mattssporre

Lovely image, Pavel, A colorful greeting to the new year. BR Matts

Happy New Year Antonio! Very nice - I am a bit surprised to see this suposedly dark nebula being bright and colorful! BR Matts

Excellent image, only 52 degrees from a 72% moon - narrowband really is like magic BR Matts

Nice one Antonio! Are you putting together a VdB image catalogue BR Matts

"But the Wiki will never replace our manuals." I guess this means that we will see an update of the manuals in the near future? BR Matts

As usual top notch! BR Matts

Hi Mark, I too have loads of dew this time of the year, but I did not have to go down the heater road. I did some tests and it turned out that I managed using the ASA N10 fans (almost on full) in combination with a dew shield. I bought myself a dew shield for Celestron OTAs and cut a hole for the focuser. It works excellent - both as a dew shield and to block stray light. Maybe you have already tried this? BR Matts

Hello Ian, I use the fans to prevent dew from forming on the primary mirror. Where I live the humidity is a real problem in the fall when temperature starts to drop in the nights. One would think that the long tube would prevent the dew formation - but that is not so. From August I use the fan on 1-2 steps lower than max. From December or so most of the water is out of the air and I can go without the fans if I would like, but the fans not seem to do any harm so I usually leave them on. BR Matts

Very nice Gerhard! Did you bring your own eq to Namibia or did you use local eq? BR Matts

Why not have an option in AS that, when checked turns on the fan automatically? Maybe not as fancy but it would help me at least. BR Matts

Really great image, Gerhard! Only 1hr of L and 20m each for RGB - hard to believe you got this result from that small amount of data - really astonishing. BR Matts

Lovely image Bob! NII is a nice addition to the usual Ha, OIII, SII. Was the signal strong in NII? I guess you are using 3nm filters? BR Matts

MIchael, first check the Autoslew manual (page 20 - English version) regarding "Ignore futher slews in Pointing files" - it should be checked. Then check the helpfile in Maxim - Telescope tab, the heading is Auto-Center: There are three different ways of calibrating so that Maxim know in which direction and how much to move the mount (the most accurate being a plate solve using pinpoint, but there are two other methods). And remember to have your mount connected under the Observatory window. BR Matts

Gerhard, I tested it last night for the Ha-filter and the median value I had was correct. It is very easy to check the focus when you have the double spider vanes. If the OTA is not in focus an image of a bright star will produce double diffraction spikes (8 instead of 4). Thanks again for answering. BR Matts

Ok, so what you do then is 1. focus using FocusMax with the reference filter 2. use the median filter offset as found using CCDAP filter offset wizard to get e.g. the R-filter close to focus 3. take an image and check the FWHM on that image 4. move the focuser outwards and check the FWHM again 5. move to the other side of original focus and check the FWHM again BR Matts