waylander

So that sounds like what most people do for M42 which is a large scale structure. So you can just cut out the blown out core and replace with the other shorter exposure segment- but the OP is talking about "stars" in general, how easy is it to combine the properly exposed stars from one image with the galaxies from another. Can Pixinsight do this do we know? I'm facing similar issues, short exposure not enough DSO detail, long exposures blown out stars with no color.

Have just been back over old guide logs and have seen a few examples of great guiding in RA (like 0.5-0.6") for long periods so looks like the mount is capable of it if set up by a competent person.

Noticed that my RA balance was very very out - like the counterweight was 1/3 of the way on the countershaft (3 inches?) out according to the handsets auto balance routine. That could have contributed to the rubbish RA...

Yes boss

Right tomorrow night I’ll do this again. I’ll adjust the worm and try bigger minmo and lower aggression for both axes.

It just recommended 20 minmo for R.A. and 30 for dec. didn’t seem right to me. oh one other thing... I don’t level my mount at all... should that matter?

Ga didn’t recommend to turn on backlash compensation so I’m assuming it didn’t think that was bad enough to mention?

I was kind of happy with the dec to be honest! Do you think reducing the guide rate for R.A. will help at all? The R.A. was the thing that most concerned me as any changes seem to aggressive and cause a bounce. Thought if I reduced the R.A. guide rate and hence hopefully reduced the effect of any changes it might settle down a bit. I’ll make the slight change mentioned to the R.A. end cap too. Forgot to do a ga run... didn’t do one till the end of the night just to see what it said.

Went out last night and tried again to get better guiding. Moved both axes to 0.9x guide rate to sort backlash, which proved effective. Calibration went better, seeing was better so lots of stars. Guiding was generally very good in DEC (0.3-0.6" ish) but worse in RA all night (1-1.2"). I feel i understand the DEC axis now, but RA is another thing entirely. I noticed i do have some binding at one point in the RA rotation, so im gonna very slightly slacken off the RA rocker adjustment screw (like 1/32 of a turn). Perhaps that could also be causing too much friction in RA generally too? Warned to improve guide star focusing, which may be fair, so gonna buy a helical focuser for the OAG. However - with regards to the RA i just cannot get it to settle down, i've tried high agg, low agg, high minmo, low minmo. So im gonna try and set that axis to a lower guide rate, it could be it just needs less "work" to keep it in the green. So gonna go for 0.3x on RA next outing and keep DEC at 0.9. Any thoughts, let me know! Have attached logs. PHD2_GuideLog_2020-04-11_204631.txt

My mental load was at Max though. Lots of things to remember!

Hi Michael. I did offset the balance a little, but noticed that due to updating the firmware on the handset it reverted my 0.9x guide rate... didn’t check it. no I didn’t get chance to run north for a while to take up the backlash. Honestly I spent a lot of time just trying to find stars at dec 0 in the clouds! For such a clear night they knew where to cause maximum damage. and yeah. Trying to resist fiddling too much with settings! Once I get a clear night next week away from the full moon I’ll try focus properly (hard!) and redo everything again. I’ve got a good feeling about this. Thanks again, I’ll post a pic on here to show my progress once I get better skies.

A question on this then. What signs in my guiding am I looking for which will tell me my mount needs adjusting? My ra binds occasionally and guiding has always been worse on the axis with random spikes too. how much deflection should the belt have? Ie how can I tell if it does need adjusting tightening whatever?

Ill try that - actually i do get binding sometimes so i reckon mine needs backing off a bit. How to adjust the allen head screws though? You mean the ones where the belt is?

I havent - is there a guide on how to do this? Im completely allergic to hardware... completely inept!!

Ok managed to do some imaging last night - they aren't really usable as it was almost full moon (not enough contrast). Tried to calibrate at DEC 0 but too many clouds so had to shift it around a bit higher. Still kept losing guide stars - but again the seeing wasn't great and i struggled to get decent focus with either camera. Tried an imaging run of M101, guiding was initially around 1.3arc sec, but later on in the night after id enabled PPEC and tweaked the settings i did see my guiding get down to 0.7-0.8 for a while. RA seems worst, need to tame it, hence changing the settings a bit - tried to get the OSC value to 0.5. I should also point out the calibration wasn't great - phd2 warned me to do it again as it was sub-optimal. I also noticed after going through the logs that my guide rate had reverted to 0.5x, so next time ill put that back to 0.9 which would improve the backlash situation and obviously guiding in general. Any focusing tips very welcome - i find that the hardest thing of all - tried the bahitnov mask but it just kept jumping between + and - values. Here's the guide log: PHD2_GuideLog_2020-04-06_204427.txt