AstroNebulee

Looking forward to having another az gti owner on board here and your generous wife. Can't wait to see your setup 👍

Hope you get some clear skies to test it out, let us know how you get on 👍

Hi Welcome to the thread. 1. I image guided with a sw 72ed (420mm) so cannot really comment on unguided. 2. My payload is 3.9 kg for scope, camera, guidescope, asiair pro then add 2kg worth of counterweights, so over the recommended. 3. I have owned a SA but as soon as I got my az gti I never used it again. The az gti goto along with tracking in ra and dec (alt az) beats the SA for me. Just more versatile in my opinion and like Elp said I'd never put my scope on a SA. The az gti much sturdier. Cheers Lee

I think in the alignment screen somewhere is says to clear previous alignment I think, on this page in manual says alignment - reset alignment. I've included the manual to download too 👍 enmanual_20200721 (1).pdf

Good point indeed, it's been so long since I've used alt az I forgot about that. I think you can clear previous alignment which I think I used to do before starting or ending a session.

That's is so frustrating and annoying indeed. What phone did you try this time with your mount?

WOW! That is a beast of a scope 🤯, is it a case of highlander and there can only be one! (fits in the obsy) she's going to pull in some targets wow, nice one 👍

I've been fitting the astro essentials dovetail bar and can see what you all mean, the declination bolts turn much easier now, thank you for your help.

Thank you. Yes I think the black tape is the way to go and good to hear you suffered no initial light leak but the tape has stayed in place for so long. I shall do the simple thing and apply the tape around the tilt adjuster, like I said before adter sorting the tilt out finally I don't want to touch the imaging train atall 😬Edit.... Added the black tape

Yep just what I was thinking too 👍, don't really wanna be pulling the imaging train apart now I've got the tilt sorted now, took 2 months to do, hoping there's a clear spell tonight to try the tape job, thank you

Thank you, I do have a longer dovetail bar at hand so will change it over and then I should be able to move the whole setup to be inline with the centre of the tripod 👍

I think I've finally sorted my tilt issue with my setup. But now with adjusting the tilt I seem to (I think) have a light leak in the bottom left and this is from the corner with most tilt applied. I'm thinking of coving the gap all around the tilt adjuster with some DIY job, has anyone else suffered this. Cheers Lee

Thanks for all your help guys, sorry if I'm sounding thick, so I have to move my scope up a bit in the direction the arrow is pointing so the whole load is more over the central tripod extension?

Really nice guiding figures Ray, I'd be delighted eith those on the az gti 👍

I've been searching and seen these on fleabay and the amazon jungle but don't know what size to get though.

Thanks Ray, like the idea but I have a small blue plate attached to the underneath of my az gti and can't move it up any. I woukd if thought there's some sort of different bolts with bigger heads in the or replacement knobs to fit over the knurled ones.

Hi I have a William Optics high latitude wedge for my az gti mount and when polar aligning the Dec I find it hard to adjust the knurled screws as there's a bit of weight on the wedge and it's tough to get them to turn easily with clutch off. I'm wondering are there different bolts I could use that have bigger grips on them to make turning them to adjust declination during pa easier. Cheers Lee

As @Shimrodsay above check out the az gti mount owners thread. You maybe able to pick up a cheapish asiair pro there's a few for sale on abs atm then you can do it all from an app and power tank for power. You can also get a polar scope adapter from Ali baba that could work with polar scope, check out the az gti thread. I was going to try the polar scope adapter but got an asiair pro soon after so never tried it. But to much of a ballache trying to calibrate the polar scope. So I went more expensive easy option 😂

Hopefully a wedge will become available soon and your there with sturdy eq mode 👍

It's a lovely set up there Phil, I love what you guys are doing with the evoguide and lenses. Regarding set up weight I use the star adventurer tripod that you can buy with the az gti and the total weight on the set up is near 6kg! The scope, guidescope, asiair and 294mc pro all come to 3.9kg but add on the 2 kg of counterweights takes me quite high.

Thank you Michael, at least I know it's sensor tilt rather than scope tilt, that gives me hope and hopefully will adjust this with my tilt adjuster now.

Hi I have been suffering with eggy stars in my images and tried the test of taking an image and then rotating the camera 180 degrees to se if its camera or scope tilt. To me the eggy stars still seem to be generally in the bottom left corner in these 2 images. I've run the two images through ccd inspector but not sure what I'm looking at to be fair. My set up is sw 72ed AzGti eq mode zwo asi 294mc pro ovl field flattener. Any help is much appreciated as I'm losing my mind after 2 months of this. These are 10 second unguided subs just to test the issue. Cheers Lee

You can edit the exposure time by ticking the box next to the exposure time, I used to do it with my Canon 600D I think I used 0.00032 or something, the asiair will tell you the minimum if you go to quick. As said before don't worry about taking darks with your 600d they don't do anything and may make your image worse, save your time and grab more light frames instead. Just take lights, flats, bias. Can't remember if I used to shoot flat darks with my Canon 600D or not. Regarding the noise in your images as you say, can you try stacking and processing without the darks. With your flats have you tried adding a t shirt stretched over the scope end or a few sheets of blank paper to diffuse the led screen a bit. I know I use a 294mc pro, but with my led light panel set up I always try to shoot 2 sec flats and get the histogram to just below halfway. I use my led screen (with mod casing seen on sgl) on lowest setting and blank paper sheets to get to the desired histogram and 2 sec exposures. After testing this, I can now keep the led panel set up the same and just pop on the end of the scope at the end of an imaging session and fire off 30 of them.

Definitely more integration time will make your 8mage better and less noisy too. Your guiding rate is good for the mount, hopefully you get your clear night tonight, good luck Ray and keep going, as I have found there are good times and bad with imaging and the good times certainly make you forget the bad times 👍

I would of thought you'd still need one as why would they make a reducer flattener for the 100 ED else, but I'm probably wrong 👍