Seanelly

I will be using the GA for each new object at least for the immediate future, and will see to the backlash setting. I just broke away a few minutes to check the handset backlash settings for the mount and both Dec and Alt are set at 0 value, which is the disable mode (manual). What is your opinion of belt drive conversion for the HEQ5? I've read here only positive results, that it can reduce backlash, etc., and though I'm in no hurry to explain another astro-related purchase to my wife, it surely can't be that expensive, and I'm confident I could do it myself, as I deal with relatively similar stuff-albeit usually on a larger scale-on a daily basis. If it can help improve my images, I would seriously consider it. Sorry to leave you hanging again for the last ten minutes (haha), I just tried to recover the lost files as you suggested and also went deeper for online strategy but they are nowhere to be found. I might be persuaded to believe in a mislabeling issue and they are hanging around somewhere if I were not sure that I did not because of their relevance to my situation, also because mislabeling two files at the same time is a boner I just can't believe I'd make, besides, the date search has revealed nothing. Quite frankly I now feel that if they are so intent on hiding from me they can bloody well stay there, I will know soon enough how my imaging is faring without them. (That said, my preliminary curious look at a couple of the subs of M57 (no star trails!) before the folder mishap were fascinating (great colour!), and I can't wait to get in a solid night imaging this ring nebula.) As for the guidescope issue: I see that the dovetail (I called it a wedge earlier) foot of the guidescope bracket can be viewed as quite inflexible in the main scope base, especially as in my case there is no extra shoe or adapter added that might increase the possibility of unwanted movement, but the guidescope tube in its bracket is less so, as the three alignment screws (you mentioned two) are not steel as I said in error earlier, but nylon. If I were having these drifting issues constantly I might be inclined to see this setup as more of a culprit, but at any rate I will keep an eye on things in this area. I hope you can bear with me a little further come Wednesday (weather permitting, which looks good for Tuesday night) and hopefully celebrate a little on helping a fellow skywatcher get back on track-actually get onto a better track. Cheers, Sean.

The recent Friday session I finally managed to fit in that showed no drift after releasing the directional buttons I think tells me that previously either something was not battened down or my balance was off, but the fact it happened four times in a row while getting progressively worse and now it seems fine, even with the extra caution Friday given to the setup, just has me baffled. If I never see it again I'll be happy, but it will bug me for a long time to come. I will have to check on the settings for backlash hopefully Tuesday night with a bit of lucky clear weather. All these settings (backlash,etc.) are new to me, as well as the Guide Assistant recommendations, which I never noticed after it finished it's routine. I just assumed it would take care of those by itself (pretty sure you knew who you were dealing with here from the start but this is more proof how new I am at to this). As to that silly business of deleting M3 and M57 subs, I never emptied the recycle bin, did not even send the subs there, I just looked there for them but they were not to be found, nor anywhere else. I can't even recall how I lost them. I thought I had separated everything into folders but after checking each sub of M51 I moved on to check M3 and M57 but the folders had vanished. Maybe I should have been a magician! As to that nuke crack, why are you using Chinese Huawei technology after all the [removed word] they've stirred up, both the country and the company? And you can't fool me, any N. Korean missile fired in this direction, if it ever got off the launch pad, would no doubt land closer to Japan than Canada. Re guiding: My experience with noticeably improved guiding Friday night after using Guide Assist was an eye opener. I did not know how necessary it was in my case, and I will use it for each new target in future. Guidescope: You will have noticed the SW scope I am using for imaging. I don't know if you've seen it, but the metal wedge mount for the guidescope is dovetailed to fit the metal Orion guidescope base and secured by a single, strong screw. I went over it thoroughly on Friday during setup and it is very solid. I can't vouch for materials or design used in these two areas in the past which may possibly be the source of the questionable reputation, but I work as an industrial millwright, and while the technical side is not my strong suit (you will have noticed, haha), I really do know a strong, mechanical connection when I see one, so while I don't rule it out entirely as as contributing to my problem, it is the least of my worries. If my drifting had occurred on just one night, or on a couple of separate nights, I might perhaps suspect that the dew heater I use on the guidescope had caught up on something and pulled on the guidscope, but four sessions in a row blows that up. Tuesday night (hopefully) I will follow all the Guide Assist recommendations and briefly test-image several more widely separated objects, and pass on any bad sub examples and the log. I hate to say it for your sake but I hope all my troubles over those four nights were an anomaly that I'll never see again and I've just wasted your time. If that is the case, hopefully the compensation on your part will be that I know a fair bit more about what I'm doing than I did before all this happened, which will no doubt improve my images, and you've shown yourself to be very selfless with your time. But first things first.

So, if you've got time, I've got answers and I've got questions. I can't provide images of the star drift during those four imaging sessions in question because while checking over each sub to potentially go into DSS I deleted all the bad ones. I didn't realize that I might need to reference them, and though I have plenty of room on my portable drives for storage, I didn't see any use in holding onto junk subs. I do have the good subs of M3 that I subsequently stacked, processed and posted in my album, 3+ hours out of about twelve imaged. After centering the third alignment star, then exchanging the eyepiece/diagonal for the DSLR and positioning the star in the DSLR 10x box for focusing, the star continued to drift for a short period of time in the direction it came from after I took my finger off the handset directional control. This was under 10x, don't forget, so the drift was not much, but it was there nonetheless, and on the last disastrous night of the four sessions, after the star drifted and I re-centered it in the DSLR 10x and achieved focus and then slewed to M3 and framed the object, I turned my attention to setting up PHD2, and when I turned back to the DSLR live-view screen a few minutes later, M3 had drifted halfway up the (unmagnified now, so a significant drift) screen of the DSLR. Seeing as how the image had already stopped moving and was still placed as such that my cropping would make it unnecessary to centre the image anyway, I left it that way and started imaging. I lost all subs on that last night. The star trails were not long, but these subs were only two minutes duration, and I've gotten much better results just guiding off the mount alone. All trails are in the same direction, what I believe to be declination, as I was imaging toward the east and the trails were running to the top right of the subs (I hope that is not misleading). Friday night I got my first chance to set up and test since that last disastrous session. I checked over all the gear, making sure everything was as it should be, and took great care in balance and locking everything down securely, etc. There was no drift of the third alignment star in the DSLR 10x live-view screen, so that was already an improvement, and after the mount slewed to M51, I framed it and then went through the Guiding Assistant routine. I asked this question earlier in the thread but got no answer, and I've yet to get into the PHD2 analysis link provided: Is it recommended to use Guide Assist every time you set up, or perhaps only every time you want to image a new object, or just randomly on occasion? This is more relevant to me now because my guiding last night was better than I've ever seen it. There were occasional blips, but generally speaking it was exceptional. I have another question that might be solved from the guide log provided below, but as stated, I have not yet looked at the analysis link so I do not know. While my guiding was very good according to the graph, I noticed that my polar alignment error in the Guide Assist routine ended up at around 8.0, whereas the first log I provided for the bad sessions earlier proved my PA alignment error at only 0.5. If I'm reading and understanding all this correctly and the discrepancy is truly an indication of bad PA, then it may be because while the handset provided Polaris position at 1:30, I just may have set the mount to 1:20 instead. It was just one of those things where after everything is done and you have started imaging, you run over the routine in your head to try and find any flaws, and this PA 1:20/1:30 stuck in my head all evening. There was no way I was going to start all over again, and I figured if PA was bad, it would still be possible to image while taking that into account, and so my question is, if all this be so, would guiding still be as good as it was last night? And now for the results, good, bad, and just plain embarrassing. I imaged about ninety minutes each of M51, M3 and finally 2 hours M57 as a late-night addition, three different locations in the sky for a good overall test, and even got up before dawn to grab darks, flats and bias. But stupidly, in my routine to organize the folders before stacking, I somehow deleted the subs for M3 and M57 (I need to get more sleep, haha). Go ahead, hit me now and get it over with-tell you what, I'll do it myself right now. Ouch. What gets me in all that is I'm usually so careful anyway in my setup, and yet here I was at the most important of imaging sessions fretting over possibly clumsy PA and then dumping valuable images not even in the recycle bin where I could retrieve them and save the day. Anyway, I still had M51. I lost about 10% of the subs to star trails or 'globbing', if I can use that word, but the types of losses were nothing like the consistent one-track trails of the bad M3 subs in question, and I'm hoping that this high loss can be attributed to the fact that while the mount RA was nearly parallel to the ground and so my balance there would have been spot on, the scope itself was nearly vertical for the roughly 90 minutes of imaging, and while my balance there was as good as I could make it, I'm wondering if this vertical attitude had anything to do with the high rate of loss. Sorry for the long-winded explanations. I post here the 1h 4m M51 image, composed of 3m subs and about 50 each of the three other calibration frames in DSS and tweaked in PS, and also the guide log. If the problem has cleared up, which won't really be known until the next session, fine and dandy, but it would still leave me wondering what caused it in the first place for all four of the imaging sessions of a new object. PHD2_GuideLog_2019-05-17_215239.txt

Twenty easy and simple years owning a visual dob spoiled me into thinking that doing the research, getting input from various sources, and springing for a basic imaging rig was as far as the cost would go, but I underestimated by a good deal the cost of all the 'extras' necessary to get another step closer to better photos, or simply to acquire necessary gear that was overlooked in the original research. SGL was a great source of information and encouragement as I sourced my rig, but nobody ever pointed out that once you think you've reached the end of the road and can now order all your stuff and away you go, there is always another, smaller road that continues the journey, and the cost. I don't say this in blame, I am, after all, responsible for everything I do, and of course everyone here wants to support a budding fellow amateur astronomer just as I encourage people following behind me, I just wish I could believe that the next time I tell my wife that this purchase will finally complete my setup, it will actually be true.

Thanks, I'm glad to see that you confirm my PA/guiding is not the problem. As I write this the scope/mount is undergoing it's first imaging session since the problem in question arose about ten days ago, crappy weather hogging the entire interval, and irregardless of the full moon, as it makes no difference for test purposes. I double-checked all connections, mounts, screws, etc., paid close attention to PA and balance and focus, etc., and used PHD2 Guide Assistant before starting on a selection of shortish exposures. I saw no hint of image creep on the third star, so that was an improvement already. I won't have all the data until tomorrow. In a nutshell, for four straight imaging sessions, all on M3 for my first crack at this glob, I was seeing the last stars of the three-star alignments, while I was in the process of centering them in the DSLR 10x live-view screen for focusing, continue moving across the DSLR live-view screen even after I released the directional button, not far the first couple of times, though I lost more than half my subs to short star trails, but by the fourth session M3, after I got my focus and re-centered the image, continued to drift halfway across the unmagnified DSLR live-view screen while I was in the process of getting PHD2 running, and all my subs were lost to short star trails, something I haven't had to deal with since my first days getting things up and running. These four sessions were each set up separately, as I'd been doing successfully leading up to that point. I'll have more to go on tomorrow, but the suspense is killing me.

This galaxy is one of my favorites, and you've done it proud.

This is a wonderful image to see during the week of Ottawa's Tulip Festival!

Hi, thanks for the comments. I've never had reason to slew the mount when my guiding is active, as PHD2 would immediately 'lose' the star, I believe. Either way, activating guiding and then the DSLR remote shutter release are the last things I do before leaving the rig to do it's work. I will be making a thorough (I hope) check of the handset Friday night, if the weather holds as it is forecast, my first chance to run a few tests since this problem began ten days ago. As for the balance, I went through that with my tech just in case and he assures me I am not mistaken in my setup. But I will take extra care Friday. Hopefully I will have good news to report.

A beauty.

I'm with Floater, it sounds like you're having a blast as it is, so go with the ride. I'm not saying take the 20 years it took me to go from observing to imaging, but just think how much money you can save up in 20 years for gear, haha.

Hi, thanks for the help. As to Guiding Assistant, are you saying that I need to activate it before every imaging session, or at least occasionally, because I certainly have not, using it only once to get the whole PHD2 phase of my learning curve off the ground, so to speak, and it seems to have worked out fine until this problem arose. As to Dec backlash, when I talked to the tech where the mount was purchased about the problem in question he mentioned a belt mod that would improve guiding irrespective of whatever is happening at this particular time, and I presume this would help eliminate some of this? Backlash comp can be activated through PHD2? In general does the newer release of PHD2 provide benefits? Thank you for the link on PHD2 analysis. And so I believe I can say my PA can be eliminated as the culpit. I'll also venture to say that flexure between the guide and main scopes is unlikely to show such a drastic change from one session to the other? The Orion guidescope has a pot metal steel bracket that is held securely by the steel mount on the telescope casing and in turn holds the steel tube of the finderscope with steel adjusting screws. While I can't vouch for the performance of it in the wider scheme of things, I can at least say that it did the job just fine throughout a miserable Canadian winter and into spring until the problem in question reared it's ugly head. I see here that you believe the latest version of PHD2 would benefit, even if only slightly, my guiding, and I will update when this I get this figured out. The more help the better, thanks for the Google group link. See above for my rebuttal on the scope flexure situation.

Sorry for the delay in getting back to everyone kind enough to spare the time with this. For the past two nights I've had the scope set up outside with me dancing and praying for a break in the clouds long enough to get PA and try to get more on top of this, but all I achieved was a couple of rain showers. If we get into drought conditions here in eastern Ontario again this summer at least I'll know what to do. Thank you for your input. Video is on my list if it comes to it. I am providing the guide logs for the past 8 sessions (at least I think they are the guide logs you refer to) so a comparison may be made between the before and after. It was during the latest four the problem arose and got progressively worse. Direct contact with SkyWatcher is something I definitely would be open to. I want at least a couple of clear nights (it looks 50/50 for the weekend) before then to try the suggestions provided and then have more info to provide them if it comes to it. PHD2_GuideLog_2019-04-28_211801.txtPHD2_GuideLog_2019-04-21_221122.txtPHD2_GuideLog_2019-04-10_235837.txtPHD2_GuideLog_2019-04-06_203111.txtPHD2_GuideLog_2019-05-08_212516.txtPHD2_GuideLog_2019-05-07_212914.txtPHD2_GuideLog_2019-05-05_211227.txtPHD2_GuideLog_2019-05-04_214027.txt I appreciate your time on this, and to answer your PA speculations, I do use the polarscope in the mount (it has been checked a few days ago by my tech and found to be centered) along with the handset (also checked out for settings) coordinates and the GPS option, and I've learned to supply myself with accurate PA (on a designated level concrete triangle pointing north, to take a little of the guesswork out of it) shortly after acquiring the scope/mount in Nov last year, so say my subs, at least, until recently. I don't say it is definitely not my PA, as I don't have a lot of experience in imaging, but once I got my PA down it was never an issue until now. What the heck is a DARV, haha? Thank you for that thoughtful reply. Yes, I first noticed the creep on the last star of the three star alignment session in question but this creep is well beyond any settling in of the gears, etc. Once the last star is slewed to, I roughly center it and then exchange the eyepiece/diagonal for the DSLR, then with the handset slew the star to the 10x box on the DSLR live-view screen for focusing with the Bmask. After releasing the directional button, the image continues, slowly, to move in that direction, the first time not very far (we are seeing it at 10x here), but progressively worse each imaging session since, ruining (I'm assuming, somehow someway) more and more subs until the last session saw the object (M3) in unmagnified live-view drift halfway across the field of view while I was busy starting up PHD2! That happened on the last of four imaging sessions that saw things go from bad to worse. The mount is still under warranty and in fact I have a scheduled appointment in two weeks originally made unrelated to this to have it tweaked, etc., if necessary, as per your routine maintenance comment. But I did bring the mount in last weekend to have it looked at related to this, and two hours later he could find nothing out of the ordinary. He did mention what you've said about the stepper motors and voltage 'creep', etc. I am definitely seeing uncommanded creepage(?) and I'm almost positive my PA is good, though I must say I only have half a dozen images with very little sub loss to back that up, but I'm confident about it. I have a level concrete triangular pad to aid me in set up and have the polar routine down pat with the polar scope, handset and GPS. Your suggestions about the ST4, guide cable, etc., have been noted, but I'm still waiting for a break in the weather to test the mount further. The weekend looks like a combination of cloud and clear, so hopefully I'll get some time at it. The suspense is killing me. Thanks for taking an interest in my situation. The guide logs (I think!) are posted above with cotak, the latest four the ones where the problem might show and a few previous sessions thrown in for comparison, the before and after. I don't know how to read the logs but if you know of a tutorial could you post a link?

Any figures requested would have to wait a few days until the weather permitted another imaging setup, but I can't believe that after five months of getting my polar alignment accurate enough for 17 hours of 5-minute subs on M81-82 only a month ago with no trouble, I've suddenly lost my touch. What I am witnessing first off is continued movement of the mount after I release the directional button severe enough now for the object in view to nearly leave the DSLR field of view, and secondly, all my subs at only two minutes exposure now showing star trails severe enough to ruin every exposure. There is something wrong with the mount, and I need proof in some substantial form for my tech to send to SkyWatcher so they can send whatever board or such that I need, otherwise the mount itself must be shipped to California (I'm in Ottawa, Ontario) for analysis for who knows how long.

It looks to me like PHD2 is trying to respond to whatever is happening, from what I can tell in the graph, but my guiding has never been great from the start, always fluctuating considerably but never outrageously, which has made it difficult to tell if it is now worse, though if pressed I would say it is worse. The few short subs I took were only for framing the object while PHD2 was going though its routine before giving me the green go-ahead. I have gone though the Guide Assistant and done everything asked of me and there are no warnings or indications of trouble, and up to this point have really had no problems guiding, achieving 17 hours of 5 minute subs recently for M81-M82 with minimal loss of subs.

I suppose I could try to video with the DSLR. My earlier long-winded explanation was an effort to encompass everything I could think of to help with solutions but I may have simply muddied the waters. In a nutshell, there seems to be a voltage leak (though the tech where I purchased it said impossible, and I don't know) to one or both of the mount drives that is keeping the mount moving after the handset button is released. It was short-lived for the first couple of sessions, moving the mount only fractionally, but the last session saw the mount continue to move until M3 was halfway across the DSLR field of view! And I'm assuming that somehow the 'leakage', for lack of a better word, continues while imaging, somehow leading to short star trails. It will be several days before clear weather will allow me to run any tests, but I put all this out here now so I can possibly have some ideas about what to try to get ahold of the problem. If I can get some proof of what is happening, I can get the tech to order the driver(?) board or whatever is needed without having to to ship the mount off to California for God knows how long.

Thanks for responding. all my settings are exactly as they were before this trouble started, and the tech where I purchased the mount verified this. I'm fairly certain there is nothing amiss in my polar alignment routine because I've been doing it successfully all through the winter and early spring, as mentioned achieving at times 5 minute subs with minimal loss (actually only for M81-M82, but that was 17.5 hours of 5m subs over the course of 6 sessions with no trouble). I'm not experienced enough to comment on whether the 3-star alignment routine is a serious test of PA, except to say that after my polar alignment I am seeing the first star of the routine close to the centre of the field of view every time now and considered that a good indication that polar alignment is at least close. As to bumping the mount, no way would that happen without it being the first thing I would think of, besides, I'm talking about four straight sessions with the problem getting more serious each time. As for trying the routine in PHD2 or a quick drift check, these are things I have never attempted nor understand how to do. I never thought of the sticky button possibility but the tech never mentioned anything and my own test after reading your comments have proved negative.

No, I don't mean me or the suspicious character who wanders past your driveway once too often on imaging nights or occasionally shows up at star parties making everyone feel uncomfortable, I mean a problem with my mount, an HEQ-5 PRO that for the past four imaging sessions has progressively become unmanageable. I noticed on the first night that the 10X view in the DSLR live view of the third star in my alignment routine that I use for positioning and focus using the Bmask continued to drift toward the edge of the screen after my finger was removed from the directional button. It stopped its uncalled for rambling before going off screen and I re-positioned it and went on with my evening. I was exposing 2 minute images of M3 using PHD2 and lost 2/3 of the subs that night to short star trails, quite a surprise to me as my polar alignments are now quite accurate, always placing the first alignment star in the field of view, and I've exposed up to 5 minutes some nights with minimal loss, but only connected the dots when on the second night of imaging that darn star tried to run away again by itself. Not knowing what else to do and having already invested the time in setup, I repositioned it and continued my focus routine and then directed the scope to M3. Once on M3, I framed the DSLR image to roughly match the first night, then turned my attention to activating PHD2, and while it was going through its routine I fired off a few 15s DSLR images to check the framing and noticed that M3 was definitely drifting somewhat toward the top of the screen, but seeing as how it lost its urge to run away and still being acceptably framed, I left it as such and once PHD2 gave me the green I started imaging. I lost 3/4 of the subs that night. I checked everything I could think of but finding nothing I was worried the third night and sure enough it went exactly as the second, only I lost 4/5 of the subs. I will say that I have a stubborn streak that prevented me from asking for help until my head became sore from banging it against the wall, I mean, the mount has performed flawlessly for me for six months so maybe I picked up a flaw in my routine or maybe it was just the awkward positioning of the scope imaging M3, the only subject to seemingly engender this creeping problem. Anyway, the fourth night the image crept so far up the DSLR screen while I was setting up PHD2 that M3 was nearly out of the field of view before stopping, and I lost every sub to short stubbly star trails. Just to compare, when I first got the scope/mount I was imaging 2 minute subs with no PHD2 and keeping 3/4 or more every time. I visited my dealer this morning and we spent two hours pouring over it but found nothing, though we were limited in what we could accomplish in-store, so I either have to send it off the California for a month or two (Ahhh!) or hopefully get some idea of how to fix this without voiding warranty. Please, I leave it in your capable hands for suggestions. Somebody out there surely has seen this problem before.

Fitting for my third attempt at a globular cluster is M3. This is 1h47m of 2m subs and 100ea of darks, flats and bias, taken with the modded Canon T6i and gear listed below. My original imaging time for this was up around 10 hours but I've encountered a problem with the mount and lost most of the subs taken over the course of four nights, especially the last night when all were lost. I will be asking for help on this problem shortly, but anyway, this is the end result as I must be moving on to other subjects to get the overall experience I need.

A sight to behold.

Very nice!

That spiral on the left is awesome.

No pointers from this green thumb but a pat on the back for lots of detail up close. A whale of an image. (Sorry.)

I too use an HEQ5 PRO and the Synscan, and after polar alignment and then returning the mount to home I've never checked where Polaris is in the main scope nor frankly thought of looking because after choosing the three-star alignment the first star is always in my field of view and I have no problem completing the entire procedure. You must release the clutches to home the mount, and once done, that position should not be tampered with, so where the pole star is in the scope at that time is where it should be. I don't even take the cover off the scope until I get to the first of the three-star alignment. Remember, that first star will almost certainly end up well off centre or even out of the field of view, which was what I was dealing with before my alignments got better, while the next two should be closer. Once the mount has computed the triangulation of the three stars you should be good to go. The real test is how your subs look.

Ya, I agree with old_eyes to re-post for some tech advice because certainly it is a pleasant-looking image just looking for some extra love.