My biggest problem so far with the QHY10 camera is obtaining focus. The standard method for doing this is to focus on a point a long distance away. However this is very difficult from my garden/house as there is no obvious point I can focus on further than roof of neighbour’s houses and this is not far enough away.
Damian came around this evening and we came up with an alternative solution – I have TS flip mirror/off axis guider and we used the neighbour’s house to set this up on the Equinox Pro 80mm with a Tele Vue 32mm eyepiece so that the eyepiece is par-focal with the QHY10 camera – this means that I should be able to point the telescope at the night sky and focus on the star field using the eyepiece and then the camera should be reasonably in focus – at least enough to get me started. I will need a Bahtinov Mask for finer focus – and Polaris will be a good star to use for that purpose.
Andy
Par-focal arrangement of visual eyepiece and QHY10 camera on Sky Watcher Equinox Pro 80mm Telescope:
Image through eyepiece on chimney:
Nebulosity 4 showing image through QHY10 and settings on Nebulosity 4 for the image – this image is using the focus option on Nebulosity 4:
Full Image on Nebulosity 4 (yellow tinge is due to light in room behind telescope) – shows settings on Nebulosity 4 for image (gain 15, offset 119):
