Grierson

I have the ZWO unit on my ED80, works fine!

All your troubles will be solved when the EQMOD cable arrives. 😄 No handset. Best few £s I invested for my HEQ5.

Yes, thank you for the response Simon. I did look at the QHYOAG-M and the more I read the more difficult it is to come to a conclusion. Received wisdom on CN seems to suggest that the larger the prism size the better. Exactly how correct that is must be open for debate however. The QHY OAG prism is I believe 8mm, the ZWO 8.8mm and the Celestron c. 12mm.

With apologies to Robin could I ask SimM what you decided on. I have the same ‘scope and reducer and the same dilemma!

I use the Orion Dual finder Shoe from Amazon for exactly the use you describe. Slightly less than the one above!!

Thanks for the link Michael. I will bear it in mind but I am going to continue to play with the distances and positioning as I've just received a set of Baader shims from FLO which may or may not provide me with the answer. 😬

Yep, before I started down the OAG route and having read that focusing distances were critical on the Edge I thought the helical focuser would be a good investment and divorce beckons anyway given the rest of the cost! I don’t have a reducer as yet, but yes, the Heath Robinson selection of spacers is to hit the 133mm. (The spec. is 133.35mm) John

Thanks for the comments chaps. The camera appears to want to be further in to achieve focus as far as I can tell. Having watched one of The Elf's videos where he apparently took a saw to the prism post it seems others have had similar problems. I am not going down this extreme route!! I am indeed doing all my experimenting during the day although from my small garden the only distant objects are tops of trees wafting in the wind. Not the ideal subject to look at focusing issues. The moon is just a blur in the guide 'scope. The picture shows the back end of my Edge and although I have tried various positions for the OAG the one shown appears to be the best to get anything approaching an image on the guide camera. I wonder if anyone has an idea of what the optimum distance from the imaging sensor the OAG needs to be?

Apologies in advance as I know a lot has been written on this subject. Prompted by the views of Olly and other members of SGL I have been trying to get a ZWO OAG set up correctly on my Edge HD. I am waiting for FLO to come up with a reducer but in the mean time I have the back focus set correctly at 133mm. The imaging camera is a ZWO ASI224 and the guide camera an ZWO ASI120mm. As far as I can judge the distance to the guide camera sensor is the same as that to the imaging camera but despite trying a variety of spacers in the light path to the guide camera I can not get it to focus. I see that it has been suggested on another forum that the ZWO OAG and the 120mm is not a good combination given the size of the prism and sensor. True or not I am keen to get it set up and at least in focus. I wonder if any other members use the combination above successfully and who would care to share their experience. Many thanks. - John

Thank you. I thought so. I’m a bit at sea then. Must be something obvious! I’ll have a further look tonight. Thanks again.

As an imager with a bit of experience who started with EQMOD and latterly uses ASIAIR but one who has never used the handset can I ask an embarrassing but basic question? Having gone through the Initialisation routine and pressed ‘2) NO’ on the handset to skip the Alignment routine and then gone to SETUP\Tracking and chosen ‘Lunar Rate‘ should the mount start tracking without further input. Trying to image the moon last night I am finding it continues to drift! Thanks.

😀 😀

Thanks chaps, obvious once you have been told! Do you ever stop learning about this hobby! I must resist any further expenditure at the moment Goran or divorce will be on the cards 🙂.

Thanks Craney, I have just received the Edge HD 8" but I have not had chance to point it at anything yet! I am still trying to sort out the back focus spacing and the guiding configuration. I had seen a number of similar images of additional focusers having been added to the Edge and I just wondered why. I'm hoping to replace the native focus control with a Feather Touch as I have the ZWO focus controller which I use with the ASIAIR and for which ZWO provide an adapter for the Feather Touch. Apologies to wornish once again for hijacking the thread,

Could I just briefly side track the thread to ask a naive question? Why would you add a Moonlight or other focuser to the Edge? Is the native focuser that bad? Thanks - John

Many thanks Craney. I will have a look.

Apologies. Please ignore this post as it has not been particularly well explained. A bit more experiment is needed.

Yep, you're probably right 🙂.

Thanks chaps for the responses. It has been suggested elsewhere that with the OAG and given the focal length of c. 1400mm (with the reducer) that finding and retaining a suitable guide star is difficult. Would you care to comment further?

Sorry John for the confused reply. I don’t want to reduce the diameter of the tube which appears to be the use of the item link you kindly supplied.

Thank Dr. but I have so far resisted the purchase of a 3D printer!! Thank John. Trouble is the adapter is 50mm.

I have a SW right angle finder 'scope. I want to remove the right angle and extend the tube 40mm to turn the 'scope into a finder/guider using one of Modern Astronomy's adapters to fit my Mini ZWO ASI120mm camera. Trouble is I can't find a suitable 40mm extension tube. The outside diameter of the tube is 53mm the inside is 50mm however I have no knowledge of how this diameter of tube is correctly described. Can anyone help or perhaps provide a link to a suitable item? Many thanks - John (ps I would swop someone the right angle finder for a straight through one if anybody near York needs a right angle one. 🙂)

I am hoping to use the 'scope above at some future date and I would welcome any comment on the following from any existing users. I would like to mount as much as possible on the tube in a similar way to my current set on the SW80 ED as in the picture. However something tells me that using my existing SW 9X50 finder 'scope with a likely fl of 180mm and the ZWO ASI120mm may not be a good guiding combination for the Edge which has a native focal length of 2032mm. I wonder if any Edge imagers are using this combination successfully at the moment or is an OAG likely to be a better answer. Looking at the manual the finder 'scope bracket appears to screw to the rear rim of the tube. Could someone tell me if the rim will be able to carry the extra weight of a dual finder shoe to which will accommodate the ASIAIR. Is anyone using such an approach and if so could you point to a suitable duel shoe? Do you use the finder which I believe comes with the 'scope or something else? Thank you for reading. Any comment would be appreciated. - John

Can’t answer your specific question Doug as I’ve not used the PC based version of EQMod since I received my EQ6-R. I do however use the ZWO ASIAIR version of EQMod with the mount and it works fine using a simple USB2 lead between the AIR and the mount. No adjustment required except for the baud rate. - John

Why? If you have the ASIAIR the Polar Alignment process in the software is more than capable of producing the required accuracy. I can see little or no difference between using the PoleMaster or the AIR or indeed SharpeCap for that matter!