FilmGuy

Well John - looks like you got away with this one. Thankfully Pentax still makes a tough camera. That SMC 200 lens is one of the best from Pentax and should be tac sharp. Looks like some drift in those pix - but some are good. You are going to have to spend some time to gain experience before the really good results come forth - unless you drop the outfit again. What a shock to the system that must have been. Get the camera tuned up - don't leave anything to chance. Good luck Igor

Exceptional effort. I love HA - and NB work. Worthy of a print to be sure. Maybe printed on some kind of plastic and mounted with a backlight? That would be something you could hang in an art gallery.

That is a very interesting hobby site there. Visiting often - and great stuff. I'd love to do the RC thing. More later.

You can drive that jeep around - and change gears manually, you should be able to guide. Burning at the stake was not an art - it was a past time. Monty Python proved that.

I almost got to Pike's Peak but the peanut wore out just before I reached the top. Burning a steak on the barbecue is my favourite past time.It was many years ago when I was there - going up was one thing - coming back down with brake fade was another matter.

Yes - no problem. I did it for two seasons although with a longer f/11 scope. But the ST-80 should work fine as long as you barlow. I used two cheap barlows 2x each with a short scope when conditions were good. This gave more accurate guiding.You need to learn not to chase the seeing, as with average conditions the star will bounce around quite a bit. You will adjust to keep up, only to find it suddenly back where you started. Practise when the moon is up. Once you get good at it - do a Pec training run, and turn Pec on with manual guiding - much easier tracking. Practise makes perfect and if you get good at it there is no reason that you cannot get perfect stars. Just pay attention to what's happening with the guide star. Don't know if the software has a "guider" setting on the HC? Some actually lock out the Dec buttons from operating - only RA. If the guide star is climbing or dropping below the IR horizontal line then you know the mount is not well polar aligned. Every time you touch the Dec button - you are causing a tad of field rotation and depending upon how many times = eggs for stars. You can practise guiding with the Pete's link - and I strongly recommend you study it well. Good guiding on your decision. It's the Drift Simulator. http://www.petesastrophotography.com/index.html igor

Thank you. You also have some nice work on Flickr - enjoyed them.igor

The Nightfly and myself have been doing film for astro and landscape forever. Many do not understand that film is still very capable, especially for wide field work with lenses.

If you like to go light - minimum of equipment - there is a lost art called Manual Guiding. Use a regular guide scope - insert a 2x barlow then illuminated reticle. Centre a suitable brighter star and use the hand controller to keep the star in the crosshairs. This is how it was done until auto guiders became available and are ideal for the really long exposures. If your mount is well polar aligned or better yet - drift aligned and you have a good Pec training run you will find that manual guiding becomes quite easy without a lot of adjustments. This is where the 80mm f/11.4 guide scope works well. Also cheap as there are used ones around. So it's also cheap by comparison to an auto guider, plus a laptop, cables, software is usually free, power for the laptop for extended session etc.. Illuminated reticles are typically in the 9 to 12mm range. Many of us film users still guide manually and it's no big deal to go 45 minutes in one go. Yes, if the mount is dialed in you can look up or take a quick breather. You are not glued to the IR. Once the mount is tracking and IR on the crosshairs you normally have time to trip the dslr or do whatever you need to and simply go back and forth as required. Do I use an auto guider? Yes, as many of my exposures are 90 to 120 minutes. I also run 2 to 3 film cameras on the mount and have a lot going on, but if I were back to using one scope or lens - then I would simply manually guide. Simple and fast. My guider is an older ST-4 with the ST-6 being more updated and becoming available as used equipment. It takes a bit of learning, time to set up and calibrate, and can be frustrating at times, but works exceptionally well when you get it going. Using a laptop and guider is also no easy task. Just ask anyone what effort it took to really understand and get that guider working properly with the software, and when things go wrong... igor

Jim you taught me a lot - I just cannot remember anything after a pint or two of the black stuff.

I love narrowband imaging. This is wonderful work. igor

Not bad for a guy that taught me everything he knows - and I still know nothing. Nice work Jim - Love the Spotty. Hope it encourages others to bring out their old friend once in awhile. igor

A frame taken with my Tec 140 and Pentax 67 camera and E200 film. A 90 minute exposure auto guided. Full sized version - scroll to bottom of image and select Original or Large view. Exposure details there as well. http://www.pbase.com...799836����Click on the image to reduce size and see thumbnails of other posted frames. Click on it to enlarge. A wide field view of the area taken with the 400 edif lens and Pentax 67. http://www.pbase.com...image/140156626

I would suggest white lithium is OK but there are far better lubricants out there, especially the full synthetic. Much more expensive for a tube - but being where I am I get temperature extremes. Hot summers in an enclosed observatory - very little run off. Cold winter temps - I'm not that crazy - but around -10 c the lube lets the bearings and bushings turn freely. During the fall months it can go from a +25 during the day to 0 in the middle of the night. It works. Checking the worm and pinion gear on my mount after 3 months of use after the summer heat - still there. A dab on the worm and quick swipe on the pinion - done. By all means - do a lot of slewing with both axis to let everything run in. As far as polar alignment goes and your accuracy - have you checked the polar scope for alignment? Rotating around the axis and making it accurate? There is a polar alignment program for use with a CCD to quickly drift align the mount. http://wcs.ruthner.at/index-en.php I think your software also has a polar alignment accuracy routine. All else - do it manually. Spend an hour with manual drift and really dial in the mount. http://www.petesastrophotography.com/index.html I shoot film and the mount is auto guided. But without a very accurate drift I could not do my 90 minute exposures without trailing. I mount my f/11.4 refractor with two 2x barlows & 12mm illuminated reticle for f/45 - or 360x, and the crosshairs stay exactly on the centre of the star after 30 minutes in the Dec axis which is most important as the guider takes care of the RA. Are you balancing your mount East heavy? That should take out any RA backlash. I also offset my Dec axis so it's heavy on the left side looking from behind. This loads the worm gear - just like RA axis to keep the worm and pinion meshed in a "lifting" attitude. If the motor needs to stop or reverse - the weight on that side allows the pinion to stay in contact with the worm - no backlash. For east heavy - I have the mount lying horizontally, counter weights on the east side of the mount. I adjust the weights so that side starts to drop under it's own weight when I let go. The shaft end should drop slowly. I then slide the weight down a tad more so that the shaft stops before centre. With a meridian flip - the scope side is now East heavy. I then slide the top CW up the shaft until the scope side drops. Now the worm mesh has a lifting action again. When the seeing is very good, I will let the mount run 7 seconds between guider iterations. The Dec axis will usually give zero's for long runs, which is really the most important thing for round stars. igor some of my astro work - www.pbase.com/pentax67

Spending money on the EQ5 at this point in time? My experience, and many others, is that the level of frustration working with an undersized mount is not worth the spending money on it. It will not advance your imaging skills either, but rather hinder them. Every possible thing that can go wrong in an evening will happen during the learning curve. Put the money towards a good robust mount that will last you for years. Get the best mount you can afford. Then go from there.