Dear Astrofriends,
I have a relatively old EQ5goto, a TSQ 65 telescope, a D800 standard imaging camera and an ASI120MM mini guidecamera with Orion 50mm guidescope controlled via ASIAIR. Stars in every photo I take with this setup, turn out to be elongated in the same general direction. Since I'm using ASIair there aren't any log files I can provide, but the curve is relatively smooth and reproducible. It generally resides under 2 arc-second total and RA Error is normally around 0.8 arc-seconds. I know that guiding curve is not everything, but I don't think my stars should look like as bad as this at the end of the day. I have a very good balance and neither dec nor RA axis fall, when clutches are released. I even tried being a little east heavy to no avail. I kinda ran out of options to figure out the problem. Since I'm an electrical engineer I have the necessary skills to open the mount and tune it and grease it, if you guys think that would solve my problem. The photo looks as attached. Would appreciate any kind of insight. Thanks in advance,
Clear skies,
Kamyar