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For those struggling to collimate there Astrotrac Polarscope (as I was), check the tube housed in the main body of the scope for flex and ensure it is the right way round. today I removed the tube and swapped it around, this made ALL the difference, collimation was a breeze after this. I have already swapped out the grub screws for thumb screws and remember to make tiny adjustments each time.

Hi So this thread will cover in fact PoleMaster, Astrotrac and GiroMini because this is my setup.I bought the PM (PoleMaster) since the Astrotrac has a fail polar scope (no matter how you fiddle about it), and of course the dedicated adapter to mount PM on the AT (Astrotrac) arm. PM is a real joy to use, but somehow I suspect the AT polar arm has some "issues", so I bought another PM adapter for AZEQ5 and mount it right on the GM (GiroMini).It was based on another suggestion I made to a fellow astronomer, but nobody did it. Long story short, below the new adapter in place. I am certain this is as close to the rotation axis as it can be. The plan is to replace those M3 screws with M3 thumb screws in the future for easy setup and not to have the PM there when I don't use it. I will post more pictures "in the wild" and on site results ,but now the clouds are here because my new ES 82° eyepieces also arrived

I was wondering, is there an alternative to the ATTH3010 declination unit one could use with the Astrotrac? Counterweight is important, because I'd use a 90/600 APO.

Hello everyone, i`m thinking about buying an astrotrac mount. To save some money i consider buying a used one. I would like to know the differences between the TT320X and TT320X-AG. The TT320X has "solid" arms and no autoguider port as opposed to the TT320X-AG. These are the obvious differences. Are there any other differences especially concerning periodic error? Thanks for your help!

An AstroTrac and a Red Dot Finder I have been looking for something like this for a few years. Finally found it - so thought I would share. It's an adapter that allows you to mount a Red Dot Finder "firmly" on a camera Hot Shoe. From Geopitik via Teleskop-express. It has a screw (with a nylon tip) that you can use to clamp it down (clamp it up to be more accurate) so it does not move. Happy I found it! Cheers Ian PS - Yes - that's a PoleMaster lower left. ;-) PPS - And a guide scope upper right. PPPS - Dying to see if this lot works! ;-)

My beloved wife bought me an Astrotrac for Christmas. Now that the relatives have all gone home I had my first play with it. The weather here has been foul for the last week, and tonight was due to be almost uniformly cloudy. However I did manage to get half an hour outside where I could see the stars. I did a few trial runs indoors to see how the Astrotrac fitted onto the tripod and how the ball joint fitted onto the Astrotrac and how to power the whole thing up. It all went together smoothly. I had a bit of trouble getting the 20 year old tripod to stay where I put it, and I had to learn how far out I needed to aim, so that when I tightened it all up it ended up where it needed to be. then I set it going and took a test shot. First shot, star trails. So I checked the Polaris alignment and it was a bit out, so I tried to realign and took another shot. Long star trails... I tried this about 3 times, each time the alignment looked a little out, but not hugely. Ok, so the alignment needs to be really dead on then... Hang on... You unfold the arm one way for south of the equator and the other for north of the equator. I wonder.... Yup, I had unfolded the tracking arm the wrong way. As you can guess the air turned a bit blue. Ok, reverse the arm back to the starting position, and fold it back up and down the other way. Then take another test shot... Wow!. Okay, that works. I did not bother to take the laptop out because there was no way I was going to be out for more than half an hour. So I had not way of taking a shot of more than 30 seconds, and I had no way of focussing other than taking a shot and fiddling with the focus by hand, then taking another shot. Even so I managed to get something half decent. So this is a stack of 6 30 second subs at 300mm iso 800 and 6 darks. I cropped the image to about half size to concentrate on the nebula. Stacking was done in Deep Sky Stacker with some fiddling with in Photoshop afterwards. By no means an Olly standard photo, there are still some minor star trails due to bad alignment, and the focussing is off, but not back for half an hour with a new toy and no laptop to help with the focusing.

Ok, some of you know that I have an AstroTrac (hereto referred to as AT) which I plan to use as a more portable, easier to set up, imaging rig. What you might not know is that, whilst the AT is a superb piece of engineering, like many other astro items on the market, there is always room for fine tuning. With the AT this is particularly true of the polarscope alignment, or collimation. This is something which I am aiming to undertake over the next week or so and thought it might benefit the members of SGL if this process were documented. Firstly, Id like to thank StuartJPP who intially brought the need for collimation to my attention in this thread. For further reading I would highly recommend this: Rotating Polar Scope Arm Messes Up Alignment - Yahoo Discussion and this: Fred Miranda Polar Scope Collimation PDF So how do you begin to collimate the polar scope? The answer is two fold. The first step is to ensure that the polar scope is collimated within the holder i.e. about its own axis. The second step is to ensure that the holder is centred about the AT 'polar' axis. Step One - Polarscope Reticule Centring The initial step is to ensure that the polar scope is centred about its own axis. To do this you need to first set up your AT and aim the polarscope on a distant object such as a pylon, telegraph pole or any other distant, stationary object Once you have chosen your object align your polar scope so that the centre (the intersection of all markings) is aligned to the top, or other definable point, of your object. Once aligned you can rotate your polarscope through 360 degrees. A correctly collimated or centred polar scope will keep its place when rotated. If your polar scope is badly collimated you will see the centre move around and off your definable point as you rotate. I chose a distant radio mast with a conveniently placed light ontop. The following set of photos show how the light is covered, but then emerges as I rotate the polar scope around through 360 degrees: This clearly shows that the polar scope is in need of collimation. Here is where the fun begins! To collimate the scope you need to adjust the 3no grub screws that are located around the barrel near where the illuminator sits: To make this easier, the Fred Miranda paper suggest replacing these with 3mm thumbscrews. I have currently ordered some thumbscrews from here: Kustom PCs - Black Metric Thumbscrews You can also order Thumbscrews from 365 Astronomy, they are labelled eyepiece fixings. Once they arrive I can see if they are long enough. And here is where the story, temporarily ends........

Took these last week. The first is a wide field of the area around the constellation Aquila. I did not intend to image Barnards E, i never even knew it was there! I just pointed the camera at that area as i knew there would be some nice dusty stuff floating around was quite surprised when the first exposure came in showing the 'E'. I used the Canon 50mm 1.8 for this image with a Canon 1100D unmodded. I now intend to for this to be the first panel of a mosaic i hope to crack on with. The second image is again of Barnard's E but shot with the 200mm for a closer look! I had a lot of trouble with the second image. I was getting a blurry result from Deep Sky Stacker which was very frustrating! But thanks to some fellow imagers the problem was sorted. Too many stars, DSS was finding over 30,000! So i had to move the slider (which i hadn't touched in months) up to 70%. Also, the stars are a bit trailed also due to polar scope collimation issues. And i may as well throw in this image of Cassiopeia which was also shot with the nifty fifty! The more i use this lens the more i love it Thanks for looking Clear skies

This is my first go at M31, taken with the EF200L and an unmodded Canon 1100D on a Astrotrac. I quite enjoy this wider FOV for Andromeda, its a nice change to see it floating in space rather than squeezed diagonally into frame hopefully this time next year i will have a scope and i myself will be doing the squeezing. Exposure details: 1 hour of 120 second subs, f4, ISO 800 4 hours of 180 second subs, f4, ISO 1600 Calibration frames 200mm FL Clear skies! Callum

Evening SGL, though i would share my first astro mosaic. Taking on this little project was a spur of the moment decision, i made no plans for it until i imaged M8+M20 and thought "hmmmm, a galactic centre mosaic would look pretty tasty!". I then planned to create a 3x5 mosaic of the area totaling in 15 panels. But like i said, without planning it out properly i was left with the Milky Way dropping too low in my sky for me to get anywhere near what i wanted. So i only managed 4 panels... Each panel was around 70-80 minutes exposure time except one which i lost a lot of frames on because of cloud, leaving me with one panel of which the exposure time totaled 45 minutes. The processing and creating a seamless image was hard but this 'dud' panel caused more problems. I had to stretch it first and then bring the rest up to the same levels, if i had managed 70 minutes on this panel, i could of stretched the whole image a bit more without any problems. Each panel was made up of 120 second exposures at f3.2, ISO 800. And here is a couple of the single images... M8+M20, the Lagoon and Trifid And a part of the Pipe nebula, i call this area Barnard City I will be better prepared next year and will hopefully get to finish what i've started! All images were taken with a Canon 1100D and a EF200L on a Astrotrac TT320X-AG Clear skies!

Hello everyone, Last wednesday, I tried my first shot with an Astrotrac, which I borrowed from a friend before making the jump and buy one. And I must say that I'm quite amazed by its tracking capabilities, even without an autoguider. I know that the lens I used has only 85mm of focal length, but I only got a 5 pixels drift during 45 minutes of imaging : that's quite impressive Enough chitchat, here are the images : 5DmkII, Astrotrac, 85mm f/4.0, ISO 800, 14 x 60 seconds exposures, 15 darks, 50 bias, no flats, PixInsight for everything except the colors/saturation. From the Southern Cross to Eta Carina 5DmkII, Astrotrac, 85mm f/2.8, ISO 800, 9 x 60 seconds exposures, 15 darks, 50 bias, no flats, PixInsight for everything except the colors/saturation. Pipe, Trifid and Lagon nebulas, with some Barnard 5DmkII, Astrotrac, 85mm f/2.8, ISO 800, 30 x 60 seconds exposures, 15 darks, 50 bias, no flats, PixInsight for everything except the colors/saturation. Rho Ophiuchi A mosaic of the last two images Click on the pictures for a larger version I hope you liked them ! And if you're on the fence to buy an Astrotrac, just do it, it's an excellent piece of gear. Clear Skies

Evening SGL, i recently purchased an Astrotrac TT320X-AG and thought i would give you my thoughts and share my results so far. Any critism and tips or tricks that may help me improve are very welcome. My Astrotrac arrived probably about a month ago now so i have had roughly 2 weeks of Moonless sky to image. This is also my first tracking platform after doing fixed tripod for about a year so its been a great fortnight, as i feel i have squeezed just about all i can out of 30 second exposures! Dont get me wrong, fixed tripod AP is great but i've had an itch to go deeper for quite a while now. The images shown are in the order they were taken. I will put the exposure details below each image. All images are taken with a Canon 1100D (un-modded) and either a Canon EF 50mm 1.8 or a Canon EF 70-300mm 5.6 IS USM. Since my AT arrived just as the Moon was new, i had two weeks to sit and stare at my new piece of gear. I set it up every now and then to get familiar with it. This is a strong point for the AT, i takes 5 minutes to set up and take down. I took advice and also replaced the grub screws in the polar scope with thumb screws to make collimation much easier. A couple of weeks later, my first image, like 90% of everyone here was of course M42. This was a one hour exposure. I was quite happy with my first neb but the image made one thing obvious - the 70-300mm was ****. As you can see, it produces odd star shapes and is just overall, not well suited for AP. Unfortunately i dont have the money or access to anything better right now so this lens will have to do for now. Exposure Details - 2 minute subs, ISO 800, f5.6, calibration frames (darks, bias) also took some 10 second subs for the core. I have also added an hour to M42 but prefer this version for some reason... i think the core looks alot better. My second night imaging i managed to shoot two targets. The first, M45 the Pleiades Star Cluster - one of my favourites. This night taught me that my Polar Scope needed re-collimated more accurately as i couldnt manage 4 minute subs without trailing. I re-collimated the next day. Exposure - 19 3 minute exposures, ISO 800, f5.6, calibration frames (darks, bias) I also got 48mins on Andromeda using the nifty fifty. This lens is awesome, nice round stars. Obviously this image is very heavily cropped. Exposure - 12 4 minute exposures, f5, ISO 800, calibration frames (darks) The next clear night i shot an hour on M33 at 300mm and an hour on Orion at 50mm. All that data was useless. The focus on m33 had slipped and light pollution had creeped in on Orion as it approached the horizon. Gutted. I also had to re-collimate after dropping the Polar Scope on the ground i still need to buy a washer to stop this happening again. A couple days later i set my gear up with a newly bought plug socket power source, so i dont have to buy batteries anymore unless i am shooting in a remote location. I left my camera with the 50mm pointing at Orion. I came back an hour later to find all frames except the 1st covered in a thin layer of cloud... oh well, i had a flick through and found a nice looking shot. The cloud acted as a natural diffusion filter This was a single 3 minute exposure at f4.5 and ISO 1600. Next up was the Horsehead or Barnard 33 if you want to get fancy. This was taken two nights ago under the new Moon after failing again to find PANSTARRS. I framed the whole of Orions Belt just to switch it up a bit from most Horsehead images. Exposure Details - 1 Hour 39 Minutes of 3 minute exposures, f5.6, ISO 800, calibration frames (daks, bias, flats) And finally, my image from last night. Caldwell 49, the Rosette Nebula. Didnt take me long to find it, took me blumming ages to frame it. I was very surprised when this image popped out of DSS. Since i dont have a modded camera, i as not expecting so much to be picked up. Exposure Details - 1 hour 42 minutes of 3 min subs, f5.6, ISO 1600, calibration frames (darks, bias, flats) Overall i think the Astrotrac is an excellent piece of equipment. Yes it is very expensive, including tripod and tripod heads my bill is over £1000. The polar scope lets it down the most but you get used to its flaws and can correct them. I also think portability and ease of use makes up for that. I've had to make some adjustments to my polar scope arm aswell as the polar scope but if you can get it in a sweet spot, you can get some long subs. I can now manage 4 minutes but if i put some more time into fine tuning i could manage longer. I recommend anyone who owns an AT or is thinking of buying one, joins the Astrotrac Yahoo group. There you can find the solution to any problem you may encounter. Next thing i will be doing is selling my 70-300mm and putting the money towards a EF200L, which appears to be an excellent lens for AP. Thanks for taking a look, and remember any tips are welcome. Oh, and sorry about the images being so big. I'm not sure how to make them smaller.

Third time lucky for me, freezing cold and cloudy Monday and Tuesday but this evening I literally had a lucky break. Here is a widefield shot to set the scene taken with an 85mm lens on a Canon 600D. Link to video shot with 300mm lens http://flic.kr/p/e35h6b Mel And this is a stacked croppped image of the comet using the frames from the video

I took this shot a week ago but we're had a fair few clear nights so the processing has lagged behind a bit (not complaining) Having shot PanSTARRS as it passed M31 last month I checked on Sky Safari to see if was going to pass by anything else interesting. I'd imaged Cederblad 214 before but this time it was as low in the sky as it can be so I travelled out to where I had a reasonable north horizon, this is a stack of 41 150sec frames taken with a 200mmL lens on a modded Canon 600D all mounted on my Astrotrac. Lots of Photoshop on this one to remove gradients due to the low altitude but I think it was worth the effort Mel

This is second light with my AstroTrac. Andromeda Galaxy from Ag Nik in Crete. 10 x 120s subs, Nikon D40, ISO 800 with 85-200mm kit lens @ 200mm. Stacked and with small stretch in DSS. Won't win any prizes, but I'm really happy to be doing some imaging on hgoliday! When I get home I'll try to clean up the egg shaped stars.