Running power at night for telescope

[sdingeldein]

I want to run a small telescope at night for astrophotography purposes from the bed of my new lightning. The truck itself will be plugged in and charging.

Does the truck have to be "on", say, via the accessory mode from the start button? Will it stay on all night (unless power is drawn down to the level I set)? The draw from the telescope equipment is minimal.

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[The Weatherman]

Yes to being on. And you will need to turn off the auto shutdown (30min) setting in the truck. FYI it resets to the default ea key cycle.

Happy Photographing and Merry Christmas!!

 

[RTanton]

I want to run a small telescope at night for astrophotography purposes from the bed of my new lightning. The truck itself will be plugged in and charging.

Does the truck have to be "on", say, via the accessory mode from the start button? Will it stay on all night (unless power is drawn down to the level I set)? The draw from the telescope equipment is minimal.

Nice photo of M31 from the bed of your Lightning!

 

[Jseis]

Super fun idea. You probably have enough power to run 100 telescopes at once. I recall a starry night 600 moons ago and seeing the rings of Saturn from a telescope in the middle of nowhere Wa state. I vaguely recall its drive was being driven by a 12 voltl lash-hup to a truck.

https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/755929-portable-power-calculating-requirements/

 

[sdingeldein]

Yes to being on. And you will need to turn off the auto shutdown (30min) setting in the truck. FYI it resets to the default ea key cycle.

Happy Photographing and Merry Christmas!!

Thank you and Merry Christmas!

 

[RickLightning]

Bring some towels to cover the dash and the center display.

 

[queuewho]

from the bed

Not sure if you mean just plugged in to the bed, or the actual telescope is in the bed...If you're in there with it, this is never going to work... But if your setup is full goto mount and an auto focuser, then maybe... but I can't imagine it being possible to get a good polar alignment with the truck wobbling around. Maybe I'm way off and you didn't mean that at all haha.

As for me, I haven't found a spot yet that I wouldn't have Cleatus coming out to see what I'm up to with a shotgun... but my eventual goal is to find somewhere in the PA ridges that no one cares if I am there for most of the night. Normally I use my lawn mower battery for power, and it works as power for my laptop, mount, guide cam and everything for a few hours. It's a pain to haul that stuff, so having the truck with me would be great, and also be an escape from bears if they show up.

My back yard bortle 5 shots are nowhere close to what you showed earlier...

 

[sdingeldein]

I want to run a small telescope at night for astrophotography purposes from the bed of my new lightning. The truck itself will be plugged in and charging.

Does the truck have to be "on", say, via the accessory mode from the start button? Will it stay on all night (unless power is drawn down to the level I set)? The draw from the telescope equipment is minimal.

I would put the scope on the ground, typically in my drive way. I tell people I have two things against me in this hobby: I’m lazy and I don’t stay up late. So my stuff is all ZWO (except the scopes). The photo I posted is Bortle 6 and is the product of a couple of years of working with PixInsight. I combined about 11 hours taken with an LPro filter and 2 hours with an LeXtreme filter to help bring out the Ha knots. Used to tell folk it was 50% taking photos and 50% processing. Now I know it is 10% taking photos and 90% processing. Your picture is good and looks like mine just a year ago. Just that we get photos like yours or mine is amazing to me. And fun.

 

[queuewho]

I would put the scope on the ground, typically in my drive way. I tell people I have two things against me in this hobby: I’m lazy and I don’t stay up late. So my stuff is all ZWO (except the scopes). The photo I posted is Bortle 6 and is the product of a couple of years of working with PixInsight. I combined about 11 hours taken with an LPro filter and 2 hours with an LeXtreme filter to help bring out the Ha knots. Used to tell folk it was 50% taking photos and 50% processing. Now I know it is 10% taking photos and 90% processing. Your picture is good and looks like mine just a year ago. Just that we get photos like yours or mine is amazing to me. And fun.

Yeah I would say my biggest issue is I am just working with what I have processing-wise. I just use photoshop. I am trying to use various gradient removal tools now, as you can see in that pic I had a fairly substantial one.

 

[sdingeldein]

Yeah I would say my biggest issue is I am just working with what I have processing-wise. I just use photoshop. I am trying to use various gradient removal tools now, as you can see in that pic I had a fairly substantial one.

Download the AI version of GraXpert. It is free and everyone is using it now for gradient removal.

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