20250926 Deep sky imaging resumed

First time after the long daylight summer, I tried to use a LiFePO4 battery to power the setup.

But then the deep sky camera will disconnect itself sometimes, turning cooling off does help a bit, but it does not eliminate the problem entirely.  It will disconnect when the mount slews to another target.  A good indicator that there is not enough power.

I know the problem immediately.

I was using a power cable from a cheap solar panel, and the wire is just too thin.  I made the one below with a 12AWG cable, and I hope it solves the problem.

-- 

Spent sometime to test it indoor briefly, it works perfectly.

Those thin cables shall be throw away, but the clips should be kept.  

I believe I might need a separate power cable for the cooled camera directly to the battery.

20250921 Family observation

Almy said, let's do some stargazing.

85mm refractor, with a large 2" eyepiece for widefield, a 8-24mm zoom and a 3-8mm zoom.

Almach was an amazing sight!  It begins to split at around 10mm, cleanly split at 8mm.  The blue companion is just attractive.

The double clusters, M13, M19, M31.

The ring nebula was not seen.

20250916 Sun

Got some sunshine today, not exactly good but I caught thart moment.  

It rains soon after I packed up my stuff.  I have bought a bigger box to store my EQ mount head so I can setup and pack up rather quickly.

The sun is active, several sunspots can be seen and so many prominences around the edge.

Seeing low at maybe 3-4/10, windy.  Transparency was high during the moments that I took the images.

1342 (UT+1) with reducer for full disc:

1352 (UT+1) with reducer, false colorised.

AR4216 and 4217, ignoring the prominences to bring out as much as detail possible at 2x, taken at 1354 (UT+1)

AR4217 at 1355 (UT+1)

AR4127 with 4221 on the lower side at 1356 (UT+1)

Yet another shot at 1359 (UT+1)

Finally a false colorised one at 1400 (UT+1)

I am happy that I finally had a short imaging session again.

20250817 Sun

It has been several months since my last imaging session.

The weather was nice occasionally, just no energy to pull out the stuff for imaging.

Glad that I did it today.  I have also taken a vlog in Cantonese, might be published one day in my youtube channel.

1521 taken with a reducer, prominence brought out by pushing the level selectively, merged with the surface detail without pushing.

1524 taken with a 2x barlows, colorised.

1525, same setting as above, it's a filament day!

1526, around with same area of the one at 1524

I guess I will be doing some more astronomy in the near future.  It's a shame to waste the weather and the equipments.

20250517 Sun (reducer finally works)

This is a test of equipment, a 1.25" 0.5x focal reducer.  It won't come to focus before, but then I remember that I have a very short 1.25" nosepiece for C mount.  It comes to focus finally.

It's easy to take a full disc shots now!  Maybe good for continuous monitoring, like making animations, I shall try later.

This is a simple two frames mosaic at prime focus.  The non-uniform illumination makes it a bit tricky, but this does not worth the effort now.

Close up with AR4087, with 2x barlows.

Solar imaging is happy in Scottish summer.

20250513 Sun

Didn't pull out my setup for quite long, the thing couldn't get focus properly at first for unknown reason.  I removed the filter and insert again, things work normally then.

Those two 1.25" focal reducer did not work, they looked identical optically and physically.

The solar filter is not very useful too. 

I am going to sell the above on ebay.

1055 (UT+1), prime focus:

1106 + 1108 (UT+1),, failed mosaic at prime focus

And then finally push up the exposure to bring prominences., not well executed:

Too little practice.

20250417 Setting up and testing

Add a quick release mechanism between the mount and the pillar, need to try out polar alignment so that it could be far faster later.

Did a few test shots afterward of M81 and M82.

Also M41.

Canon EF 200mm f2.8 acting as the main scope, and the Canon FD 300mm f2.8 modified as the guidescope.

It didn't get dark until around 9:30pm... so summer came!