Instrumentation and Equipment

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For discussions on all aspects of equipment, from building new devices from scratch, to what ready made products are the best for your current setup. Attached the "Instrumentation and Equipment" observing section.

165 1183 By Andrew Pearce 2 months 3 weeks ago

Mating Celestron C-8 with a QHY268M+CFW - struggling with thread conversion

douglste@lafay… Wed, 08/14/2024 - 17:40

Hi all - we've bought a new camera to go with existing telescopes, and it turns out the included adapter package does not work for our telescopes. I'd like to get some advice before we buy more things. 

Telescope: Celestron C-8 8" Schmidt-Cassegrain

Camera: QHY268M plus CFW3L

North American sources of individual Baader photometric filters?

Affiliation
American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO)
dghent Sat, 07/27/2024 - 00:56

I hope this question isn't too out of place. Apologies if so. I'm looking to stock my filter wheel with Baader g/r/i and B/V filters (50.4mm unmounted), however the only place that appears to sell these individually is Baader's themselves in Germany. The issue is that they will not sell and ship to any country where they have a local dealer, so that would include the US. The problem with this is that the US Baader dealers sell them only the full sets, so half or more of the filters in each set are operationally irrelevant and is wasted money. Has anyone managed to do this before?

Use of ZWO 533MM with RGB fiters

Affiliation
American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO)
Darren Sun, 07/14/2024 - 14:52

Purchased a 533MM and 8 position 1.25" filter wheel. The LRGB filters were in stock, but Chroma have not responded yet to the dealer regarding my order of a UBVRI set of filters. Not even sure the time involved yet, and it's been two weeks. My DSLR is no longer functional, so took this opportunity to upgrade. Since we FINALLY are having a string of good weather, would like to get back to monitoring my 5-6 SNEWS stars and others visible reliably from my yard.

Eyepiece webcam

Affiliation
American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO)
tcalderw Fri, 07/12/2024 - 15:22

I have a situation where I need to monitor the view through my "targeting" eyepiece with a camera instead of my eyeball.  Eyepiece is only 1.25" (a ramsden with limited field-of-view).  Can anyone recommend a suitable USB camera - preferably USB-C - with a frame rate rapid enough for performing fine pointing adjustments?  I probably need 8 feet of cable to reach the computer in all sky positions.  Oh, and camera needs to be supported on Linux.

Tom

 

Filter drawers and filter heights....

Affiliation
American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO)
SVD Mon, 07/08/2024 - 18:02

I bought a Askar M54 filter drawer.

The plan was to get some Baader photometric filters and use the filter drawer to swap them during an observing run.

Most of my previous filters (non-photometric) did NOT fit the Baader drawer.  I asked a friend to bring his ZWO filter drawer and though slightly "higher" than the Askar most of my filters again did not fit.

I called Alpine Astro and the Baader photometric filters will not fit in either drawer.

Section Spotlight: Exoplanets, YSOs and I&E

Affiliation
American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO)
tlyster Wed, 06/05/2024 - 20:36

You are invited to a one-hour webinar on June 8 featuring brief talks from three AAVSO Sections:

  • Exoplanets
  • Young Stellar Objects
  • Instrumentation & Equipment

We’ll also discuss the AAVSO's Section system, and ways to get involved.

Registration and additional information here.