C8i SE DEC gear tweaks

Long ago I may have gotten to used to attaching a LOT of weight to my C8i SE with single armed fork design.  Likely it stressed the DEC miter gears and so instead of paying TOO much to Celestron, I found a cheap Chinese pair instead.  The only issue I had was the set screw maintaining a good grip on the shaft.  It's not easy to photograph but here's essential the design.

The supplied set screw had a tiny Allen head and it was difficult to get the right amount of torque.  Luckily I was able to find the same diameter and pitch screw in an old cache horde of left over PC screws from the 1990's and while the head is ugly, it makes no contact and provides much more torque for driving the screw into the shaft.  It is great!

 

Make sure you 1080p it this video - https://photos.app.goo.gl/qheygodtATuq6JTe8

Wide Field Horsehead and Orion Nebulae REDO

 

Sadly I had not properly archived the raw images and upon cleanup up my drives I thought it was unprocessed.  Upon this finishing this version, which I'm quite happy about, I found my logs which linked to the more timely blog of - http://astromaphilli14.blogspot.com/2016/01/my-widefield-horsehead-flame-running.html  THE DAY AFTER imaging, not 6 years later!  

While I like this version for the fainter, inter-nebula molecular clouds, something in between the 2016 and 2022 processing might be the best.

Early morning planets cellphone edition...

This one is from the cellphone

Arranged as...

Venus

                  Mars

       Saturn

             Moon

Unsorted

 I promised myself I'd post here more regularly.  I've noticed it's been some time, here's some of the unsorted photos I take for fun and learning that often don't make the cut.  I like the framing on this, its a scrape of a raw with no processing....