[WingnutR32 (Sam)]

Okay, so after having last week off on holidays, I was able to spend a LOT of time in my observatory. YAY!!!

Out of all the problems I managed to overcome, I was unable to get one sorted, focus.

I have a Williams Optics FLT98 (White + Gold colour one) with the Digital readout crayford style focuser with the 10:1 fine focus knob as well. What I found whilst imaging IC434 was that my focus was changing a fair bit.

I understand that the seeing was not perfect, and some of my exposures (particularly Luminance data) at 300seconds seemed to hit the full well depth of the QHY9-Ms chip, so that probably won't help.

My FWHM for the night started at 1.8 - 2.0 at 10pm, and then a few exposures in (maybe 10 minutes passed) FWHM was 4.8. It seemed that I had to constantly make changes to the focuser throughout the night which made it very hard to keep my exposure routine running in MaximDL.

SO, after all that waffling, I am very keen on helping DDG focuser on the FLT 98 by using some kind of automated focuser linked to MaximDL.

Who is keen to help me here? I am not experienced at all in pulling apart telescopes, so if that is involved, I would need to employ the help of someone to do that.

A new focuser with built-in automated focus controls would be nice, but if I can get something to utilize my current focuser, would be great as I cannot afford to spend much at all after pre-ordering the new AZ EQ6-GT mount from MyAstroShop.

Cheers
Sam