Skipper Billy

My understanding is that sidereal rate is the rate at which stars move across our sky - a sidereal day i.e. one full rotation of the earth is about 23 h 56 m 04.091s The Sun and moon track at different speeds to almost everything else which is why there is often a Sun and Moon setting on a mount. So if Mars is drifting out of your view the problem isn't the chosen sidereal rate it sounds like something else - polar alignment would be my first guess. With a guide camera you could guide on an object but more usually the guide camera is used to issue tiny corrections to the mount to make up for deficiencies the mounts accuracy. DSO's track at the normal sidereal rate and should be static in the viewfinder. HTH !

Attacked the California Nebula and I got most of the Ha data last night but soon after midnight it clouded over. The Sii and Oiii data will have to wait for another day. For now its a monochrome image. This is stacked and calibrated but no processing done to it other than stretching and converting to Jpeg. 12 x 600 sec subs.

jpeg

I have learnt something today - thanks @vlaiv !!

This might be easier for what you want to do https://telescopius.com/

The APM 115 weighs about 6.5kgs I think. The HEQ5 should be good for an imaging rig of up to about 11kgs so unless you have a massive guide scope and incredibly heavy cameras and filter wheels etc you should be well within the capacity of the mount. It sounds like your original guiding wasn't that good and its got worse with extra weight which to me would suggest either a balance issue or backlash or both. If you have had the mount apart in the past then you know how it works and it might be worth having a look at this guide and seeing if you can remove any backlash. The Heq5 should guide well below 1" total RMS easily under reasonable seeing conditions if it is set up properly and should easily cope with the APM115.

Peter and I posted at the same time and Peter has answered the part I didnt know. In which case you need this cable

Welcome to SGL !! I cant see any reason why that wouldn't work. The only thing I dont know and can't quickly find out, is the size of the power socket on the mount. The outside is 5.5mm but the two popular internal pin sizes are 2.5mm and 2.1mm - just make sure that you order the right one. The other thing to check is the correct polarity. When I was looking for the tip size I found that the mount needs centre pin positive - just check the battery and lead output with a multimeter before you plug it in !!!! Ha sa kul 😉

I guess that response is aimed at me??? I was just asking what I thought was a perfectly reasonable question in a perfectly reasonable manner. If you cant answer it in a reasonable way then please don't bother replying at all.

Well done !

Heads up!!!!!!! Be quick !!!!!!

Understood but if you stack on the stars then the static foreground would be blurred and if you stack on the foreground then the stars would be blurred unless i am missing something and being really thick !! 😉

If this image is 48 x 60 sec exposures how have you managed to keep the static foreground and the stars sharp???

Don't forget about a decent tripod or everything else is totally irrelevant 😉

I would spend at least half your budget on a decent tripod - it doesn't matter what is on top of it you will always have poor images if your tripod is wobbling about. The rest of the budget I would spend on diesel to get to dark sites - nothing improves images as much as truly dark skies which I guess you don't have in Biggin Hill ????

I haven't used APP, I only use Pixinsight so I cant compare the two. In PI I use about 14 tools and none of them are hard to learn - many of the available tools do very similar things and that makes it look daunting. I can usually produce a reasonable image with those 14 tools and often I don't use more than 10 of them.

There is a setting in BIOS that starts up the PC at power on - no need to press the 'on' button. I found that very useful for a remote observatory.

PS - the views about slightly out of focus has kind of been changed now - my guiding is always better when the focus is spot on. It wont matter to begin with but ultimately you want focus as sharp as you can get it.

There is a useful guide about PHD2 on my website - 2nd item down on this page.

Head over the parapet time !!!! Processed in Pixinsight - ABE, DBE, Channel Combination, Histogram Transformation, Curves, SCNR, Curves, TGV DeNoise, Unsharp Mask, Morphological Transformation (teeny weeny bit) Curves, SCNR - saved as TIFF and JPEG prop neb.tif

I would only buy this cable fro FLO - there are so many counterfeit 'FTDI' cables about but buying from FLO guarantees you a genuine chip that will work reliably.

Cheers Dave. 😉

Thanks Adam 😉

Swap places a moment - if you sold something to someone and posted it and the purchaser emailed you to tell you that the outer packaging was damaged but the inner product packaging was fine and the goods were undamaged - would you be interested ??

4th item from the bottom on this page helped me enormously..... https://www.davidbanksastro.com/how-to