Lostone

On 27/10/2020 at 02:22, Xsubmariner said:

My Altair Astro 250TT (GSO 10” ver2 truss ) has a back focus of 230mm from the back plate. Yours may vary slightly but it’s a good place to start.  If you are new to this type of scope, be prepared to find a lot more fiddling is needed to get it just right for your imaging train.  I have a 3” feather-touch fitted and used it with my SX36 full frame camera, so your cameras will present similar fun. Getting the guiding right with an OAG (loadstarX2) was problematic given the prism is on the edge/outside the flat field (due to sensor size), this resulted in guide stars that are elongated which compounded the usual seeing challenges. No a problem if you have an ONAG or are fortunate to have an unguided Mount, in the end I settled for using a smaller sensor with this scope.

Good luck with your scope, you will learn a lot configuring your new setup.

Martin

That's sofar that's been the best help I have gotten from any of the forums.  My Moonlite 2.5 focuser just arrived today so I should be able to work on finding the focus point and if and what spacers I will need to use between the focuser and the backplane of the scope housing.  I'm hoping it won't be too much of a pain.  I know there is a learning curve with this. Especially since I've been using Refractors for so long and just now deciding to go with a reflector that has much more reach.  I'm looking forward to imaging and re-imaging some of the smaller objects out there.  I am still waiting on my Laser Collimation from starlite industries, but who knows how long that will be

I just picked up a GSO Ritchey Chretien 10".  While i'm waiting on a focuser and a few other things.  I tried doing some research on the back focus for one of these.  I have always been using Refractors and the Ritchey Chretien are a different beast altogether.  Anyway It came with 3 spacers, 2" & 2ea 1"  Anyway the 2 camera set's that I will be using are the QHY600 Mono with filter wheel, and a ZWO Asi6200MC with filter tray.  Normally I will be using a 55mm backfocus with these camera on my Esprit 120.  However from my understanding the back focus on an RC is much further away and I am unable to find any kind of documentation that tells me what it should be and where it is measured from on the back of the scope.

So on that note, is there anyone using a GSO RC 10" (Truss) than can help me out.  How many and which spacers are you using and what should be back focus be along with where you are measuring it from.

Any help would be greatly appreciated and would probably save me a couple of nights of trial and error.  I would rather have 1 night instead of many to get it dialed in.

9 minutes ago, michael8554 said:

You only need one star to guide! 

Seriously, what do you actually mean? 

If using PHD2 to guide, that chooses the star, not you. 

Are you saying that the stars are not good enough for PHD2 to autoselect? 

What exposure are you using? 

What gain is the camera set to? 

The ASI174 is a fine imaging camera, but at 500 dollars is a bit overkill for guiding purposes, the ASI120 MINI ought to work with your current guidescope. 

Michael 

The 174 might be 500 where your at, but bairly over 300 for me.  Anyway the 120 does work, but not good enough, It does pick a star but it's not always the best star.  I have no issues with phd2, but this is a personal preferance.  I live is a class 8/9 sky area and the 174 has a better sensor than the 120 which is just soso.  Plus the 174 has a much wider field of view

I'm looking at replacing my current guidescope with a new one.  I currently have a 50mm with a focal leigenth of 242mm and current camera is an asi120mini.  The reasone I'm looking at a new scope is I normaly can only pickup 3 or 4 star's to choose from for my guiding.  I'm thinking of someware in the 60mm range with a shortor focal leigenth.  My thinking in this may be flawed, if so tell me.  I have a new camera on it's way. The ASI174 to replace the 120mini.  Would a guidescope with a wider appature and a shorter focal leigenth give me a wider field of view? or is it something that is a moot point?  Looking for suggestions and guidance place.

On 21/04/2020 at 23:56, Notty said:

I currently run an ED80 ds pro on an HEQ5, and although the ED80 is fine for wider field images obviously for galaxy season it's not ideal. I used to have a 200PDS reflector which (when collimated) gave a nice resolution, but was too large and heavy and the mount struggled a bit (and I hated the whole collimation faff).

My question is if anyone could recommend any other non-reflector type of scope my mount might be able to handle? Or maybe it doesn't exist but thought I'd ask. I image with ASI1600m+filters or unmodded EOS6D

thanks, Andy

I am currently using a Sky Watcher 120ED on a EQ6-R mount.  One thing you should be looking at is, how much weight can your mount handle and how much will the new configuration weight.  If weight is an Issue, I'd recomend one of the Carbon Fiber scopes.  Explorer Scientific has a dicent priced 102ED.

On 12/02/2018 at 04:10, RayD said:

It is a nice piece of kit, although there is a forum member who had to return theirs due to the grub screw threads twice stripping whilst trying to mount it.  I never had such issues and it fitted very easily and it seems to work very well.  Mine is on my Tak106 but I believe they fix in exactly the same way on the Baader.

The unit comes with a stand-alone programme on a USB stick, and also 32 and 64bit ASCOM drivers, which work perfectly in SGP.

It's pretty quick, but seemingly also pretty accurate.

So far very happy but early days yet.

Bright flashing LED is annoying and can't be switched off, so hopefully they will address that in a future update.

 

Have you hooked this up to your Esprit 100ED,  i'm looking at picking up the V2 of the focuser.  Any issues other than your red blinking light?

I'm pondering on getting a ZWO ASI294 cooled camera for use with my Esprit 100ED.

What i'd like to know is if there will be anything else needed to ensure the camera mounts properly to the back of the scope.  I'm using a DSLR now and am wanting to move to a dedicated camera.

If your using this scope & camera setup.  You advice and experience with it would be greatly appreciated.