| Joined: | Sun Apr 1st, 2012 |
| Location: | South Lakeland, UK |
| Posts: | 4066 |
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Turning my mind away from the paste url to clipboard to an equatorial mount and its pictures.
LOL, fascinating bit of kit, I could never understand the gangly arms and shafts when I saw them in shops. The simple EQ mount aimed at photography is a good start, I was incredibly lucky to have been steered towards mine. With the added bonus of having to make my own wedge. That in itself is a big challenge, I have started machining the arm, the base is still being designed on the back of an envelope!
I am gaining a better understanding of the procedure for alignment with Polaris. It's quite a distance from celestial North, not to the eye perhaps but for setting up a polar mount it is. I believe the reason I am not getting alignment properly is because I am not taking into account the time. I find it so difficult kneeling in a boggy field, in the dark, at an awkward angle trying to adjust the contraption that I don't bother with the axial alignment too but it's crucial. I am working on an idea use my Go-Pro cube to allow me to view the polar scope's image on my iPad or MacBook Pro, probably the iPad, less cumbersome... Unless of course I made a shelf or bracket to support the MBP on the tripod? That would be a neat trick!
Until I have made a micro adjustable solid wedge mount I can't hope to get accurate alignment. I have watched several YouTube videos and it's becoming clearer how to align it.
I would like to be able to get individual pictures of sky feature like the Orion nebula and some of the other sky features especially the Milky Way without going into deep space which costs a fortune and is a whole pass time on it's own. You should have reasonably dark skies in your area I would have thought. I am greatly enjoying going out during the night and exploring to find good vantage points. Features like the Cornish cliffs and those stacked rocks would make wonderful foregrounds for a starry sky. Bluehills comes to mind.
Novicus makes a good point, it would be better if the Splash screen didn't activate when the edit screen is active, I have had to dismiss it at least
Nobody seems to have responded to my request for feedback on the splash screen...
I think it's a really good feature, allowing the many excellent gallery images to be seen on a regular basis, often for the first time. There are still one or two technical screenshots which could do with excluding from the parade but on the whole I really like it. Adding a button to go directly to the gallery from the splash screen would be useful. Also perhaps? an 'About' screen which outlines the forum and our aims. To us it's obvious but to a visitor it's less so. Possibly also, just a thought... some sort of short intro where members experience, specialities or interests could be listed by those who wanted to, perhaps using the 'interests' data from the member profile, optional of course. Just kicking ideas about.
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Robert.