Autoguiders Help needed.

[sabana]

Hi all

I have come across a product that seems perfect for my foray into astrophotography. The 'Autoguider'. There's one made by Celestron and one by Orion that I know of. Around £250. You attach them to the mount directly if the mount has the socket and they electronically move the mount by taking a series of phtographs to adjust alignment and track the stars/planets as they move.

I have 2 questions though.

1) Do I have to callibrate and set up the EQ mount alligning it to the stars and North first or does it work straight off the bat?

2) Do I have to buy a seperate CCD camera or webacam to attach to the scope because the autoguider doesn't take good enough pictures for stacking?

Any thoughts on this product and its usefulness? And if you can help me out here a bi i really appreciate it.

Clear Skies.

[Odd Dob]

Do you mean the guider cams that don't need to connect to a PC, just connect directly to the mount and do all the tracking/guiding themselves?

I looked at them and decided against them and went for a QHY5V in the end. From my understanding you can't use them to take pictures, so you loose quite a lot of functionality for the sake of not having to have a laptop. Also, I think EQMOD is pretty awesome so there other reasons to have a laptop anyway.

Having said all that, I've not actually used the QHY5V for guiding yet, just taking pictures of Jupiter.

[Stephen]

Hi all

I have come across a product that seems perfect for my foray into astrophotography. The 'Autoguider'. There's one made by Celestron and one by Orion that I know of. Around £250. You attach them to the mount directly if the mount has the socket and they electronically move the mount by taking a series of phtographs to adjust alignment and track the stars/planets as they move.

I have 2 questions though.

1) Do I have to callibrate and set up the EQ mount alligning it to the stars and North first or does it work straight off the bat?

2) Do I have to buy a seperate CCD camera or webacam to attach to the scope because the autoguider doesn't take good enough pictures for stacking?

Any thoughts on this product and its usefulness? And if you can help me out here a bi i really appreciate it.

Clear Skies.

Well there's two things that may be termed "autoguider" - one is a full on camera that you can use as a camera but also a guide camera (QHY5 for example) and the other is just a CCD that can guide the mount with no PC input (Synguider.)

You will need to align correctly. Even with the best guiding in the world, if you don't do that, you will get field rotation in your images.

Also, if you are using a camera/pc style guider, you won't be using that for imaging - it's tied up doing the guiding!

What's your desired out come, and can you let us know specifically which ones you are looking at?

[sabana]

Hi

Yes. They get rid of the need for laptops entirely.

They claim they are perfect fr long exposure DSO photography.

NexGuide Autoguider (item #93713) / New Products / Products / Celestron.com

[Stephen]

Hi

Yes. They get rid of the need for laptops entirely.

They claim they are perfect fr long exposure DSO photography.

NexGuide Autoguider (item #93713) / New Products / Products / Celestron.com

That one specifically is not an imaging device. It's sole purpose is to keep the scope centered on the star it's targetting.

When it says it's perfect for long exposure, it means it's perfect for keeping the mount on track for imaging with your OTHER camera

[Cornelius Varley]

The Orion and Celestron units are stand alone guide cameras, the unit plugs into the ST4 port of your mount and guides your mount directly. What they don't do is take photographs for processing later. you will still need a separate camera for this.

The mount will still need to be polar aligned and star aligned as well.

Peter

[GME]

Hello

Well short answer is..

1/ Yes

2/ Yes

The aoutoguider only do one thing, it guids the mount, meaning it corrects for errors in your system to make it possible to take longer exposures, so you need a CCD or DSLR or the like to take the image it self.

How large errors it can handle deppends on how often it can update the possition and the focal lenght of your telescope including Barlow lenses etc vs the exposure time.

So you benefit from a good setup, polar alignement, cone error adjustment etc.

My recomadations is that you take youre time and read articles about guiding and guiding tecnics , thers a lot to think about !

Sky watchers synguider works, it's abit tricky before you get the hang of it but then it does the jobb ( read the manual and do as it say, it makes life easier ;-).

I havent been able to test it's limits yet due to bad seeingconditions, work etc but it it indicates that it do what they say it will be able of.

okey so this was a swift and not very deep answer to your questions and as I stated abowe therse alot more to it so read and learn it will pay off by the end of the day.

Good Luck !

[sabana]

Thanks guys. I'm still a bit perplexed though. With the needing for alignment of the EQ mount. If the autoguider is doing the tracking what is the purpose of the mount apart from stability. I mean does the autoguider overide the EQ mounts tracking?

[Stephen]

Thanks guys. I'm still a bit perplexed though. With the needing for alignment of the EQ mount. If the autoguider is doing the tracking what is the purpose of the mount apart from stability. I mean does the autoguider overide the EQ mounts tracking?

The mount tracks across the sky, the guider sends corrections to the mount. It's an enhancement rather than the answer.

Think about it this way, if you are 0.5 degrees out on your polar alignment, you are missing Polaris by several light years

Over a long exposure, that will show up as star trails in your images.

[sabana]

Ah Now it makes sense.

Thankyou:hello2:

[Budgie]

Is it possible to use something like a Neximage or SPC900 with PHD for autoguiding?

Just looking at the cheapest way and not read all the info yet, but thought I'd ask.

[Spikey]

Yes the webcams can be used for autoguiding with PHD and many people do it very successfully using the finder as the guidescope.

[Budgie]

That would make life a little easier as I have a Neximage & SPC900. So, one for guiding and one for imagine, well maybe just use my 400D for the imaging side but it's all worth trying.

I need a better scope first as the 127 SLT isn't the best for DSO's but one can only try.