Skip to main content

Astro PiFi

Search This Blog

NGC 4565 Needle Galaxy

on May 18, 2018

Get link
Facebook
X
Pinterest
Email
Other Apps

First deep sky photography target, the Needle Galaxy. It's about 40 million light years away! I'm tracking the progress here: https://photos.app.goo.gl/YfYTnraRuK37U88C3

Get link
Facebook
X
Pinterest
Email
Other Apps

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular Posts

Hyperstar Hyper adjustments

Having some trouble with fine adjustments on the Hyperstar. The new hyperstar is great, but it's very sensitive to focus, tilt, corrector alignment and backspacing. I've been struggling to work through the tilt issues lately. Steps Here's the steps to achieve near perfect alignment when there is negligible tilt in the optics of the system: Zero all tilt adjustments in the system. Interactively test and adjust the height of each adjustment screw push/pull set using a dial gauge on a flat surface while rotating the component under the dial gauge. Do the camera first then the Hyperstar. Center the corrector plate Take the scope out at night and point it straight up. Loosen the corrector plate screws de-focus the system and examine the direction of the star elongation around the edges Adjust the corrector plate centering screws until all the elongation directions point away from the center of the image Tighten up the corrector plate Check for tilt in the system by rotating ...

Stable Tripod Base

One thing that I've been really happy with is my idea for a tripod base as an alternative to a pier. I have two bases setup in my yard, one for each mount. I can polar align once, and be able to keep that alignment for months. I've seen PA of around 0.1 months after doing a drift align with PHD. This reduces my setup time drastically and allows me to be very methodical when doing an alignment. This is very simple to do. Just get threaded pipe and a flange attachment, screw them together like so: And pound three of them into the ground where the tripod bottoms are. Make sure the mount is roughly pointing in the right direction, and level. Do a very careful polar alignment once, and you won't have to do it again for a long time. You can now take the mount into the house at night, and bring it back out when you want to use it. Make sure not adjust Alt-Az on the mount or the tripod leg length, and you are good to go for quite a while!

General Setup, RPI, guiding

Adventures in PiFi Astronomy Using a raspberry pi to control and guide a Celestron EdgeHD 8 AVX with a ZWOASI120CC and a Sony a6000 Although I prefer to use a manual mount and look at the stars through an eyepiece. There are some deep sky objects that I just can't see with my telescope through the eyepiece. For these objects I use astrophotography. I believe that I have everything that I need, and have set just about everything up so I can do guided long exposures. I now just need a clear night to try it out. Here's an overview of how I got to this point. General Setup -------------------- Power I've found that if you don't use a good, well charged power supply the AVX will misbehave, so I have it connected to either the Celestron wall wort, or the Celestron Lithium power tank. WiFi Celestron WiFi: Don't use it. It is unreliable and will be the source of endless grief. The problem is that it can easily disconnect and when it does, your alignment is...

Powered by Blogger