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Showing results for tags 'tracking'.
Found 36 results
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Vixen Polarie Star Tracker with Vixen Quick Polaris Locator Compass in mint condition - For Sale. This mint condition Polarie Star Tracker and Vixen Polaris Locator Compass have only been used during the course of a review that I carried out for Vixen UK and will be supplied in their original boxes with manuals. This tracker is the ultimate in portable camera tracking mounts being lightweight yet manufactured to Vixen’s usual exemplary high standard and the additional Vixen Polaris Locator Compass makes polar alignment for wide field imaging quick and simple. The new price for the two items would be £399.00 For sale at £195.00 delivered. Payment by bank transfer - WILL NOT SELL OUTSIDE UK. Polarie Star Tracker Vixen Quick Polaris Locator Compass
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I know it may be a bit of a long shot but I'm looking to buy a HEQ5 Pro mount or an NEQ6 Pro or something similar. Preferably belt driven but not necessary as can happily modify it. Please let me know if you have anything! Thanks.
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Hi! I'm Fran Not so long ago I took a picture of the ISS I never thought I was going to be able to get with the equipment I have. After saving for a long time, I was able to buy my first scope, an OTA Skywatcher 200P. I adapted it to be used in a dobsonian base because it was the cheapest way I had to get it to work. One night, I thought it might be cool to try to aim and record with my phone an ISS pass overhead. During the first attempt, I messed up the focus extremely bad but you can't imagine how happy I was to get a white blob in a frame that only I knew was the ISS. The following afternoon I tried again. This time the flyby was almost exactly overhead and the night was crystal clear. So I manually tracked the station looking through the finder scope and recording it with my phone at 1080p 60fps. Without much expectations I downloaded the files into my computer to review them. And was shocked with the results. The video was processed with PIPP, AutoStakkert and RegiStax. If someone told me the image was taken with a phone and manually tracked with a shitty dobsonian base I would not believe him! I got really lucky that night, but I can not be happier with the results. I believe I got to the edge of what I can accomplish with the equipment that I was able to buy. I'm not sure if ext step up should be a real camera or a mount. Anyway, any of them are too expensive If you want to see the frames before processing (and some nice shots of the moon that night), I'll leave a link to the video where I show them: Thank you so much for reading it all. Cheers, Fran -
Hi Tonight I was looking at Jupiter and got some nice views with a range of eyepeices. The best image detail wise and for clarity of image was a 15mm, which on my 8" Evolution gives me appx 135X I tried using my Televue 2X Barlow which normally works fine. I can't remember exactly which eyepiece this happened with, maybe the 15mm or a 9mm, but when I used the barlow the planetary image would soon disappear out of the eyepiece. The mount seemed to otherwise be tracking OK although notice the planets seem to move out of the eyepiece view after a while. So did I have too much magnification with the Barlow? I think I did manage to get focus, the image just wouldn't stay put. Thanks for any insights or advice Siouxsie -
Hi, I have a Celestron 8" Evolution with StarSense. Once I have enabled Auto Align, done the calibration stars, and enabled Auto Align again - after all that is done, will the telescope then automagically track the first object I choose to observe? I have read all the manuals etc but I haven't used a telescope with tracking before, only manual ones. I feel I might be missing something very obvious here but such is the nature of learning! My learning curve is still very steep!! My understanding is that the telescope will track automagically, I don't have to enable tracking as such. I can select 3 tracking modes - Sidereal, Lunar and Solar. I believe the tracking defaults to Sidereal. Do I have that right? IE I don't have to switch tracking on as such? Note - I only have a StarSesne HC, it didn't come with a NexStar HC - will this be OK? Does re-centering an object in the eyepiece while tracking damage or strain the motors? Thanks for any advice, opinions or thoughts Siouxsie
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For quite a while I've had an issue where the images I take have trails that show up when going higher then about 20 seconds exposure time. I do a rough polar alignment where you can still see the polaris in the scope as I live in the north of Sweden and the EQ3-2 mount doesn't allow for accurate adjustment above 64 degrees. I'm 100% sure that the locatation, time zone and time is correct, I've also parked the scope to the position with the scope facing polaris and the weights downwards. I did a 3 star alignment and after a 1 min exposure with my Olympus 420 the result was as the first image I attached. For 20 second exposures I get the second image attached but once in a while without having touched the scope (yes I am 100% sure of this, I stood perfectly still a good distance away from the scope and triggered the shutter with a remote control) I get results such as the third image. My guess is that the cogwheels are slipping somehow but I'm gonna ask here to be sure.
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Hi A very newbie question here but for the life of me cannot figure it out. Have an EQM35 goto mount linked through a skywatcher wifi dongle to a synscan pro app on my android galaxy s9 phone. I van use the app but have a couple of things that are either greyed out or dont operate when pressed: 1. Point and track 2. Doesn't seem to track (tried the.moon) using lunar tracking but mount doesn't move Thanks in advance for your help. Tim
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Hi everybody, i'd like to share with you the design, making and progress of a project my astro club endeavoring to. I'll post here relevant info in a run-up to where we got to so far. Here is the mission: 800mm in diameter. That's it. A lot of inspiration out there but it needs to be able to do science. So it's a relatively fast Newtonian capable of tracking for tens of minutes. So we realized that we were facing 2 projects in one. The mirror on one side and the mount on the other. Shall we start with the mount? What's the best compromise in terms of ease to build and cheap components and the chance to have a stiff yet light structure. An alt-az, like the biggest telescope! - or rather a glorified dobsonian in this case. Ambitious? Definitely Any comment/suggestion is welcome!
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Hi, As my GoTo is successfully finished (some cosmetic issues remain) I shoud focus my attention on planets' positions. I have proper source of information: fantastic book "Astronomical Algorithms" by Jean Meeus, thus I will sort the planets soon. But planets are not a challenge for me at this moment, they are just something obvious to do in my list. I have another idea and ambitious plan for next project within the year: locating and tracking the ISS to be able to make a video of its fly, not only transition. Similarly to other objects, I need some equations. I'm pretty sure they are available somewhere, because plenty websites or apps offer showing current position of the ISS. I will use this topic for sharing a progress ot the project.
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I have had an issue with the mount of my CPC800. I have noted that sometimes when slewing through a large angle in azimuth the note of the gear noise changes. Also once or twice the target image has taken off to the left while I was preparing to image and even motor speed 3 would not hold it on screen. Also I have once or twice left it unattended for several minutes and returned to discover that I needed to use the optical finder to recover the target. This makes me wonder if something is binding. It still works far better than the 6/8 SE mount, so I am reluctant to send it for repair or open it up without a clear pointer to the nature of the problem and likely fix. It would be a more serious issue for long exposures/deep space imaging.
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I have an EQ5 telescope mount which i use for astrophotography. I have modified it with a motorised RA axis using a bipolar stepper motor - my thread for the build is here . I want to expand the mount's tracking ability by motorising the DEC axis and using a guide scope/camera. I generally use the mount in fairly remote locations so would like to use a raspberry Pi for portability. I understand that I'll need to use a Raspberry Pi Camera Module for the guide camera. The capability I want is: 1. guide the mount along RA and DEC axes using a guide star as feedback 2. track the mount using the RA axis only, and if possible continuously take 20-30 second exposures on the guide camera (this functionality is optional, but would assist in polar alignment of the mount) I don't want any GOTO capability. I am very new to RPi and need some help: - do I need to write code for this, or is there existing programming available for what I want to do? - is it possible to avoid the use of screens (in the field)? My preferred option would be to flick a switch to start and stop the guiding, with another switch for alignment mode (or something simple like this). - do I need to use any particular stepper motors/drivers for raspberry Pi? I'm using a bipolar stepper motor running quarter steps, with an A4988 stepper driver - is the RPi 3 Model B+ the unit I should buy? Thanks
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Messier 31 Andromeda Galaxy Distance from Earth - approx 2.5 million light years After spending ages getting a decent polar alignment, the clouds were on their way in so I only had a small window of opportunity remaining. This was my first real run with the new setup (minus the ST80 and ZWO ASI120 as i was having issues there) and I almost gave up. SO glad I didn't!! Focus was off a bit though I think and I've definitely over-processed EXIF: Nikon D5300 270mm f / 5.6 @ ISO 800 21 x 30 second subs Bortle 5 Stacked in Sequator. Very quick minor crop and global edits in LightRoom. No darks/flats/offsets
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Last night I finally managed to get out and have a go at tracking for the first time with the SW SA. DEFINITELY need a ball head... Once I figured out that I should be leaving the latitude adjustment alone (yes I'm THAT much of a noob at tracking and polar alignment), about the only target in my FOV was M31, and even that was about to vanish behind a roof! But I did manage a few 30 second subs before it disappeared. Could've probably gotten longer exposures but the intervalometer wasn't setup and I was out of time. But I'm happy enough for a first time out. The attached is just the test image from last night. About half a dozen subs, Canon 550D, ISO 3200, F/4, cropped down from 55mm Oh, I did notice that whatever way up I put my PA scope, it was upside down...any ideas?
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Hi! Last week I received my Star Adventurer, and I'm learning how to use it. I had no issues aroud 0 - 80mm, but yesterday I was out trying to take pictures with my 200mm Takumar (300mm on my DX body), and I was struggling to point it towards my target (Andromeda). I know where it is, I could see it with my own eyes, yet, I wasn't able to point my lens towards, only after like 40 minutes... :/ I don't know how others do it, so any advice would be appreciated! What I was thinking about: 1. hot shoe adapter + phone holder + phone / tablet with stellarium, so I would see in the app where my lens pointing (adds weight) 2. some kind of hot shoe adapter + a reflex sight 3. some kind of hot shoe adapter + a green laser pointer 4. a small scope, maybe a finder scope attached to the other end of the declination unit 5. maybe it's overkill, but is it possible to make the Star Adventurer GoTo somehow? Thanks in advance!
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Hello all !! I have owned a C5 in the past but the 5 inch set up on a Nexstar se mount is very attractive. The C5 can be adapted to be a f/10 scope or a f/6.3 with proper adapter, great for wider field viewing and photo work or you can just use it at f/10 for planets , and double stars.a good multipurpse scope. With a wedge I can do astro photo work as well very cool. I think I want the Nexstar SE mount cause you can change optical tubes. I if I want extreme low power wide field views I can buy a 3 ich APO at f5.0 , or I can use the C5 at f/10 to f/6.3 two scopes in one, or if I want more light grasp I can buy a C8 to look at galaxies and nebula in brighter and more detial the planets look better as well. Had a cousin who had a C8 still remember Saturn in this scope like it was yesterday. The C8 also does the magic trick of f/10 or f/6.3. very cool. With certian C8's and I think C5's you can do Fastar a really cool trick as well you can do astro photo work at f/2 thats very atteactive for future endevors. 30 second photos vs 45 min photos. What do you think I should do in the future of my needs. I dont need to hear about 2000.00 APO scopes , I hate equetorial mounts completely .Id rather buy the SE mount and then buy a wedge for it to do my basic astro photo work. Besides if I love astro photo work I will probably buy a mount thats legendary for astro photo work later. So I dont need to be inundated with stuff about equetorial mounts that are way out of my price range any ways my price range is 400.00 to 1200.00 . If you have information on other GOTO alt/az mounts I would love to know about them thats the way I m gona go. Its really an open book right now Im not gona buy the scope for a year . So My opinion as to what I want is probably gona change as time goes on . Right now I am engrossed in binocular astronomy learning the craft of star hopping and reaquanting myself with the night sky. I want to go to a semi local astronomy club to see if anyone has this scope and look at it in person to see what I really want . If storage and transportaion and accsess to a good site was not an issue, Id buy a computerized push to dob probably 10 or 12 inch , but then again I could not do any photo work with a dob other than video planet/moon work . SO I thnk the nexstar SE is the system for me versitility, light weight , compact for transport and storage, good optical tubes and a really good wifi app with another adaption. There seems to be alot one can do with the Nexstar system . I think its the way to go for me . What do you think .Thanks happy hunting the Evolution system is out it costs too much for my basic astronomy ambitions. Basic visual and basic astro photo work really its pretty simple the more basic and easier to use the better lets keep this from getting complicated. -
I bought a new CEM25P and just spend two nights trying to get it to track. I've had many GEM mounts over the last 30 years, so I thought this would easy. But it seems that either I have a problem with the mount, or I am getting old. I leveled, balanced, and polar aligned the mount well. Then I attached a guide scope. I did NOT attach the cable from the guidescope to mount. I also did not attach the mount to my computer. This way I could watch stars drift and get an idea of was going on with just the mount. I checked the CEM25's tracking rate, and it is set to sidereal. LAT/LONG and perfect. Time accurate. Next, I watched stars drift on my laptop using PHD. When the mount is turned on, and tracking turned ON - the stars move somewhat quickly in RA. Like they are slewing slowly. When I turn OFF the tracking (zero key) they still drift, but a little slower. When I turn off the power to the mount, of course the stars drift, but at slower rate still - normal sidereal rate. When I turn the power back on the stars drift a little faster. Turn the tracking back on, and they drift faster still. But when I set the slew speed to 2x, and press and hold down the left arrow key, and the stars STOP drifting. Perfect tracking. Thanks for any advice! CF
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Hi guys, This is my first post in here and apologies if someone has asked this question already but I have searched the forum for this answer and couldn't find one. So the problem I have with my mount is that there is a few seconds lag (1-2 seconds) to control input on both RA and DEC axis when I switch the control input to the opposite direction. It happens when I use both the Skywatcher Dual Axis Motor drive kit or even the manual precise controls. There is a slight "give" in the mount when I move it by hand from side to side. It just seems sloppy, like there's too much room between the moving parts inside the mount itself. My questions: Is this "give" normal? Can I fix it? Thanks for reading
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Hi all, I bought a Astromaster 130EQ two years ago and bought separately a celestron xcell barlow 2x and a Xcell LX 25mm. I now use my iphone to take photo's with a adapter. However, I have trouble finding and specially tracking objects. Will an Goto system make this much easier? The next question is, should i stay with my astromaster 130 mm newt. telescope and invest in a goto mount like the skywatcher eq5 with synscan or can i better take an Nexstar 5SE? I am open for other suggestions I want to make planetary pictures with my cannon camera (moon / mars / jupiter) if possible deep sky. However there is severe light pollution in my area. Thanks in advance -
New Celestron 8SE owner and not impressed. Alignment is a bitch. I finally "succeeded" with the three-star align and then the scope would only take me sort of close to where I wanted to go. Had to adjust manually. How spot on is alignment supposed to be? Tracking? I can't tell from the inadequate instruction manual how to engage tracking once I'm on an object. The whole exercise was supposed to allow me to do some astrophotography with my Canon 5D and related camera-to-scope attachments. Finally, I was surprised to learn (I think) that one needs to go through the alignment process for each session. The "computer" apparently doesn't hold the alignment. That right? Again, I can't find any reference in the instruction manual! If this is the case, it's certainly inconvenient. Any help or advice will be appreciated.
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So i have had my fair share of visual astronomy with my 10 inch dob, But i am no looking forward into the realm of astrophotography. And i don't want to have into the jump into the deep end and by a $1,500 eq mount(yet) i was planning on getting a ed80 refactor and the camera i can get figured out. Is there any (good) budget mounts for dso? I was hoping to find a good mount for around $900. Even though i want Budget mount(or a budget mount compared to a $1500 mount) i do not want to get rid of feature that would keep me from pulling my hair out. Would it even be worth it? Thanks in advanced! I was referring to the http://www.telescope.com/Mounts-Tripods/Equatorial-Mounts-Tripods/Orion-Atlas-EQ-G-Computerized-GoTo-Telescope-Mount/pc/-1/c/2/sc/34/p/116277.uts Looking forward to be able to see nebulae in color(of course after i process it and such)
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Hi In my quest to identify a mount, I would like advice on the Losmandy G8 - the basic unit without add ones is $1500 +tax and shipping, and this is somewhat beyond my budget. However, the reviews I have read seem to suggest that it is a far superior mount than the usual Celestron, Orion, Sirius, atlas etc. Is that true that Losmandy G8 is a better mount. I will be using the mount for AP (upto three minutes), is it a feasible with a basic G8 unit without the Gemini unit. Telescope is 5" MAK (8 lb) thanks Rajeev
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Skywatcher EQ5 dual axis motors
Sp4rkR4t posted a topic in Getting Started Equipment Help and Advice
I just purchased dual axis motors to fit to my EQ5 mount and while that all went OK I something is either too stiff or the motors don't have the required grunt as they are barely capable of moving the mount at all. If I press the control for any given direction the motors might move a little before giving up with little clicky noises or I can give the knob or gear a little nudge with my finger and they will move again for a while, it's like either the motors are not getting enough power or they simply don't have enough grunt to move the equipment and there is only a 150pds on the mount. Anyone else use these motors and if so could you give me any pointers. -
Hello again friendly forum! Recently I upgraded from an old Vixen refractor to a Skywatcher 200 P reflector with a HEQ5 Pro mount. My first night out was pretty horrible as I couldn't even find polaris due to a mass of trees. But instead I spun the telescope around and took a variety of photos of the moon to make a huge a moasaic. So I made turned a bad night into a semi decent one (see my profile post if interested.) Finally on my second light, the moon had gone from the sky and I found polaris and I aligned my polar scope up perfectly (SUCCESS!). The last time the illuminated polar scope was so bright I couldn't see polaris through it, but this time a combination of turning the mount on and off helped me align the scope as I wanted. So I entered in all the useful coordinates/time and started the 3 star alignment process. I chose Pleiades of Tauros to the South as I could see it. So I accepted the target chosen and the mount started slewing but instead of pointing anywhere near the target, it pointed up to the west. I am very confused and still have no idea how it's happening as I've been checking the forums but I'm pretty certain I'm entering incorrect coordinates. Could somebody please help me format the location of my scope in a format the SYNSCAN will understand. Thanks for any advice! I'd love to get my setup sorted this month as I hear January is a good mont hfor astronomy, planetary-wise at least! Cheers, Tom -
nexstar Nexstar 6se mount NOT tracking
Graptharshammer posted a topic in Getting Started With Imaging
I'm a complete noob with imaging but am really methodical in approaching any hobby I pick up so I'm hoping that with a little practice I can someday take some amazing images for my own enjoyment. Currently I'm having no end of trouble with my scope setup and was hoping someone could shed some light on what MIGHT be going on here. I have a Nexstar 6se which uses spur gears I realize, but it's what I have. I'm using a celestron 6/8se wedge on a cpc 1100 tripod which makes for a rock solid platform for this modest scope. Movement calms down with this setup in under a second so I'm confident it's not the mount. The problem though, when I get my camera on the scope, get things focused as well as I can without a mask (i'm working on getting one 3d printed), I'm getting trails no matter what I do! I'm polar aligned, making very sure to use a high power eyepiece and really spend the time to line up my mount. Any image longer than about 20 seconds however exhibit trails! I've adjusted the backlash controls from 0 to 50 in 5 unit increments with no discernible results. I've used A/C power as well as a 12 volt 20amp/hr battery so I don't believe it to be power related. This setup, with the heavy tripod, the wedge, a decent computerized mount should allow me to image for a couple of minutes at least in my mind, but I cannot get it to work properly for even super short exposures! I'm wondering if this is something that can be adjusted with the mounts clutch or some other trick to get things working how they should. The images I've attached show an extreme amount of error in tracking and I'm beginning to wonder if my particular mount is just not going to work no matter what! The "trailing 3" image is of Albireo and you can see that the stars below this double are doubled themselves, meaning to me that the mount is skipping or jumping partway through the exposure (45 seconds in this case) Any help would be awesome. -
Hi all have picked out a scope and mount I'm interested in buying. The scope is the skywatcher ed80 pro and I will be using it with my canon 5d mark 1 for astrophotography. It's the mount that I'm having trouble deciding on. Have been reading loads on the net but when I find something I think will be ok I search for reviews of it and looks and behold for everyone who says this is a great choice there is someone else who says don't buy this. Anyway I liked the skywatcher heq5 mount so does anyone on here think this would be a good choice also if I bought a goto mount would this also track or would I need a motorized mount. Also does anyone have a smaller or different mouth sergestion as to what mount I should get, obviously it will have to be tracking. Cheers in advance for your reply so. Russell.
