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PHD2 guiding and eggs for breakfast


Owmuchonomy

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So I've been dabbling in imaging for a year. By April this year I was happy with my guiding set up. I use a Lodestar in my Altair guide scope piggy backed onto my Altair Astro 102 EDT. I then guide with PHD2 on my Mac. I could get long subs and round stars. Now this summer it's all gone egg shaped. So I checked all the usual things, rigidity of the set up, slight off balance, Polar Alignment etc., and all is seemingly peachy. So I set up last night to check guiding. My PHD graph showed a very regular and predictable sudden jump up in RA followed by the same displacement of the line down. This occurred without fail every 90 seconds. I'm not concluding this is the cause of my eggy stars for one minute but now I'm distracted by the regular heartbeat on my graph. My gut tells me mount issue in RA but what is the opinion out there?

I was guiding on the Eastern Veil region just West of the Meridian but high in the sky.

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Hi Louise, thanks, yes I'm familiar with the HEQ5 strip down. I've serviced it myself a couple if times in 7 years and quite recently. The guiding has been fine this year until now. I'm a bit stumped by this but as it's such a regular 'heartbeat' I should be able to diagnose it eventually. I just thought someone else may have seen the same. The Dec axis was behaving itself very well meanwhile. With clouds forecast for at least a week I'll check the worm drive play again.

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Hi Chris

I saw the other post :) Glad you got a nice smooth graph! I have issues now - difficulties guiding my heq5 above about 30 deg for some reason. It's fine lower down. I don't think it's a balance problem - more likely flex else I need to readjust the motor gear or something. Apart from that, I got quite a few subs over the last couple of nights :) Have to sift through them at some point.

Louise

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Hi Chris

I saw the other post :) Glad you got a nice smooth graph! I have issues now - difficulties guiding my heq5 above about 30 deg for some reason. It's fine lower down. I don't think it's a balance problem - more likely flex else I need to readjust the motor gear or something. Apart from that, I got quite a few subs over the last couple of nights :) Have to sift through them at some point.

Louise

Hi Louise, yes we need a lot of patience with this hobby. Despite the opinions of others I'm becoming more and more certain through my own observations that the 2 star alignment and PA of the Synscan plays a big role in guiding success. I am very cautious of my star choices these days particularly near the meridian. The other thing I noticed a few days ago was that my Dec axis had stiffened up dramatically. I had trouble guiding near the zenith so I stripped down the Dec axis. I found something resembling molasses around the brass worm gear so I cleaned it up with meths and applied a little molybdenum grease. The difference in ability to balance and dec graph in PHD was dramatic.
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Hi Louise, yes we need a lot of patience with this hobby. Despite the opinions of others I'm becoming more and more certain through my own observations that the 2 star alignment and PA of the Synscan plays a big role in guiding success. I am very cautious of my star choices these days particularly near the meridian. The other thing I noticed a few days ago was that my Dec axis had stiffened up dramatically. I had trouble guiding near the zenith so I stripped down the Dec axis. I found something resembling molasses around the brass worm gear so I cleaned it up with meths and applied a little molybdenum grease. The difference in ability to balance and dec graph in PHD was dramatic.

Hi

Indeed, patience and persistence! I use Astrotortilla - it's something I could barely do without! Thanks to the Finns for creating it!

I'll eliminate the obvious sources of trouble before attempting to strip mine down but it's in the back of mind in case all else fails! My Heq5 is less than a year old but you never know!

Cheers

Louise

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