--- steve ott <steveo@...> wrote:

1. It seems it has no slow-motion controls. Do the slewing
capabilities effectively act as slow-motion controls?

There are no manual slow-motion controls. The Losmandy "digital drive" has
slewing speeds up to 32x sidereal. See their website at www.losmandy.com.

2. I am planning to build an `observatory'; four walls and a deck, no
roof (bless the neighbors, but curse their lights). How will the
GM-8's head hold up under weather? At my site it can get into the
high nineties in Summer (humid,too), close to zero in Winter. Would one

of

these `Desert Storm' bags do the trick? Or maybe enclosing the pier
and head in a hinged box. Anyhow, I want to leave the thing set up.
So I guess this question is a more general one about eq. heads and how
they react to the elements.

I don't know for sure, but I would suspect that the most important thing
would be to keep the mount completely dry and moisture-free. Also,
temperature extremes could ruin the grease and possibly also cause internal
stress problems in the metals?

Paul Sterngold

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Hi folks. I am seriously considering buying the GM-8, and have two
questions.


1. It seems it has no slow-motion controls. Do the slewing
capabilities effectively act as slow-motion controls?

2. I am planning to build an `observatory'; four walls and a deck, no
roof (bless the neighbors, but curse their lights). How will the
GM-8's head hold up under weather? At my site it can get into the
high
nineties in Summer (humid,too), close to zero in Winter. Would one of
these `Desert Storm' bags do the trick? Or maybe enclosing the pier
and head in a hinged box. Anyhow, I want to leave the thing set up.
So
I guess this question is a more general one about eq. heads and how
they react to the elements.


Thanks for any help.

Hi all,
Very interesting postings on this group some of which make
interesting reading and have already solved some problems with my G11
mount.
Anyway I have recently stripped down and relubed my mount, the only
problem I have left is how to set up the worm drives.
It seems very awkward to get the pressure just right, it either feels
to tight or to slack against the drive wheel on both ra and dec,is
there any procedure to get this assembly spot on as it looks like the
only adjustment is on the two bolts that hold the bearing blocks in
place,any ideas?


Regards Bill Snowzell

--- In Losmandy_users@..., "Jeffrey D. Gortatowsky"
<mrrockets@h...> wrote:

Are there any incompatibilities with the older G11 mounts label by
Celestron? I have a G11 without the second altitude lock bolt.

Probably 1994...........


Hello Jeff,

The new Gemini system will be compatible with all G-11's even the
ones with Celestron labels (which were fully manufactured by Losmandy)


Regards
Peter Ward
Advanced Telescope Supplies

Rogelio,

Please don't be overly impressed with the modified G11 mount at this point
(it may be tracking quite well, but I need to take higher mag images to be
sure.) The image res in the picture is only about 3.5 arc seconds per pixel
with a TV101 and ST8E.

I'm also guiding (actually, an SBIG STV and SW Bisque's 'Orchestrate' is
doing the hard work - I'm catching a few Z's on a cot) with a 'side-saddled'
TeleVue Pronto and STV running a fairly fast correction rate of 1.0 seconds.
That would eliminate a world of sins on my stacked 5min exposures <g>.

My longer FL scopes are too heavy for a G11, so I'll mount up an ancient
Celestron C8 (1981 vintage- orange tube) and see what gives with a .7 arc
second per pixel res.

Bye for now,
Neal

Very nice!...

Herm

"Neal Barry" <nbarry@...> wrote:

I pick up a copy of Photoshop the other day and since it was cloudy last
night, I finally tried my hand at processing a color image. (I've had a CFW8
attached to my CCD camera for years, but never really used it until just
recently.) Have a look:

Astropics

That's outstanding, Neal, really beautiful. The registration looks good,
but you can probably do better in a program such as Maxim that lets you do
"sub-pixel" registration.

Paul Sterngold

--- Neal Barry <nbarry@...> wrote:

Hi all,

This is my first shot after modifying the RA axis on my G11. The mod
appears
to have accomplished the objective. The stars are much rounder and better
defined than before the mod. (See:
)

I pick up a copy of Photoshop the other day and since it was cloudy last
night, I finally tried my hand at processing a color image. (I've had a
CFW8
attached to my CCD camera for years, but never really used it until just
recently.) Have a look:



It came out reasonably well for a first attempt, but may be a little too
'colorful'. I didn't really play much with the color balance other than
setting the ratios during the combine in MaxIm. Most of the Photoshop
processing was to bring out local detail by adjusting local histogram
specs.
I particularly like how the blue/red nebulosity shows up in the dust
lanes,
but don't know why it is so pronounced here. Most of the M31 images I
have
seen have little color in the lanes.

Neal

__________________________________________________
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Yahoo! Mail - Free email you can access from anywhere!

Hi all,

This is my first shot after modifying the RA axis on my G11. The mod appears
to have accomplished the objective. The stars are much rounder and better
defined than before the mod. (See:
)

I pick up a copy of Photoshop the other day and since it was cloudy last
night, I finally tried my hand at processing a color image. (I've had a CFW8
attached to my CCD camera for years, but never really used it until just
recently.) Have a look:



It came out reasonably well for a first attempt, but may be a little too
'colorful'. I didn't really play much with the color balance other than
setting the ratios during the combine in MaxIm. Most of the Photoshop
processing was to bring out local detail by adjusting local histogram specs.
I particularly like how the blue/red nebulosity shows up in the dust lanes,
but don't know why it is so pronounced here. Most of the M31 images I have
seen have little color in the lanes.

Neal

--- In Losmandy_users@..., "Tony Bonanno" <tbonanno@m...>
wrote:

When assembling my new GM-8, I wound up with two extra bolts (about
1/4" thread)with "L" shaped little handles on them. Can't figure

out
Thanks,

Tony

Those bolts are an optional drive fastener. The handles are
indexable (pull out and turn). I hang my controller from them.
My GM8 came with them, my G11 did not. Scott sells them for $4 ea.

David Neal Minnick
Lake Elsinore, CA

I have emailed Scott this however since their are a few people familiar with
the Gemini Goto retrofit here, I thought I'd ask as well.

Are there any incompatibilities with the older G11 mounts label by
Celestron? I have a G11 without the second altitude lock bolt. Probably 1994
or there abouts (I bought it used).

Thanks
Jeff

Tony,

I can not find an L-bolts on my GM-8. Mine is about a year old.

Take care,
Gregory david Stempel
FIREFRAME

On occasion a question is asked about the suitability of a
particular DSC for a specific application. Answers come back
like "The DSC should be adequate or the DSC places the object square
in the middle of the field" or a host of othe vague comments. I
would like to describe a more general and rigorous method of
evaluation of the DSC for a specific application.
The readability of Losmandy's DSC is 1 min. (time) in RA and 0.1
arcdeg on Dec. A little consideration shows that a reading
difference on the meter can actuall be as large as 1.8 units.
Coverting RA from time to arcangle is 1.8x15 arcmin and Dec. is 1.8x6
arcmin. This means that the window for placing an object has the
dimentions of of 27 arcmin in RA and 10.8 in Dec. directions. Given
this information, a quantitative decision can be made for a specific
application.
For example, consider a scope with a 3000 mm FL with a 12 mm ep.
The field of view is 40 arcmin. The object will be some where in the
FOV but not necessarily in the center. If one uses a 1000 mm scope
and an ep of 32 mm the FOV will be 3000 mm. In this case the object
will appear to be (smack) in the center. For the case of CCD
cameras, with either scope, one will have to estimate the
(considerably reduced) FOV for the specific application.
In general, the rectangle with the above dimentions is ideal
because it assumes no experimental errors such as poor polar
alignment. I made an attempt to measure the size of my experimental
window using a 12 in SCT (FL=3030 mm). I determined the positions of
10 stars whose coordinates were available from SKYChart III and found
the dimensions of the box to be 30 by 8 arcmins. This gives me the
confidence that my polar alignment procedure, choice of Deneb as the
calibration star and the instrument is comperable to the
specification of the DSC. In other words there is no experimental
reason to choose a more southerly star or be more finicky about my
alingment proceedure.

Any comments are welcomed.

开云体育

When assembling my new GM-8, I wound up with two extra bolts (about
1/4" thread)with "L" shaped little handles on them. Can't figure out
where they go unless they were suppose to be used to mount the
control panel (threads fit), but the L shaped handles seem sort of
peculiar for that purpose. I found two bolts with regular
thumbscrews that I used to mount the control panel... just wondering
what I missed ???

Thanks,

Tony

Thanks, Jim. I'll take a look.

****
Ray Porter
lrporter@...
dragon@...
ray_porter@...
Home Page:

"Meddle not in the affairs of dragons
for thou art crunchy and taste good with ketchup"

Ray Porter wrote:

I forgot while writing my last post, I still haven't been able to find the
lock-screw that is used to lock the mechanical declination circle in place
once it's calibrated. Were there some modes of G-11 that were made without
that screw (i.e., with no way to lock down the declination circle)?

Ray,

Don't know if you've found it yet, but you might want to check out Rene
Goerlich's G-11 tuning page at

He ran into the same thing (mine doesn't have one either) so I suspect it's
probably the norm. Anyhow, he describes his fix on the page (as well as a
number of other issues.)

--
Jim Girard

I forgot while writing my last post, I still haven't been able to find the
lock-screw that is used to lock the mechanical declination circle in place
once it's calibrated. Were there some modes of G-11 that were made without
that screw (i.e., with no way to lock down the declination circle)?

Thanks,
****
Ray Porter
lrporter@...
dragon@...
ray_porter@...
Home Page:

"Meddle not in the affairs of dragons
for thou art crunchy and taste good with ketchup"

Thanks again to everyone who has responded to my questions so far. The
weather forecast for tomorrow calls for clearing so maybe I'll actually be
able to get this thing out under the stars tomorrow evening.

Gregory, I suspect that our polar scopes are the same, or at least very
close. I checked the retaining ring closely this afternoon and there is a
hole in the ring for the set screw you mentioned. It appears that the set
screw has been lost though. I'll ask the mount's current owner but I
suspect he will have not idea about where it's at. He usually preferred to
drift, even when only observing visually. Consequently he pretty much never
used the polar scope and was unlikely to have noticed when the screw was
lost. What do I need to look for as a replacement?

I set everything up in the living room this afternoon, with the scope
mounted, just as I would start a visual observing session. I wanted to see
how things looked and moved with a load on the mount. I also wanted to go
through the little DSC walkthrough in section 6 of the manual.

I noticed that the RA motor ticks quite loudly. Is this normal or am I
likely to encounter the vibration that I've seen mentioned in this forum
several times? Everything was balanced and there was a working load of
about 20 pounds on the mount (not counting counterweights).

Thanks,
****
Ray Porter
lrporter@...
dragon@...
ray_porter@...
Home Page:

"Meddle not in the affairs of dragons
for thou art crunchy and taste good with ketchup"

****
Ray Porter
lrporter@...
dragon@...
ray_porter@...
Home Page:

"Meddle not in the affairs of dragons
for thou art crunchy and taste good with ketchup"

hermperez@... wrote:

Very nice!, very high resolution, you can see an eagle within an eagle, both of
them diving to the 4:00 position. Take a look at mine:

Beautiful shot Herm.


Rockett Crawford

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Capella's Observatory (CCD Imaging)

hermperez@... wrote:

If you rotate the images prior to stacking, then you can cancel out field
rotation (obviously some of the rotation, not all)...in other words, you do x-y
adjustments on your images to stack, but if you also do a rotation of one of the
images then field rotation is canceled.

I can stack two 90 min exposures, there is noticeable rotation on one of the
images to make them align. Picture Window Pro will do this kind of alignment.

Herm

That's a good point Herm. Someone could take shorter exposures,
de-rotate, and register them if they needed to during image processing
as long as no one image smeared.

A friend of a friend of mine was supposed to have been experimenting
with shooting through an alt-az arrangment doing this with very short
integrations.


take care,
Rockett Crawford

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Capella's Observatory (CCD Imaging)