Jay6879

So those two pics I posted above were 5 and 10 (!) minute exposures using a Zenithstar 61ii, the ten minute one has bloated stars but they are still quite round. The 5 minute exposure looks mint. IF it happens to be mechanical, what should I be looking out for? I just got PHD2 all setup and ready to go. I'll be outside soon to give it a go. I figured I may as well format the Asiair Pro SD card that holds the OS, and then flash the card with the backup I made when I first got the Asiair Pro. I tried to format it and it wouldnt do it. Kept throwing a "windows was unable to format the card" error. Strangely enough it only showed the card as having 30mb of space, despite being a 32gb card. I tried repairing it, just regular ol windows formatting, using disk manager, even going into the cmd prompt and using diskpart to select the volume and manually format that way. It all didn't work. Didn't matter if I formatted in exfat or ntsf it was throwing up errors. I looked at the SD card and it was bent! New card on the left, old on the right. So I'm now flashing the OS backup inmade when I first got the Asiair Pro. I wonder if this is why it wasn't saving any guiding logs as well. Could this damaged SD card be the cause of my guiding woes? ...ehh..probably not. But as long as I have any new theories to test out I can keep up hope that there will be a solution!

Well, after weeks and weeks of rain and clouds and forest fire smoke, last night I finally got a chance to see if the changes would solve these issues. Swapped in new cables and managed them better to reduce any chance of snags Modified the counterbalance rod to have a bit more weight for better balance Tightened up the loose autoguiding rail Double (and even triple) polar aligned And....the issue still persists. It runs well for awhile then goes wild. I don't get it, I'm feeling utterly dejected at this point. Get a load of this, when the autoguiding WAS working I took a 5 minute and 10 minute test exposure to see how it would do... I zoomed it in to get a better look at the star shape, but that looks pretty damn good to me for 5 minutes at 360mm focal length! During that exposure the RA bounced between 2" and 3" and yet still managed to pull that off? Next I tried 10 minutes... At 10 minutes you can see the stars jussst starting to go egg shaped. But I see this and think to myself, mechanically there isn't an issue? If there was surely it would've shown up. So does it come down to software? I have no friggin idea anymore. I was going to upload the log but for some reason it didn't save it? I'll check again tonight. My next step is to try PHD2 on a laptop and see how that goes. I tried hooking it up but it didn't recognize my guide camera for some reason? Do I need to download those ASCOM drivers? I'm using a Stwr Adventurer, which is st-4 so I was under the impression ASCOM didn't apply. Do you have any other ideas here?

My bad I should've been more clear, when I said I meant when I was tightening up the worm adjustment screw. I had read that was a good way to tell if it had been tightened up too much, causing binding. That was done with just just counterweights by themselves. As for the actual balancing with the scope on it I did a little modification allowing me to add a bit more weight and I'm more balanced than I was before. Let's hope tightening that part up solves these issues!

Good idea, wish I saw this post past night before gong out. I'll be sure to give it a shot tonight, this looks to be my last clear night for at least a week. Update, so I did a double polar align last night. Managed my cords better. I attempted to reduce backlash by adjusting the screw on the bottom of the unit. There is no "clicking" backlash sound anymore when I move the unit with the clutch tight and it appears to rotate freely. I left the clutch open and had the counterweights on and it dropped smoothly into the 6o'clock position so I believe it is not too tight? In the end it didn't make much of a difference at all. It still was going wild after some time. I wasted the night, what a bummer. However, when I was putting away the Zenithstar 61 I noticed the guide scope rail moved... I was able to wiggle it back and forth a heavy 1/16 of an inch. Not much but I'm assuming it could be enough to mess with guiding? I friggin hope? Seriously, it would be wonderful to tighten that up and everything just work again...

The orientation of the camera matters as well! This is quite involved.l, a lot of variables. For what it's worth this is the orientation of the guide camera from the other night... Last night I set up the whole thingand played around with balance. What I had originally thought was well balanced I found needed to be tweaked more. I modified the counterbalance rod and added a bit more weight to the end, allowing me to adjust the counterweight that came with the Star Adventurer. It allowed me to get better balance than I did before, quite a bit better actually. I tried rotating the Star Adventurer and either felt smooth the whole way. From what I'm gathering since it's showing Dec drift I'll tighten up PA and now I've got a much better balance. On top of that I'll manage the cords better to avoid snagging, hopefully tomorrow I'll be able to check if this has made a difference. If you all don't mind I'll try to get a log at least as long as the one posted above to make a comparison? I do appreciate the help so far!

Ok I'll give that a go next time I'm out. So could the declination drift be the cause of these issues in your opinion? Like it drifts so much, and without any way to correct the drift, it eventually just fails? If I remember correctly in the guide cam screen the little circle around the star would drift to the right.

When you say it must be in the RA wheel, should I try tightening the clutch up more? I read somewhere that tightening too much would be detrimental so I would lightly tighten it. I will check the free movement tonight and will also experiment with my balancing setup...things that can be done while it is cloudy and rainy! 😞 There is declination drift despite the Asiair reporting 2 arc minutes...so would that mean it isnt to be trusted? Should I just try to get it even tighter? (1 arc minute? Not sure what happens below 1 arcminute ha)

First off I want to thank all of you for joining in on solving this conundrum, as I said despite being very new to this I feel I've gotten everything down, and if guiding just worked properly I'd be on my way so thank you for the discussion here. I am going to read through the replies so far and respond as best I can. For now... This isn't my image but it's essentially the way my guidescope is attached, using the provided rail on the Zenithstar 61.

Wtf for real? Someone else who said they took a look at the guide log shared that pic so I assumed that's what it was. Ugh. So could a cable snag or mechanical failure cause issues that occur at consistent repeatable intervals like what has happened?

I dont believe anything was stopping the mount, there is only a single 12v cable leaving the whole setup and the rest are fairly tidy. I originally thought it could be that but I had checked everything and it looked good. Not to mention the consistency of the drops being after 6 to 7 exposures each time I kinda ruled that out. Though I will definitely pay attention to cables next time. Here is a screen grab from someone else who had a look at the log and it appears once the guiding goes wild there aren't even any pulses to correct it?

Omg are you serious?! I've been loosening the rings and rotating the whole telescope all this time...

Equipment -- Star Adventurer Pro 2i Canon t3i Ha modified Zenithstar 61ii Asi 120mm mini Asi 30F4 guide scope Ok so for the first month or so that I had the Asiair Pro it worked phenomenally. I could set everything up and go to sleep, let it run the whole night no issues. I do that at least seven or eight times. There have been multiple updates to the AAP since then and I can't figure out if this is a software issue I'm having or it's hardware? There have been numerous threads and numerous people who have mentioned issues with guiding, especially since the multi star update but it's hard to say for certain if the issue was update related since there are so many hardware combinations out there. So the other night I was out for around three hours and tried all sorts of different settings and combinations to remedy the issue and I'm hoping I managed to get enough data to be useful. I'm still quite new to all this so I don't fully understand the nuances of what's contained in the guide log so any help is appreciated. Here is the issue, I will set up calibration (single star or multi star, it doesn't seem to matter) and everything will go fine. I am easily getting 2 minute subs with round stars and could go longer. Unguided it appeared 60 seconds was max with the Zenthstar 61ii before stars went oblong so it is obvious the guiding works. I will get six to seven subs in and the RA guiding goes wild. I've seen it shoot up 50"! The star is completely lost. Here is a screenshot of my polar alignment... Throughout the night when checked through plate solving my DEC moved less than 2', I slightly adjusted it once if I remember correctly. Everytime the guiding went wild it was only the RA I needed to adjust so my polar alignment is good I believe. As the night went on I tried fiddling with different settings in the app, and it showed some improvement with RA numbers. When it was working it tightened up the RA, at times to sub 1". That's good! Unfortunately, like clockwork, six or seven two minute exposures later and boom it would go wild again. I am so close to just being ready to rock here, my setup and takedown routine is *chef kiss*. I can use plate solve to find my object in minutes despite no goto. Everything is mint, except I have zero confidence in the guiding now because of these issues. I have to sit and babysit the thing, and it slaughters any exposure time I have. I managed to gather about an hour and a half worth of data in almost three hours because of this nonsense. I hope I've providing enough information here to help with trying to figure this out, this forum hasn't let me down yet when it has come to my incessant questions since I started last year and I'm hoping I can get some answers on what exactly is happening here! I appreciate any help, thanks in advance. Here is the log... PHD2_GuideLog_2021-07-03_232628.txt

Would the guide cameras exposure have anything to do with it, should I drop it lower? I was using 3s.

I saw a guy on YouTube who reversed the foot as well, it's just such a pain in the ass cause it won't fit in the soft carry case it came in if I do that so everytime I gotta flip it back at the end. Tbh I never tried to see what happened without guiding, though that probably should've been my first process of elimination. I'll give that that try tonight and see how it goes.

Brand new Energizer Max batteries in the Star Adventurer, balanced fairly well. Would the position of the camera/scope setup on the dovetail make a difference? Sliding it back or forwards?

I finally received my modded t3i and field flattener for the Zenithstar 61 so I'm ready to go. I'm using a Star Adventurer 2i, asi120mm and asiair pro. Get everything good set up, acquire target and do the guiding calibration. It bounced between .9 and 1.2, 180s subs produced nice pinpoint stars. 10 or so images I to the routine it starts going wild, rms shoots way up and stars streaking. Redo calibration and same issue. Any ideas what the issue could be? How do I go back to single star guiding if I want to try that out instead of multistar?

Welp, that's exactly what I ended up doing. I purchased a modified dslr (selling my old one), and I'm ready to rock. I appreciate all the help here for giving me that little boost to finally just modify and get it over with.

I'm jn a bortle 5 location so there is light pollution but not extreme, but I guess if the filter helps cut out even that little but it's only going to improve the image eh? So I should still see a boost in Ha despite my camera being unmodified right? I've been told a few times already my camera will be useless for nebula so I'm trying to make this work without modifying it!

This is good! I'm new so I'm not exactly looking to add any more complexity at this point, but I like that the option is there to add it as separate data. One thing I forgot to mention is I have an unmodified Canon T3i, would this filter still make a difference over no filter?

Do I essentially have to capture the data twice and then combine it in post? Or is imaging just straight L-enhance good enough?

Oh boy, I haven't even had a chance to try it out and I'm already getting aperture fever for the 73. What kind of hobby is this?

Have you thought about getting an Asiair Pro? It has elevated the whole game for me. I've got a Star Adventurer so same schtick, no goto and a pain in the ass to find objects. With the asiair pro I would find the whirlpool galaxy in an app like stellarium, get the dec and RA coordinates. I'd point the camera in the general direction and take a short 2 second exposure and then plate solve. It then gives me the coordinates of where the camera is pointed, I compare it to the objects coordinates and adjust. I can get the object in frame in five minutes or so most of the time. And when you are close enough you can then use the annotate feature, it'll put a nice green circle around any objects in frame, even if you can actually see it in the preview. It has made imaging so much smoother, less time messing around with thirty second exposures looking for a faint blob iand more time imaging. Honestly I was getting very frustrated by the whole ordeal before I picked one of those up. This allowed me, for the first time, to properly image across multiple nights. And yeah you can stack multiple exposure lengths, and for many objects it is recommended. Especially for HDR imaging. Just make sure that each night has its own set of calibration frames. As for reframing on different nights without an asiair pro? It's brutal, I honestly have no tips, I couldn't figure out a way to do it efficiently and consistently. Maybe others will chime in with help on that?

Wow you got 4 minutes out of a Zenithstar 73?! I have a Star Adventurer 2i (more or less the same as the Skyguider) and I opted for the Zenithstar 61 because I thought weight and focal length would an issue. Haven't tried it out yet as I'm still waiting for the field flattener to show up, backordered. Your Bode's galaxy pic doesn't look too overexposed to me though. Imagine what you'd achieve with four or five hours worth of data! I'm only a month or so into imaging as well and have much to learn still, everytime I go out I learn something new.

Geez, so you mean I've been caught up in marketing fluff from decades ago eh? Scoundrels. Alright, I'll put only accurate info in from now on. Thanks for the help.

Hello, I have just purchased a Zenithstar 61 ii and I'm trying to see how well objects frame up on Telescopius. The focal length is 360mm, but with the 1.6 crop factor it equals out to 576mm. In the settings would I put 360mm or 576mm? I appreciate the help!