GeorgeCarey

Thanks Dietmar, If ASA are there I will go

I see on the website that ASA will be at Astrofest this year. Will there be people from ASA there, or will it be like the Midlands Astronomy Exhibition where some ASA equipment was part of Astrograph's stand? The DDM60 on Astrograph's stand did not have a power supply, so unfortunately it could not demonstrate the famous ASA silent slewing.

Excellent. Congratulations!

Superb image! I particularly like the colour.

Just a guess... Is it a problem about confusion with decimal points? Some use a "." and others a ",".

CCD Inspector shows a small tilt. The field looks nice and flat.

You two must have good eyesight. I can't see the effect you are talking about.

A friend of mine with a Paramount MX had all sorts of problems. Eventually we found that the order in which we switched on equipment and software was very important. Particularly the sequence of USB connections.

The field of view is 38 x 51 arc minutes.

Good to hear that you fixed the problem! George

My homemade 10" scope had a plastic tube and I never got good pointing accuracy. The tube had considerable flexure. My new scope has a very solid carbon fibre tube and I made a 40 star pointing model with Sequence. Pointing is now excellent. I slewed to 5 stars and M31 and these are the results. (I forgot to turn the observatory light off for M31, hence the fog). How does this compare with your setup?

Thanks. All I need now is some decent weather to see how the scope performs!

I have made a new telescope based on an 8" Zambuto mirror (http://geoastro.co.uk/zambuto1.htm). The mount is very fussy about balance in the DEC axis. Moving the telescope in the tube rings (custom made by ASA!) only 1mm is sometimes too much. I made a lead balance weight which sticks to a steel plate by strong magnets. It is easy to slide the weight small amounts which gives very fine balance adjustment.

Glad to hear the problem is resolved.

Aggelos, I could not find the ad. What number is it?

But two hours would mean your error should be enormous, not 15 arc minutes. There is a reading of -104 seconds under DIFF which is perhaps the reason. I don't use gps so I am not an expert on this...

I do not know what causes that error - I have never had it myself. I had a look at your motor current. This is the graph:

I have never had that happen. Autoslew has reported you have a write float error, something to do with USB. Maybe a bad USB connection is connecting imaginary ascom objects?

Are you using the same epoch in Autoslew and your planetarium software?

Have checked the accuracy of your computer's clock?

Thanks. Details are: 9x10 minutes Ha, 12X10 minutes SII and 15x10 minutes OIII Homemade 10" Newtonian, QSI 683 camera and of course, DDM 60 mount.

This is very close to the horizon from my observatory, and in a light polluted sky. However, 5nm narrowband filters still manage to get through the murk.

Would it not be great if there was a small panel on the Autoslew window that displayed the motor currents? It could be an optional feature. Perhaps on the status line next to where the limits are displayed...

Some minor bugs removed. New version here: http://geoastro.co.uk/asa/Motor_current_analysis_V9.xls

There is a new version (V7) here: http://geoastro.co.uk/asa/Motor_current_analysis_V7.xls Instructions: 1 Open a DDM logfile 2 Copy all the text in the logfile (Use CTRL-A followed by CTRL-C) 3 Click on the analysis spreadsheet 4 Click on button "1. Clear and Paste". The data should be transferred to cell B3 and downwards. (You can paste directly to cell B3 if you prefer). 5 If you are happy the data has pasted correctly click on button "2. Trim Header". This will strip irrelevant data leaving only the important information. 6 Click on button "3. Process" to display the graph. To use another logfile repeat from step 2. Old data will be cleared.