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Another few days in the workshop produced a dovetail clamp. I still need to make the three knobs and I'm going to design a mechanism to stop the scope sliding out of the dovetail, but in all honesty I doubt if this would ever occur as there is plenty of clamping force. I couldn't resist placing the scope on top of the mount, as there is no knobs yet I just used M6 nuts to tighten the dovetail clamp.

Well did not manage much at kelling. Mostly cloud and fog. But this is the small amount of data I managed between the clouds and fog. Not best work not much data either

Well tackled the Eq6 power mod today, bit nerve racking soldering , I used blue tac to protect nearby soldering points but all seems to work now , connected power up reading 14v slewed scope dropped to 13.9v which I assume is ok , red light was steady no flickering now 😅

The Carina Nebula this morning. Ive been wanting to tackle this for some time. Some more points loaded on iTelescope gave me the chance to reserve my favourite scope at Sidings Springs for this morning, Tak FSQ106. This is 15 minutes luminence, severely stretched to see what I could get. I intend to add colour to this for an LRGB, then maybe add some Ha, we will see. Nice to get some photons to play with, its been awhile.

3.2 Hour total integration - Canon 1200D Full post - https://astrob.in/334257/C/

Here's my first go at this one.Taken from the Astroshed on 14th April - a bonus night as it turned out - the forecast had been dire all day. Taken with my Altair Astro 72 ED-R, 43 x2 min subs and the usual darks & flats

Through the double glazing

Conditions weren't brilliant: high cloud changing constantly made setting up on small/faint targets frustrating. But it was a useful exercise and showed what might be achieved with better seeing. Kev (8472) came along for a while but didn't have much success either. I pitched camp in the corner of the field nearest the cricket club, as I was wary of softer ground lower down. Sharon was very helpful as usual but I don't think she has a tractor available if you get stuck. Nobody else was there, and Sharon said they had had several cancellations over Easter, so there will be space if you wanted to give it a try. I took a rather shaky handheld panorama to show the view from the site:

Managed to scrape together 3 hour on M51 over the past month using my Skywatcher 150 Mak. Not much time to do anything else to be honest given the weather but glad to get another galaxy in the bag for galaxy season

I'm sure everyone's struggeled with the weather of late. I've had to grab some very short sessions (less than 30 mins) to grab enough data to finally construct a version of M51 I'm happy with. Cheers everyone

Just a few photo's of some of the layouts in different scales..

Took a couple of images today. The first one is from this morning at 10 o'clock. The second is from 2 o'clock this afternoon. The difference between the two shows just how dynamic the sun really is. The flares at the 4 o'clock position have vanished and have been replaced by some more at the eleven o'clock position. 60mm Lunt double stacked Blackfly camera Click on the images a couple of times to get to full res.

Just stumbled upon this weird eyepiece. https://www.vixen.co.jp/product/35203_6/ A Vixen 100mm eyepiece. You don't get many eyepieces in this focal length. In my scope: Magnification will be X 8.4 Exit pupil will be 15mm TFOV will be 6.8° Field stop will be 96mm in diameter

ED 80 and 7D Click through for full size

Resistance is futile! Just had to get one of these ES 92 degree series. The ES 92 17mm is nice, but since I already have a 17mm Ethos, I went for the 12mm. They apparently have a very easy and immersive view with long eye relief. Just look at that for an eye lens, it is a whopping 44mm in diameter! A big eye lens helps with the eye relief on wide angle eyepieces. No squinting through this one.

Made the knobs for the dovetail plate today. There are three of them made from 33mm hexagonal bar. There is plenty of clamping force and the whole dovetail works brilliantly. With scope attached

Managed to get the ISS transit but I am having problems loading it to the hosting site so this is the stack ED80 and Chameleon 3

Lets try You Tube then Had to travel for this one and the seeing was not that good. The pass was not an illuminated one so we had to go on "time" and set the Ser file running a couple of minutes beforehand. ED80 and Chameleon 3 cam

I did a wider field of the Engagement Ring than normal at 70mm.

Having got the hang of dark frames, I thought it was time to organise some flats. The panel has to fit both of my scopes, and a small ADM dovetail clamp allows the rig to be fixed in place. The panel came from eBay, and it is powered by three 18650 lithium cells to provide 12-ish volts. As well as the new saddle and puck for the mount, I replaced the standard dovetail bar for a longer one which allows the rig to be fitted. The 25cm square panel is oversized for the refractor... The same setup works with the C925's dovetail bar: The rig is lightweight and compact, and seems to do the job OK.

After 21 days held up in UK customs this grenade finally landed on target. BW-Optik Rodenstock Giant Groẞfeld Okular...

For somebody who does not do the moon things went a bit mad last night, over 120GB of data gathered with the C11 and the Chameleon. Click through for full res. and not forgetting the terrible Jupiter image through the boiling atmosphere.

I am using my 127mm Mak. I occasionally use a Barlow lens. BTW, a couple more and I'm not finished yet: