A warm and Sunny day ...

[PDB]

and it looks as if my Quark has woken up from its winter hibernation.
For months have not been able to produce any decent images. No detail, washed out images, already started to think my Quark was giving up. But yesterday and today warm and sunny, and suddenly images started to look a lot better visually. (Don't think my Quark likes winter)

Solved all my recent hardware an cable problems as well last week, so was able to do some imaging today. Upgraded my scope with an "home-made" arduino based focus motorization, so that made life easier. (Now I can sit inside and control everything remotely)

Seeing was very good, until I was ready to start capturing, and then deteriorated, but was able to get some reasonable picture from the new active area.

P2017-05-17_T_13-41-44-0039_HA_g3_ap3328.jpg (149.13 KiB) Viewed 1619 times

Regards,

Paul

[ffellah]

Paul: nice image, I am glad you captured the new small sunspot !

Franco

[Montana]

Excellent!! maybe you need a dew heater on your Quark

Alexandra

[PDB]

Thanks Franco and Alexandra.
I have tried putting some insulation around the Quark, but that did not help much. Have been thinking about buying one of these heater ribbons used for eye-pieces. Maybe next winter. (Or by a decent front etalon ...)

Regards,

Paul

[marktownley]

Nice quadrant Paul! Shame to hear the quark doesn't suit your climate all year round.

[PDB]

Thanks Mark.

And not even getting really cold here (probably same or even little better than your area) but once outside temp below 15°C I have never been able to get good images. Maybe sky conditions come in as well, but I also find that if the sun is high in the sky producing more heat on the Quark, performance looks better. Maybe I need to remove the UV/IR filter when sun is lower in the sky.

Regards,

Paul

[nickatnight]

Nice shot. Looks about what my Combo Quark gives at F10, directly on my SCT with a full Aries DERF. My Combo Quark needs tuning fully clockwise to give any decent surface detail. Love to see a shot of your motorized focuser!

[PDB]

Nick,

This was taken with an 80mm f/6 + Quark + Focal Reducer giving f/12 at camera. Quark tuned to -1.

The focuser controller is based on Robert Brown's focuser project: https://sourceforge.net/projects/arduin ... rollerpro/
There is also a pro2 version, but I used this one because it is also compatible with the moonlite focus driver on Linux (Indi Project)
A few minor modifs to to the Arduino software to make manual focusing little bit faster.

Due to the way the focuser is constructed (longpern focuser http://longperng.com.tw/goods.php?act=view&no=71) it was difficult to find parts and attach the motor) I managed to find 2 pulleys with correct bore and attach the motor somewhere in front connected to the dovetail bar. Total reduction of the motor to focuser is 1 to 47.

It doesn't look nice, but it works.

DSC_2852_00001.jpg (101.24 KiB) Viewed 1544 times

Controller box

20170117_215128.jpg (102.01 KiB) Viewed 1544 times

Only one problem. There seems to be al little bit of play in the focussing mechanism which makes that forward an backward steps not exactly match. Not a real problem, except for Genika's autofocus mode. Need to check if I can fix that.

Regards,

Paul

[marktownley]

Nice work on that focuser!

[Derek Klepp]

Thanks Paul luckily our temps seldom get down to 15C here.And thanks for the focused pics.