michael8554

As Dave said. Astronomy often involves looking at very dim objects, so adding a lens to a scope to make images upright, comes at a price of more light absorption. And a star looks the same either way up ! Michael

Is there a power LED on the mount and does it go out just before the handset resets ? That would be intermittent contact of the power plug. Michael

Have you installed a suitable driver for the Neximage 10 ? Michael

Wot he said Michael

Skywatcher recommend a 3 Amp power supply. A 1 Amp power supply will be over loaded when you slew. Michael

Hi Tom, Don't understand that, is that Social Distancing? Out of interest, what figure on the scale did the wedge end up at? Michael

Hi Tom Loosen Red, Yellow, and Green (both sides of the wedge) and turn Blue to lower the tilt plate. I've a vague memory that it should be set to 90 - 32 = 58 on the scale. But that does not compute with this wedge, maybe it does with other brands: If this wedge was set to 90 on the scale, the tilt plate would be parallel to the ground, and the scope would be pointing straight up. At Lat 90 North Pole the scope would then be pointing to Polaris. So 90 on the scale does mean Lat 90, the scale is correct. Similarly at the Equator Lat 0 it would be pointing at the horizon, so would have to be set to 10 on the scale, and the north tripod leg lowered a bit. So I don't know why your scope is located at Lat 32, the wedge is set to 32, but it's pointing high. Michael

PHD2 shows arcsecs and pixels for the Statistics. Pixels is how far stars have moved on the guidecam, arcsecs is the same thing but in , erm, arcsecs, which translates to how elongated your imaged stars are in RA and Dec. People get very excited when the Stats are showing 1 arcsec or less. When using the PHD2 Drift Align I find it can take several minutes per measurement for the RA line to stabilise back on the x axis, up to that point the Dec and RA lines are moving relative to each other, and so is the reported PA. A few arcmins of PA is a tiny adjustment, you may find just rotating the mount PA knobs a tiny bit without loosening anything will be enough, you'd be amazed how bendy most mounts are. And avoids it all changing when you tighten up ! PHD2 is complicated, looked at SGP and similar, and PEMPro for PEC, but far too complicated for me. Michael

There does come a point when further fettling of the mount worm and PHD2 settings is no longer effective. So long as the RA and Dec RMS are similar you'll have round stars, though they my be fatter than you'd like. Certainly too many poor frames at the moment to give up refining. Is the main camera imaging during those 2 minute Settling periods, or is it paused? I don't know SGP, so I can only suggest setting the Dither to after every zero frames if it will let you, and try the settling to 1 pixel since nothing is going on. Michael

Forgot to mention the Periodic Error is about 100arcsec peak to peak, if your mount has PEC I'd give that a go. The guidelogs are kept for 3 months, so that old guidelog from May last year with the Cal on it is way gone. Settling - you've dithered, which has moved the mount further than normal guiding, so it will take a few seconds to stabilise the guiding at the new position. The settling reports when the guiding has got to within a certain fraction of a pixel. 2 seconds is a typical exposure. Michael

Yes on a permanent setup you can reuse the Cal for a goodly time, but seeing the Cal might help the diagnosis. In a permanent setup the PA shouldn't change of course, and doesn't need to be better than 5arcmins if you're guiding. Yours is 10 arcmins, so a small one-time tweak would help, you really don't want to bother with Polemaster with a permanent setup. As you haven't used the mount in a long time maybe slewing it around for a while to redistribute the grease might help. The big evenly spaced spikes in Dec are worrying, do you have Backlash Comp set in the mount, this should be set to zero as it conflicts with the PHD2 Backlash Comp and guiding? Or dragging cables? Are you Dithering with an external prog? I can see the settling, but not the Dither command. Also Settling is taking 2 minutes sometimes! Are your settling settings too stringent? The frequent Star Lost messages suggest the Seeing was poor, or that your 1 sec exposure is too fast. And the very choppy guiding might also be a consequence, Chasing the Seeing perhaps? Do a new Cal at Dec 0 after nudging North to take up any backlash, run the Guide Assistant, accept the recommendations, then guide for 10 mins without altering anything, and post the log if it's not looking good. Michael

Is this in RA or DEC? Might be best to post a guidelog that includes a Calibration. Michael

Canon 60D? Not what I'd call budget! Canon 600D is the earliest and cheapest flipscreen DSLR. Michael

Programs external to the mount will only have accurate Goto if the mount has been well Star Aligned. They will not compensate for a poor star alignment. But in my experience, centering and synching on a star near the target should place the target in your FOV. Michael

Once again, what do you mean? If PHD2 has selected it, it should be suitable for guiding. 500 dollars was the price on a US site, not UK. Looks to me like you've made your mind up already. Michael

You only need one star to guide! Seriously, what do you actually mean? If using PHD2 to guide, that chooses the star, not you. Are you saying that the stars are not good enough for PHD2 to autoselect? What exposure are you using? What gain is the camera set to? The ASI174 is a fine imaging camera, but at 500 dollars is a bit overkill for guiding purposes, the ASI120 MINI ought to work with your current guidescope. Michael

Would help to see a Calibration but the log says the latest Calibration was in May 2019 ? Michael

Very much likely. Huge overhang, worst feature of refractors meant to be used with a diagonal. Screw connections as much as possible, length worked out with the focuser almost fully retracted. Michael

For guiding a 9.25 to have any chance you should use an Off Axis Guider OAG, which would add far less weight than a guidescope and mountings would. Michael

Yes that's true, ideally the mount should be balanced to take up the backlash, if that's what it is. Michael

Is north to the left on the image? Did the test complete? If not, at what stage of the test? If North is left, the mount may have headed fully north from the centre of the cross, but failed to reverse back to the centre, so failed to head south of centre to complete the cross. Did you do a Guide Assistant run with backlash measurement, what was the figure for backlash? Could you post the graph in Review Calibration Data? And a Guidelog that ideally includes a Cal. The lack of South movement could be Dec backlash, but not cable problem, as the star test shows North movement it would seem. Michael

I think the cable swap shows the RA motor is faulty. Any way you can tell if RA is jammed? Is there very slight play if you gently rock RA ? Michael

Why was LiveView on when you were imaging? Michael

He's already getting the feedback, but because he doesn't star align, it's wrong. So Cal near your target. Slew (not GoTo) to the nearest Meade Known Star, centre it, call up that star in the handset, press ENTER, you should then see the Bayer or whatever name for the star, DONT GoTo. Then SYNCH (press ENTER for 3 secs ) The mount and PHD2 will now think it's at those coords. Then Calibrate Michael

Well I would leave it tracking for 10 minutes or so to see if RA is tracking but not slewing. Try replugging so that the working Dec electronics are driving RA, and vice versa. But if it's new and not working I would return it, opening it up will invalidate the gaurentee. Michael