69boss302

Just as an update, I decided to get the ASI2600MM pro OSC. It seems like it will fit my needs well for now, and if I decide down the road that I need better quality, Ill get the mono and a color wheel. From what Im hearing it should do quite well! Now Im just waiting for my darn ASAIR Plus to come in but who knows when that will be Once I get that, Ill be good to go and give it a nice test. I probably can now with my laptop setup but here in New England, its getting too cold to sit out there for any extended period of time. So at this point I may just wait until the AA+ comes in. When I start shooting, Ill report back!

Awesome, thank you!

Quick question for the owners of a pro or plus. I have a plus on order, and hope to get it somewhat soon. My question is... does this device use the guide camera or the OTA camera for Go to? In other words, Ill polar align and guide with the guide camera, but if its relying on the guide camera to know where DSO's are it will matter how things are aligned at my end. It seems like it would make sense that the OTA camera will plate solve and use for Go to... Im hoping Im right , it will help sort things out in my pea sized brain

Francis, I actually thought of doing that during the day but I figured the convergence would be way off. Aligning my scope to the OTA at something a mile or 5 away would be dramatically different than something hundreds of light years away, but I could be wrong, or it may not matter that much. Either way, I think you are correct, it will sure get me closer than I am currently. As for the handset I havent used it yet but that is also a good idea. Thank you for your input.

I wanted to give an update on this. Thank you for your recommendations... I got an extension tube, dialed back my camera gain to 50 and upped the camera cycle in PHD2 to 2 seconds and I was able to get pin point stars for guiding! PHD2 now guides and locks quickly and easily. Thank you! bob

Thanks to all of you, Ive had a lot of success in getting the hang of this lately! Tonight, for the first time ever I was able to actually guide using a guide scope and phd! Im missing two pieces of the puzzle in my head though. Heres my setup: -Zenithstar 73 with field flattener. -EQ6-R Pro mount -ZWO ASI290 Mini Mono Guide camera -Orion 60mm Guide scope -Camera is currently Canon EOS 1DX Mark III, I didnt hook up the ASI 2600MC Pro OSC yet. I have a laptop using ASCOM, PHD2, Stellarium and APT. I actually have it all working well and talking to each other! I do a rough polar alignment of the EQ6, then connect all my gear to the laptop. In Stellarium I can select an item and go to it, and that still makes me smile, its just so cool. But heres what Im mentally missing. How do I align my Zenithstar and camera and guide scope all together? What I mean by that is I can have PHD2 pick a star and start guiding.....but dont know what star it is. And even if I did, how do I now align that to my main scope so they are all pointing at the same thing in the center of the field of view? Right now, I can point to a star, and it goes to it.. but it does not mean that what I pointed to in stellarium is in the center of my view of my camera. I know the guide scope doesnt really care within reason what its pointing to, its just a point of reference. But it seems to me Id like to have them all pointing at exactly the same thing. I found this out tonight because when I pointed to something big and bright (andromeda) and took a long exposure, it was nowhere to be seen in my photo (but the picture came out GREAT!) Thank you for any tips on this! bob

Thank you, That is great information. Do you have a good filter recommendation for dual band? I see a ton of them out there. bob

Thanks @malc-c. I did order an extension tube for the camera, so that should be in tomorrow hopefully to try. The slider youre talking about is already maxed out. If I move it in the other direction the image is just bright white I also notice I had the focal length wrong in the camera settings, so I just now changed that, but wont be able to try it for quite some time, as weather here is not looking promising at all

@michael8554 I think if I have it any longer, it gets too bright and is washed out, but Ill try again. Fair point on PHD2, Ill try sharpcap and see what it looks like through that.

Thanks guys, Ill give it another shot tonight. Hopefully itll be a little darker. Ill also see if I can get an extension tube.

I got in my guide scope and camera today, and started messing with it tonight....until the clouds rolled in For a scope, I got Orion 60mm Guide Scope with Helical Focuser, and for the camera, I got the ZWO ASI290mm. If it matters, its sitting on a Zenithstar 73. I entered the camera info in PHD2, but when I went to cycle through pictures for focusing every second or so, the image quality was horrible. Yes, it was a full moon, light clouds and bortle 5 so hardly good conditions at all. One of the issues I saw was when focusing it, I had to focus all the way out, and it was still blurry. I then loosened the thumb screws on the camera and took it out f the tube as far as it would go without falling out. It got better but feel it could still go more. Maybe the two arent compatible? Image below of what I got, and some settings. On top of it all, I could never get PHD2 to pick a star and start tracking. Bob

Currently I have a William Optic Zenithstar 73, but I think the combo mentioned above should allow me to put it on my next OTA when I outgrow this one. Also, I do have PHD2 now. bob

Thank you everyone. Today I ordered a ZWO ASI290mm and an Orion 60mm Guide Scope with Helical Focuser. I think its good for what I have now, as well as something I can grow in to when I get a more advanced telescope. Rest assured, Ill be asking questions about that too Bob

Thanks @barbulo Thats pretty much how Im doing it now. I just level everything up then visually get 0 to 12:00 and then line up Polaris. Thank you for the confirmation! bob

Im a little confused on something with my EQ6-R Pro. I can polar align it just fine but it doesnt seem to match up what Ive been told or what I see in some videos. My Process: - Level tripod while having it point North - Mount the EQ on it and dial in my latitude. - Loosen RA clutch and extend CW bar and level it to 90 degrees. -- This is where things go loopy for me (at least in my mind). From what I understand, at this stage, if I look through the PA scope my reticle should show 0 at 12:00. It is not, Its at 2:00 and theres nothing I can do to change it. I continue to adjust the green RA dial to read 6, then lock it. -Once I have RA leveled, I lock it and loosen Dec clutch, and level that. Set dec dial to 90, and lock it. - Now I turn the RA to 12:00 on the RA dial and the DEC dial to 0 Im under the understanding that this is now my home position. However if I do all that, now my PA Reticle is showing 0 at 5:00 or so and my OTA is pointing 45 degrees off to the right. If I ignore the numbers on the reticle I can PA just fine but I am pretty sure Im missing something. Thank you Bob

This is great information, thank you all. I am fortunate enough to have a lot of nights of clear skies in relative darkness. Bortel 4 generally but if I get in my car can get to Bortel 3. However the last time I was out that area I got surrounded by coyotes and had to run. To be honest I didnt come away with a clear decision hahaha. I guess thats a good thing though, if the difference isnt that huge, then a rookie like me would never know the difference. Since I do have the good skies and a lot of clear nights, I may lean toward the mono then.... It will be a steeper learning curve and more time but Im ok with that. @mackiedlm you mention the 1600mm is old. Do you recommend a different / newer one? Thank you guys! Good stuff! bob

Im just about to upgrade my gear...I currently have a Canon DSLR as my camera, but its time for a dedicated one. I know the pros and cons of color vs mono. Mono will ultimately get me a better image, but more work, more time, more equipment etc. I get the whole RGGB, CFA etc. all the math and science and white papers aside, whats the general consensus? Have color cameras gotten 'good enough' that its really that difficult to tell? Ive pretty much narrowed it down to the ASI1600mm and a filter wheel, or the ASI2600mc. Final cost is about the same when you get the filters etc for the mono. Im sure it has a lot to do with the OTA too but I dont want to get to that level of detail. Im just looking for opinions from those who have actual experience with each. I know the topic has been beat to death so I apologize. Thank you for your valuable input, it is much appreciated. Bob

@malc-c Thank you for that. It sounds like a nice workflow you have there. Its really not that far off from mine (except you are having success :)

Hi StevieDvd, thank you. I have the tick box unticked in EQMOD in the picture above does that mean it needs to be ticked?

Great video thank you! I went out tonight and spent a couple of hours trying some things out, and had decent success. Im happy to say that I set up the tripod and EQ in the light, leveled the tripod, set my home position and dont you know as soon as it got dark and I looked in my polar alignment scope it was almost spot on. It took 2 seconds to get it set right with the knobs after that More good news: Connected the laptop to the camera and EQ mount, fired up EQMOD and it connected right away. Went into stellarium, and it connected right away. Went into APT and it all connected right away! Click on an object in stellarium and it goes right over to it! Thats pretty much the end of my success. I was unable to plate solve because for some reason I was getting star trails when taking a 20 second test shot. I attached a screen shot. You will notice that on the left window it says Not Tracking. Plus it says Meridian Limit and Im not sure what that means. When I pressed the star icon nothing happens. It doesnt track. I noticed in APT I have the ability to track (guide) too but looks like it whats PHD2, which I do not have. I think this is where a lot of my confusion is coming in. There are 3 places or more to put in my longitude and latitude (EQMOD, APT, Stellarium...), and more than one place to track. Where do I do it from? Do long/lat/alt go in all three apps? Wheres the best place to guide? Why am I getting star trails? In APT, I did make a telescope profile with focal length. Im getting really close, I can feel it. I think once I solve the star trails/guide issue Ill be able to plate solve then take some actual pictures. Thank you all for your help, it is very much appreciated. Oh, one other thing. On the EQ6-r Pro, when I turn on the power, the Polar alignment red LED in the scope defaults to 100% brightness which is way too bright. I turn it down with the handheld but its a pain, is there an easier way? I think Im guessing I wont even need the scope if I can get the plate solve working but I could be wrong. Bob

You guys are the best! Success!! It looks like it was a few things that went wrong that you helped with! - I had the baud set wrong, it was set to auto. When that didnt work, I went to 9600. However taking malc-c 's advice, setting it to 115000 worked! - The latest version of stellarium has a bug where it wont accept a configuration for Telescope control. I had to use a back version. -When I connected stellarium to the eq, it said port not available. I had to quit eqmod (since it was using the port?) and that worked. Now, at least in my living room, I can see where my scope is pointed in stellarium, and then slew to any DSO I select. Im pretty sure I yelled out loud when it worked! Of course my mount was randomly placed in the living room so it wasnt near polar aligned, it was too cloudy out. Hopefully tomorrow it will be clear and I can try it out. Of course this is just half the battle...getting it to find DSO's. Photographing them is another challenge which I cant wait to experiment with. I cant thank you guys enough, very very very helpful, and Im pretty excited right now! bob

Hi Again. I just wanted to give an update, and cry on your shoulders a little. Ive had absolutely zero luck so far. hahaha. Im not giving up! I have watched a bunch of excellent videos. Two of the best were this one for ADP and plate solving https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=dpYXoYEKFpA and this one for stellarium/ascom etc : https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=mYTD7RuF3x8 Take out the space in the .com to watch, I hated the way int inserted the video into this message. Anyway... Just because I watched them didnt mean I had good luck. Holy hell, I installed a dozen apps while I was following him along and in the end it didnt work. It seems in order to control anything I need to have my PC recognize the the EQ mount which doesnt seem to be happening whatsoever. I installed the ASCOM stuff, as well as going to skywatcher and getting the drivers for both the mount and the syncscan handheld. I even installed syncscan for windows and that doesnt recognize my mount either. I took a USB cable from my laptop and plugged it directly in to the USB slot on the mount, and no luck. Then I read that I either need a special usb cable with some drivers in the cable, or a regular usb cable which is what I had, into the hand controller. Still no luck. At this point Im at a loss. Do I really need to install all those apps just to get this to work? bob

Thank you everyone for the excellent advice. Im going to start with APT and my DSLR using plate solving for alignment at this point, since I have the camera and a laptop. When my ASAIR plus comes in Ill get a dedicated cam for that to make it a little easier. Ill report back on how it goes!

I just ordered an ASAIR Plus but it wont be in for a month or so, whenever they get shipped. Im looking for a recommendation for a camera for auto guiding and/or polar alignment. I have a DSLR attached to my Skywatcher EQ6-R Pro but having a rough time aligning so I figure this would help. I read the manual on the ASAIR, and it looks like I have a USB connection to my DSLR so it can use that for plate solving and polar alignment (Please correct me if Im wrong), but then I was thinking of getting another small/cheap ccd camera that I can dedicate for autoguiding. Or should I not bother? If I dont get a ccd camera, is the ASAIR app good enough? Should I use PHD2? Other? Thank you Bob

GoldTop57, thank you for that, I was thinking of something exactly like that, I didnt know it actually existed. Thats perfect. Im all for using an ASI Air Pro to do alignment with if it helps. I know that now means I have to lug a laptop around with me but thats not the end of the world. What alignment camera do you recommend? bob