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Guiding...... WIN!!!!!

rocketandroll

By rocketandroll
in Imaging - Discussion

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rocketandroll

rocketandroll

Posted
Posted

Dear all

The first thing I have to say is thankyou to everyone on here who offered help and advice and support since I've been trying to get guiding working. It has been a hard slog....

I especially want to give a big thanks to Steve Richards for his offers of help, and a MASSIVE thankyou to Steve (Parallax) for ultimately getting things working last night on, what I think has to be, one of the clearest, darkest most crystal clear nights I've seen since getting in to astronomy.

So.... having established there seems to be an issue with the guide port on my HEQ5, we decided to give pulse guiding via a USB adapter and the hand controller a go.

After we'd installed the relevant drivers and booted up EQMOD and PHD it seeemed to start working straight off, it calibrated in about 30 seconds and off it went... then, I slewed the scope slightly to center it on M45 using the hand controller (whilst it was still in PC direct mode)... after that the guiding went to pot, it took us half an hour to realise that me slewing the scope manually must have been what messed it up, so i turned it off PC direct mode, then back on again, re-acquired a star, re-calibrated.... and bang... it was DEAD on. We watched the graph for a few minutes and it was steady as anything, so I started shooting some exposures on M45.

Bearning in mind I was still trying to use the RC6 at f9 and 1.4m fl I was aware I was setting myself a challenge :-)

So, first I did a 5 min sub.... looked good, guiding held steady throughout... so then I said to Steve I was gonna try for a 10 minute sub....

WIN!!!

It was a LOOOONG ten minutes standing there in the freezing cold.... but, the finished image was well worth it.

So... I now know, with no drift alignment and a little pfaffing, I can get 10 minute subs at 1.4m fl.... so goodness knows what I could get with the Megrez at 400mm odd :-)

Might point it at the NA again next clear night and see if I can get 20 minutes :-)

There was no noticable amp glow from the DSLR at 10 minutes and ISO800, though it was a very cold night and it had all be standing out there for a good hour or more by the time the sub was taken.

Anyway.... I stacked the 5min and 10 min subs in DSS and here's the result. The stars are all still slightly oval top left to bottom right but that is an issue with the scope as shown by the 20 second subs on Tuesday... either colimation or sag due to the weight of the camera on the end of an extension tube... or a combination of both.

The key thing is... it looks sexy :-)

Thanks again all.... expect some much better images from me over the next few months :-)

Ben

post-23494-133877680907_thumb.jpg

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carastro

carastro

Posted
Posted

Well done Ben and Steve.

An issue with your HEQ5 guide port eh? That's not good. Maybe that's why your stand alone guider wouldn't work properly.

Is it a new mount Ben?

I would be interested to see how you get on with a DSLR and these really long subs Ben as I always understood that the noise increases quite a bit after about 5mins. Would be interested to see your results.

I can see some really good images coming up now on the basis of what you managed unguided.

Carole

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Dann

Dann

Posted
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Congratulations, I’m glad you got it sorted. It’s a pain about your mounts port but at least there was a backup.

A nice image to start with too, now you just need a few more subs and some calibration frames and your well on your way :)

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Psychobilly

Psychobilly

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Posted

Congrats .. The universe "awaits"...

Glad you stuck at it through the frustrations and with the support from the forum members got it working...

I have used the Synguider with my ancient HEQ-5 at it calibrates properly - So I guess the guide port on mine must be ok...

Peter...

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rocketandroll

rocketandroll

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Cheers all for the comments.... I must admit I kinda can't wait to get going on some projects that have all just been waiting for this to be resolved!!! :-)

@Merlin... nope, we didn't mess with the ST4 port at all last night... we only had limited time and knew the hand controller was working fine so figured we'd just bypass anything that might have an issue and go straight for the pulse guiding.

I am still going to properly investigate IF there is an issue with the guide port at a later date. I am just glad I have a working solution.

@Peter.... I am guessing my problem is intermittent, or new, as the Synguider did calibrate and start guiding the first time I used it... it just lost it again fairly quickly. I definitely need to look in to it further.

@Carol.... yeah, I think if I'd tried to get a LOT of ten minute subs back to back it might have started to show up.... but I'm gonna do some tests and see... may just be a need for working on cold nights with the long subs and leaving enough cool down time between each one.

I must admit... I am still pretty chuffed with how dead flat the guide graph was considering we polar aligned in a bit of a rush... and weren't even sure we had it on Polaris to start with (too many stars visible in the polarscope!)

It was a good thing to see after all this heartache!

Ben

Congrats .. The universe "awaits"...

Glad you stuck at it through the frustrations and with the support from the forum members got it working...

I have used the Synguider with my ancient HEQ-5 at it calibrates properly - So I guess the guide port on mine must be ok...

Peter...

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kookoo_gr

kookoo_gr

Posted
Posted

Can you post a larger image? I can't see very well the disformation of the stars at the corners but since i own a gso rc 8'' i can tell almost positevely that it is a collimation issue. It took almost a year to collimate my own rc but last night i made it to an acceptable degree and i am ready for a new year of photographic sessions

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rocketandroll

rocketandroll

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Can you post a larger image? I can't see very well the disformation of the stars at the corners but since i own a gso rc 8'' i can tell almost positevely that it is a collimation issue. It took almost a year to collimate my own rc but last night i made it to an acceptable degree and i am ready for a new year of photographic sessions

I've just posted a close up of some of the stars showing the issues in the 'colimation FAIL' thread in this forum.

I'm less worried actually about the asymetry issue and more about why the scope appears unable to achieve sharp focus at all.

Thoughts?

Ben

PS: No, I noticed the halo around the brightest star.... goodness knows what that is or why it's only on the one star?!

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