Enceladus Dan

This is my 8 year old daughters, She watched me with my entry above and wanted to take her own picture. you may disqualify as really both of us made this. I set up my Eos M3 to wifi control from my phone and she took 500 frames with an intervalometer app. i showed her what settings to use in PIPP, Registax as they were still set up from my image. and this is her image shes proud of. again please disqualify as a two person effort. Regards Danny

This is my entry, taken on the 10th December 2021, taken at 1800 just before the moon set. i tried out my ASI462mc for this and being new i recorded in 8bit mode causing me issues with registax. i had to change the PIPP output from Tiff to Bmp to get it to work. im not sure if i lost any detail by not changing the bit rate but im happy with the outcome. 33,000 frames were taken from the video and the best 3,000 were stacked in Registax, i had a play with the wavelet sliders not really knowing how they work just stopped when i was happy. Regards Danny

I had a chat with FLO and the thought is, as others have stated these are cheap mounts and the fact I can track more than 45 seconds unguided is doing well. I asked about the worm drive going tight in the same spot each rotation means I can't adjust out all the backlash. The offer was I can send it back and they would tune it which is chargable service. for now I think my plan will be to plod on and try the 1 direction guiding. I could swap the worms but in my head it would create too much backlash in RA by the time I adjust out all the binding. Possibly could slip where so loose. I may look at just buying a worm drive online, I saw on teleskop-express.de they can do one shipped to UK for £55. Hopefully soon I can have a full night session and try some ling exposures as so far I've only practiced setting up my guiding system due to clouds. Regards Danny

an entry for category 2, I have no idea if I was supposed to add the constellation lines or not. this was only 10 x 30 second frames and 5 x 30 second darks. stacked in DSS and just levels adjusted in gimp. Thanks Danny

Further updates, I adjusted out as much backlash as I felt safe to do. The tight side of the worm was marked on a sticky label on the slow motion control. It left me with just under 180 degrees usable. I orientated it so I can put the usable area inline with the worm carrier bolt as a reference. It felt much better and after calibration I ran the guide assistant which managed to complete the backlash measurement. It came back as 20,366 ms with a recommendation to guide in one direction as mentioned by Onikkinen. I guess that is a little on the large side so I’ll contact FLO for recommendations as the mount is still relatively new. thanks for help and guidance everyone. regards Danny

There was a break in the clouds last night so I quickly set up and run the guiding assistant. Dec backlash measurement was aborted due to not enough south movement. I'm going to adjust to avoid using the worms tight spot and try again on next clear night. See how it looks if I only use part of the worm. Regards Danny

Earlier in the week Saturday was looking promising but Arwen has other plans.

Thanks Onikkinen, your posts in my last thread helped me figure out it was my tracking and not PA, also helped me decide to go guided. My First try guided was able to go 5 mins OK, I do need to try properly as it was a rush and skies were no good for imaging. I will try and get out before the moon phase goes into last quarter and use the time to practice and get measurements. I might even adjust dec and re-measure same night. I did think of swapping worms to pass my problem to the RA as I had read its less of an issue but was worried I'd make it worse. As for the SW lottery i feel I had a small win or break even as the RA is good now I adjusted out the binding. For the deliberate Polar misalignment I read it and get the idea but didn't quite understand the how. I assume it's the altitude is slightly out so it corrects one direction. Regards Danny

Thanks everybody, I wished I had looked into the backlash sooner, being completely new I assumed it was a wear thing and being a new mount it was ready out the box and I didn’t need to check it…….. Lesson learned. it would have saved me a lot of time and stress, again being new I thought it was me and my alignment was terrible so I would spend hours trying again and again and end up just using 45 second and loose 50% of the to elongated stars. Now I adjusted RA to not bind I get 90 seconds easy. Now I’m just starting with guiding I’ll be flying and can’t wait to see how my images improve. I’ll pop back after clear skies (Saturday for me in the uk but it changes daily) with some measurements and hopefully some news. thanks Danny

Thank you, at least I know that it wasn’t a stupid idea I had. I think my course of action will be to measure the backlash in PHD2 , I think I read the instructions right saying the assistant will measure it for me. From there I’ll contact FLO to see what they say, while I weigh up options I’ll adjust out as much as I can in the best potion and run some sessions to see how it goes. As my mount isn’t goto I assume I’ll use Dec axis less as I’m not slewing from target to target. If a replacement is an option I’ll need to think as my RA is pretty good and don’t fancy ending up with RA being like my Dec. thanks Danny

After what I saw just by taking the worm carrier off I think I should have a go at a full strip down, clean and re-grease. Just need to courage to get on with it. I have no reservations with taking driveshafts and suspension springs out of cars, this is just that bit more delicate and I'm quite heavy handed lol.

Also to clarify the movement from 12 to 1 is the rotation of the worm as seen by the slow motion knob before the Dec axis moves. I'm not sure if that is where I'm supposed to measure free play there or at the axis.