newbie alert

So not being familiar with indi or ST4 or the starshoot autoguide( isn't that a stand alone guider?) With a Windows setup you would need the Celestron ascom driver, ascom platform and the driver for your guide camera.. I would connect the guide camera and make sure you can see stars, IE focus and exposure settings, can you see stars within phd with the camera looping? If you're not guiding I'd check your pa as you shouldn't have drift in your stars in a 10 sec sub , your mount should easily track for far longer than that.. to do decent guiding you need decent pa, decent balance and then decent calibration.. Using the ST4 method you will need to calibrate on every target, and after every flip.. not sure if you can run the guiding assistant but if you can I'd advise you to do so

Yep as never heard that one before...is that because I'm older than 4

Yeah totally agree with you there, but penguin mentioned planets aswell... Not that you can't do that with a newt either..

No central obstruction in a frac The bigger the central obstruction the lower the contrast

MN190 has 1000mm FL? ..1m tube A 8 inch SCT you can reduce its native focal length with a 6.3 reducer, some people run there's at f5 , but it depends on sensor size if you can get away with it

Looking at all the images they're all inconsistent, so it could be guiding errors, tilt, spacing, focuser sag, un- solid fixings to the camera, delrin spacers... Lots of reasons that can cause these errors so need to tackle them one at a time

First of all Id like to say I'm not trying to put you off, I think SCT for deepsky are awesome.. had mine on the mount for 18 months now and it serves me well, but.. The whole setup of a SCT has a few weaknesses.. the mirror moves up and down a shaft to achieve focus, the mirror is big and heavy and so with gravity the mirror moves, hence the term mirror shift and mirror flop..The idea of a oag is if it shifts the whole imaging train also does.. if you have a separate guide scope setup the guide camera could be happily guiding on a star and it won't see that the mirror in the imaging has shifted, this is differential flexure... Mirror flop is where the mirror has moved down the shaft under the influence of gravity.. some SCT have mirror locks to hopefully reduce this problems I think oag is the way to go, I tried the separate guidescope but that made issues within itself.. Collimation needs to be pretty much spot on as with any scopes, but again is fairly straightforward but then quite easy to get it wrong too I've not tried the crab, but the ring nebula is a fairly decent size, not a frame filler, although the crescent does at 1280mm fl

To my eyes on my phone the top one is worst than the bottom, seems to some improvement to the bottom one but I'd say you're too far away on your spacing

Nice split on the double star... Nice work

SCT do have their own weaknesses for deepsky.. mirror flop, mirror shift, if not using a oag then differential flexure, cooling to ambient, is your camera sensor too large for the scopes imaging circle, you may need a reducer for fov and less taxing on the mount.. lots to consider before jumping in But they have a good few positives and very rewarding when the images come in

Upgrading the firmware is a piece of cake,you tube is your friend here... Using the mains charger doesn't sound right... I'd ask for another one... 3 star alignment should work, provided the time/date/ latitude and longitude have been entered...if it doesn't I'd contact your vendor and maybe send it back

Hi Jane as I understand it, the 16 bit has higher range than a 14 65000 odd for 16 bit 16000 odd for 14

Thought the 71 was discontinued but a quick search say no it's still current... £1489.. If I were looking I'd put abit more towards it and buy a 571 sensor, 16 bit as opposed to the 14 of the 071.. still APS-C size , abit more up to date, smaller pixels, no ampglow as it's put..

The moon is quite a large target to align on.. Quite agree with Micheal above Star alignment is for pointing, if it drifts then pa needs addressing

Zero position is home position , weights down, looking at the ncp if you're northern hemisphere... Trusting that you entered the time date latitude and longitude it now can point towards your stars for alignment as it knows where it is and where the stars should be...3 star alignment is like a fine tune calibration

You will only find that out from the full package of PhD..... I've no faith in the air... But it's not my setup so nothing to do with me..so good luck hope it works for you

Looking at your guidegraph I looking at your Ra peak to peak at at around 3 and the Dec never drops below the trend line.. I fail to see where the air gets those figures from

Fingers crossed it be with you soon then Mike

Also if you use phd2 directly you can run the guiding assistant.. not sure that you have that with the air, something tells me it's missing

Sunspots are very welcome.. seen a white light blank disc plenty of times and then it feels like Christmas if one appears... Just like magic... Anyway.. your focus looks good, if you added a continuum filter it might give you a little better contrast...

Looking at my phone it don't seem too far away, but the bigger the sensor the more crucial the spacing... I'd be inclined to add the thinnest baader shim , think the thinnest is the black one .3, red are .5 and gold 1.0.. delrin ones aren't that accurate, mine wasn't the same thickness all the way around and created tilt so I threw them away If you're adding a filter you need to add 2/3rds of your filter thickness to your spacing

ST4 guiding maybe old but the op is using a pulse guide format in a ST4 manner Seems to me that the mount isn't reacting to the guide pulses, which should have flagged up in calibration ... I've no idea or interest in the air .. it only uses part of the PhD software and seems to have its own figures which are far lower than within the phd2 software How can you have it start guiding in the .10 region but can't complete a 2 min sub? The mount and your 72 should be able to easily do that unguided.. I'd cut out the air and use it directly with PhD, read how to set it up and properly calibrate.. key to good guiding is careful PA doesn't make PhD work so hard, good balance and careful calibration..

If you followed you would know

Done it proud... Really nice that

Ok Ian, the 60 is a awesome mount... Love mine to bits... If you need any help with it, ping me a pm...enjoy