #31  
Old 31-07-2020, 01:54 PM
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An Esprit 150 matched with the ASI6200MM would be a killer setup. Higher resolution while still having a fairly wide field. It would be my choice and a major step above the ASI1600.
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  #32  
Old 31-07-2020, 02:19 PM
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The only thing you would have to watch there Alex is I reckon for an Espirit 150 you would still want an OAG even with the CEM70G. I reckon guiding something that long FL with a 120mm FL guidescope built into the puck would be a challenge. Though at least a big frac would have the advantage of internally stable optics. Anything with possible mirror movement would be a real hassle I reckon.

The common wisdom seems to be with good rigidity, the inbuilt guider should be good to something like 600-700mm focal length. The real selling point for me was that I am setting up two rigs and while I am imaging at 480mm FL it allowed me to get USB3 connectivity and better electronics integration while kicking the cost of a second OAG and guide cam down the road a bit. So long as the inbuilt guider turns out to be a good thing.

Last edited by The_bluester; 31-07-2020 at 02:51 PM.
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  #33  
Old 31-07-2020, 03:02 PM
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An Esprit 150 matched with the ASI6200MM would be a killer setup. Higher resolution while still having a fairly wide field. It would be my choice and a major step above the ASI1600.
Thanks Colin.
Your stamp of approval means everything to me. I feel much better about everything today particularly getting on top of the motorised roof problem..I got the first winch for only $150 which prompted me to buy it as that seemed cheap but when I went to get the second one they were not on special any more so cost me $200 but the really good news is Bunnings had some decent pulley wheels, only three, I needed four but the nice young man hunted up a fourth one that he thought had dropped down when the stock box was on the top shelf..so lucky there.
And the more I think about how good just the little 80mm performs and the 115 mm I expect the 150mm will do more than I expect.
Thanks again for your input I value it very highly.
Alex
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  #34  
Old 31-07-2020, 03:48 PM
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The only thing you would have to watch there Alex is I reckon for an Espirit 150 you would still want an OAG even with the CEM70G. I reckon guiding something that long FL with a 120mm FL guidescope built into the puck would be a challenge. Though at least a big frac would have the advantage of internally stable optics. Anything with possible mirror movement would be a real hassle I reckon.

The common wisdom seems to be with good rigidity, the inbuilt guider should be good to something like 600-700mm focal length. The real selling point for me was that I am setting up two rigs and while I am imaging at 480mm FL it allowed me to get USB3 connectivity and better electronics integration while kicking the cost of a second OAG and guide cam down the road a bit. So long as the inbuilt guider turns out to be a good thing.
I was thinking about it earlier. I have always tuned my mounts as good as they can be and my old eq6 I did an 11 minute run with the 80mm once ...It needs work again but my point is I think of guiding differently to most folk in so far as I expect corrections should be needed only say at 30 second intervals and the Ioptron seems to be very smooth and easy to achieve really good balance..the fact the polar is between two bearing says to me it should be rather good...anyways being always on the rush in the past and often having to settle for 30 second subs I see now reason why I can't manage.

And I found with the ZWO that you can get away with crazy high gain and short subs.. I was looking at some HA of something I did last night..30 seconds at 450 gain..not really flash but after StarTools the noise was not anywhere as bad as you would expect and as I combined that one with others with less noise it Sortta was quiet acceptable...maybe not to others but I make no pretence I just want the best I can do with whatever exposure and gain it takes...I have yet to incorporate dark and flats so I have many areas that I can improve upon...and in the future not being rushed can go for less gain, dark etc.

And like you I will be running two rigs that need guiding, three rigs all up and possibly a four if I bring the "cube" up here..over kill ..not at all.
But if the mount guide works it will be terrific.

EQ6 unguided with two DSLR cameras one with HA and a normal one that hopefully I can combine..still working on that one but two doing different things at least, the HEQ 5 with the 80 mm maybe a one shot colour, the 115 mm with the zwo 1600 and the new set up whatever it turns out to be....and possibly a secondhand mount and camera for the eight if I get the cube up here...

My reasoning is simple..to get good photos you need perfect conditions and they are rare so when it's perfect I will gather data like there is no tomorrow..also I find that late nights are getting to me so I want to shut down around midnight and be able to avoid sleeping all day...I have many things to do so I have to manage time smarter..and so it is perfectly logical and sensible to have four rigs running on a good night.

Soon everyone will be doing it...I have even been thinking three scopes one the new mount S, H and O but it's is not a simple as I would like data management wise.

The ioptron seems a sensible choice ..well it is if it suffers no issues...I will think more but there may be three of us in the Ioptron club.

Thanks for all your help I am most grateful.

Alex
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  #35  
Old 31-07-2020, 03:51 PM
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Well, hopefully a couple of us will be able to give some feedback on the 70G in the not too distant future. I suppose as a torture test of the guider I could whack the SCT on there and see if it can deliver round stars.
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  #36  
Old 31-07-2020, 04:07 PM
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Is there any indication of ETA.?
Alex
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  #37  
Old 31-07-2020, 04:11 PM
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Not at the moment unfortunately. The ioptron site recently went from saying expected after July to expected after August.

But then the ZWO site still says expected around July for the ASI2600 and their feedback to me was "Speak to your local supplier" who had at that time heard nothing, then a couple of days later mine turned up. For all I know the CEM70 could be on the docks here, or still a collection of spare parts in a factory. The worst of it is having given my entire previous rig to my son for his birthday I am stuck until the mount arrives.
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  #38  
Old 02-08-2020, 04:50 PM
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All the YouTube videos on Ioptron mounts in general seem positive. Sidereal have already replied to my email which impressed me being the weekend.
I think I will probably go for the "G" model and just a plain tripod but add a pier later...sounds like a bit of waiting all around...but I got one winch installed and working today so making progress.
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  #39  
Old 02-08-2020, 05:06 PM
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You’re in good hands with Diego and Paul. Be sure to join their iOptron Users Group on Facebook.
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