Starflyer

You can gather data to determine the level of the SDE errors even if you don't have a full clear night. It's probably worth doing this sooner rather than later to help determine whether you do have an SDE problem with your copy of the mount. Calibrate as normal and then perform a Guiding Assistant run of five minutes with very short exposures, say 0.5 seconds. Gather the PHD2 guide and debug logs and post them to in that thread on CN and OzAndrewJ or another helpful soul will analyse them for you. As you probably know by now it helps to calibrate with a relatively long guide exposure, I've settled at 4 - 5 seconds.

PHD complains about the calibration, I confirm it and tell it to use it. The only difference from a 'good' calibration is that PHD will now issue a slightly bigger pulse that it should do, this is easily overcome by decreasing the aggression slightly. I can see you loaded the beta firmware, did you force a re-calibrate on the encoder? This is an important step after a firmware update. From the firmware page; "To calibrate the encoder: 1) Turn off the mount; 2) Hold number "2" on the hand controller, then turn the mount power on, keep holding the #2 key until the calibration started automatically; 3) After the mount stopped, turn off the mount, and turn on again." Happy to help you try and resolve this if I can, try another run or two and post back with questions, logs etc. Cheers, Ian

Well spotted, not sure when I changed that, here's the log analysis from the same evening.

The first graph shows a typical response from the pre-beta firmware; a large amount of drift in RA in one direction. The second graph shows the oscillation problem of the pre-beta firmware; the majority of corrections are in one direction, but a tiny pulse the other way results in a huge over correction.

Hi, I'm the CEM60EC user who submitted some of the log files to OzAndrewJ in that thread on CN, and previous to that in another CN thread related to the CEM60EC. Firstly, and most importantly, if the log analysis is showing a high level of SDE deviations then it's highly unlikely this can be fixed through firmware changes / PHD settings. The beta firmware has tamed my over-corrections / oscillations completely. The calibration is still odd every time, as seen in the CN thread, but the guiding is improved. This was the last run from 29/11, calibrated with 4s exposures to try and give the mount a chance to fully move before the next pulse was sent. It didn't quite work, you can see I have more RA pulses than DEC pulses to get to the same distance, but the guiding was acceptable. you just need to drop back the aggressiveness a bit. You'll see from the very sparse corrections in the graph below (7 RA corrections in a 400s time span) that the mount is almost running unguided and this is how it should be with this mount. The mount should only be correcting for drift caused by polar alignment, refraction effects etc so be sure to set a reasonably loose MinMo for RA. Setup was: Tak FSQ85 at 332mm focal length, guided with an OAG / Lodestar. I'm guiding with 4s exposures and the following algorithms; X guide algorithm = Hysteresis, Hysteresis = 0.000 <--- this is important Y guide algorithm = Resist Switch I see you have backlash compensation enabled, did GA suggest you do this? My GA runs have always said that I have negligible backlash and not to enable it. Cheers, Ian

Does the FITs header tell you the gain and offset Craig? If so compare these with your lights. I know you were using SGPs flats wizard, have you tried shooting a flat as a light? Just thinking the flats wizard might be not shooting at the same gain and offset, or somehow seeing something else up.

The phillips webcam is a cracking camera to get started with, I think most of the SGL users from the olden days (😁) cut their teeth on one of these. Start with the moon and I think you'll be hooked. The images will be close ups with your scope, but you can always build a full moon mosaic after a bit of practice. Looking forward to seeing the results!

It's likely that the Moravian capture software is using the native driver. In SGP you'll be using the ASCOM driver, I don't know the camera but the ASCOM driver or a seeing within it is causing this.

US retail prices don't include tax, it's always added at checkout. Imagine that over here, how many poor abandoned shopping carts would there be every day if you got to checkout only to find the price had gone up significantly 😕

Reliable / bomb proof 👍

One word Craig - Lakeside 😁

Take a look at a strip down guide, it'll help you to understand the internals and how the mount and clutches work. http://www.astro-baby.com/heq5-rebuild/heq5-m1.htm Occasionally accidentally moving the axis with the clutche locked won't do any damage, it's a brass button pressing against a smooth part of the worm wheel. But I imagine constant moving with the clutch locked would generate brass swarf and that isn't a good thing. The worm gear shaft is permanently engaged with the stepper motor and you can't operate it with manual slow-mo knobs. AFAIK there's no encoders on the HEQ5, the mount keeps track of it's position by counting steps of the stepper motor. Hope this helps, Ian

What scope are you imaging with? How are you guiding, finder guider, guidescope, OAG? Have you run the guiding assistant in PHD, did you make the changes it suggested? Can you post a PHD log and corresponding image from a session that you thought was awful?

This works, I used to do something similar but in EQMOD. For this to work you'll need to clear the pointing model first in EQMOD. Get the mount roughly in the home position, connect EQMOD and unpark. Click on the + sign, top left, so it shows the clock dials for RA & DEC. Slew the RA axis by 90 degrees using the clock dial to get it as close to exactly 90 degrees as possible. Use a spirit level on the RA part of the mount, unlock the RA clutch, set it level and lock the clutch. Park the mount, unpark and repeat for DEC, using the scope / tube rings etc to get your leveling surface. This, together with good PA, accurate location and time, and low cone error will get you very accurate go-tos.

I've used Anderson Powerpole connectors and distribution boards from MFJ & Windcamp for about eight years now, I've never had a single problem with them. They're reliable, robust and individually fused, what's not to like 😀

If you rely on remote access ditch TeamViewer and do it now. There's a thread on the SGP forum of people being cut off for suspected commercial use, no amount of appealing will get your account unfrozen. By opening two remote sessions at a time you're viewed as a commercial user under their revised terms and conditions apparently.

Remember to factor in some additional cash for a reducer / flattener.

Hi John, Thanks for your insight. Reading up on various reviews I think I'm going to go for the iPolar, I'll feedback here once I've had a chance to try it. Cheers, Ian

I'm thinking of getting one of these handy little devices but can't decide which one. It'll be used on an iOptron CEM60 , a SW NEQ6 and a SW AZEQ6-GT I'd love to hear from people who have experience of using either or both and their views on the hardware and the software. Reading up on the software for both I can't say I'm that overly impressed with either, I've used Sharpcap's PA routine with a finder scope in the past and that seemed more intuitive. Can I use Shapcap with these devices instead of the supplied software, has anyone else done this and what are your opinions? Thanks in advance, Ian

From going to star parties for eleven years now I can say that spring events have far more chance of being drier and clearer than autumn events.

Disappointed, but better it happens now than at 3am on Sunday morning. I thought at times it was going to flood last year, it was only inches from the top of the flood defences. I'd certainly be happy seeing it moved back to spring on a regular basis. I have memories of many many clear nights at the spring events and only one or two total from the autumn events of recent years. So sorry for the organisers, you must be absolutely gutted to have to call it off, and of course for the owners and staff at Lucksall and the poor people affected throughout the region.

I thought I'd heard APT had multi camera support these days.

He won't get that for it, I've bought both mine for £500 or less, both 1/10th wave mirrors / standard focusers. Beware the new focusers they're using, it's a SW low profile clone and they're garbage.

The VX12 is f/4 isn't it, so still 1200mm fl? I'd of thought it'd be a good match with your EQ8.

https://www.astrobuysell.com/uk/propview.php?view=154798 Depending on the distance make him a cheeky offer, go and look at it, if you decide to buy it maybe replace the focuser if needed. I've never used a secondary heater, a short camping mat dew shield is all that's needed. f/4.8 is more forgiving on collimation than the f/4 of the quattro, I rarely check mine now and it's not permanently mounted so gets moved around a bit.