johngm

Hi Paul, I am also late to this post, and enjoyed your thoughts. I, like the opening post, was looking to replace my star adventurer. Don't get me wrong, its a fantastic portable mount. The only thing wrong, even with my knowledge of the night sky, it can take me up to 30 mins to locate/align and centre my target for imaging. There are 2 lightweight travel mounts I was looking at: Explorer Scientific iEXOS-100 PMC or iOptron smartEQ Pro+ Goto. I am concerned after reading this review in the sky at night magazine https://www.skyatnightmagazine.com/reviews/mounts/explore-scientific-iexos-100-pmc-eight-equatorial-mount-review/ that the mount loses its tracking if the WIFI signal I lost, and this can happen when your tablet goes into standby mode. Reading the review for the EXOS-200 PMC, they have the same issue, and they raised this with Explorer Scientific, who say they are looking into it. My question would be, when they have a solution, can this be rectified with a firmware update ? or would only be available on future Mounts. ? All said and done, we are looking at budget mounts, but I don't want to ruin a nights imaging due to lost tracking. What I do like about the ES, is its belt driven, and tracks very well once aligned, (from what I have read that is) plus, it has a 6.8Kg imaging load capacity compared to the 5Kg of the iOptron, but there again, I would only be imaging with my Altair 60EDF and DSLR, so both mounts would comfortably suit my needs. I am attending the IAS-2019, so, I hope both ES and iOptron are both on display and gauge opinion from the exhibiters. As this post is a few months old now, I'm hoping other SGL members have purchased either of these 2 mounts and can give there input to this thread. John

Hi, 5haan, As a footnote, I tried everything on here what other guests have suggested, increasing loop times, played around with other PHD2 settings etc, all to no avail. And BTW, I am using exactly the same guide Cam as you. John

Hi 5haan. Not quite the same issue but very similar, please read my thread. I tried all sorts of things, I even wasted over £200 on a new motor control board. Whatever I did, I could not get it to calibrate with PHD2. it would calibrate west, then would not east step and came up with calibration failure. I then had a brainstorm and tried an old windows XP laptop I had, due to the fact that I tried everything else. Then, et voila, it worked sweet as a nut. Are you running windows 10 64 Bit ? because in my case, this was definitely the case. At first, everything was great, but when I think back, it all started with one of the dreaded widows updates. If you have an old PC or Laptop with XP, please try this, and report back, because I would love to know I am not alone, and this could be helpful to other fellow stargazers. Regards John

Hi Everyone. Has anyone tried pulse guiding this mount yet via EQMOD with direct cable connection ? John

This will be fantastic if it can. If so, there will be a Skywatcher SA up for sale ??

As I am a celestron CGEM owner, and my current travel mount is the SA, does anyone now if this AZ-GTI mount can be pulse guided via EQIMOD, as I am not familiar with the EQUIMOD interface. John

Yes, I have seen this on Astronomy and Nature Website. It does beg the question now though, when used with the EQ wedge, and the updated firmware, is this a better buy than the SA?, considering this has wifi, goto, and twin encoders + identical payload capacity and the SA does not. John

Sorry, forgot to mention, I only used darks, no flats, hence the dust bunny. Skywatcher ED80, Modified Canon 600D, Only a slight stretching and tweeking in pixinsight. John

Hi Pete, All new canon DSLR's have 2 filters. Only the rear filter needs to be removed. I had mine Done by Andy Ellis at Astronomiser who I highly recommend. It cost me £95 including return postage. If you check out his website, he describes in detail what the process involves. the image below was just 30 X 180s exposures taken from my garden with medium light pollution with a CLS clip filter John

Hi All, I just wanted to give my 2 pennies worth and hope its helps anyone with the SWSA. I have a QHY polemaster, which, along with Backyard EOS are probably the 2 most useful value for money bits of kit I have purchased since getting into Astrophotography around 12 months ago. I currently own a Celestron CGEM mount, and Skywatcher ED80 Scope, plus the SWSA, which I purchased for the American eclipse in August. The point of this post, and I hope I'm not trying to teach my granny to suck eggs, but if you have a polemaster, they now do an adaptor for the SWSA. I have just ordered one and will let you all know how it goes. You can load and Balance your equipment, and then polar align without dismantling. I hope this helps. Regards John