Guiding conversion project for 200p and EQ5

[bamus]

Stan here are the setting I am using my scope is an f5 ratio so I have lowered the calibration pulse rate to 250. Still learning what they all do but hopefully a bit of tweaking should improve things tonight.

as you are guiding through finder, I would suggest to change minimum motion to 0.06

could you also post screenshot of phd screen. I would like to see how noise levels look line with noise reduction 3x3

Edited February 11, 2012 by bamus

[Quatermass]

I see what you mean, well its worth having a look at it and seeing if you can tighten any thing up a bit it certainly helped with mine. Tonight is going great guns the guiding is working well and finding a guide star is pretty easy as well. I have now moved off beetle juice and gone on to the horse head nebula for a try at that using longer subs. So far all my subs are looking good and I have decided to stick with 4 and 5 minute subs for the horse head so long as the clouds hang off I should have a good result. So was all this worth it, I would say most certainly and I am enjoying being out here in my fishermans bivvy its like fishing and astrophotography mixed together.

[Quatermass]

as you are guiding through finder, I would suggest to change minimum motion to 0.06

could you also post screenshot of phd screen. I would like to see how noise levels look line with noise reduction 3x3

heres my phd screen a bit grainy but not too bad

[Quatermass]

Ok everyone this will be my final report on my Sky-watcher eq5 200p conversion to a guiding system. Last night was a good night I managed to get everything working after doing a bit of tweaking to the setting in PHD. My mount Dec axis still needs tightning up a tiny bit but overall I was very pleased with the results.

There was a bit of low fog to start off with but it soon cleared up and I got myself lined up on beetlejuice again. The graph on PHD had a good display of the guiding and so I started to take my subs.

Here are the results from last night

In order we have the first shot a full 5minutes at an ISO of 800

Next is a 6minute shot with the ISO down to 400

Next is a 7minute shot ISO 400

Next is a full 10 minute shot ISO 400

and lastly a single 5 minute shot of the horse head nebula which is just beginning to show despite it getting foggy and a bright moon.

So I am very pleased with my conversion and looking forward to enjoying longer exspoures and better images. Has it been worth doing? Without a doubt! and I would just like to say thank you to all who have contributed to this thread with there help and advice. If any one else out there is encouraged by what Stan and myself have managed to do then that will be a good thing but hats off to Stan for starting it all and I hope we all have learned a lot from these threads.

I will do a complete coverage of all this on my blog for future reference as well.

Thanks everyone and clear skies for 2012

QM

[malc-c]

Nice work QM.

Personally 5min at 800 ISO image IMO is the better one - Stars are nice and round. Stacking subs of that length and quality will give fantastic results.

Well done

[The_PSY3NTIST]

Great thread QM. Hopefully I'll be up add running shortly. Just need to question this dec motor :s sideways movement in the motor shaft surely can't be right? Don't want to mod it then find out its a dud and not be able to take it back.

[Quatermass]

Hi Dave and thank you for you contributions to the thread. It would be wise to make sure the motor shaft is not a dud and take it back if need be. I still have a little bit of play on my dec gears but that can be sorted out easy enough.

[Quatermass]

Nice work QM.

Personally 5min at 800 ISO image IMO is the better one - Stars are nice and round. Stacking subs of that length and quality will give fantastic results.

Well done

Many thanks Malcolm and hope you have enjoyed this thread as much as I have enjoyed it and all your input.

[The_PSY3NTIST]

Probably right. I'll nip it back after work tomorrow and get them to compare it with another kit. I cant see how I could get round this play as it is in the motor it's self. Just wanted to know if it was normal so I didn't look like a fool

It's been a pleasure to follow you on your successful journey to the dark side! Can't wait to see your final results. Particularly the horsehead nebula

[pixueto]

Thank you very much QM, you have been an inspiration to us all. I’ve been very quiet carefully taking in all the information in this thread. Please, do not close it yet. Please upload some of your images when you start working on your targets. Surely there is still some fine tuning that needs to be done and we can all learn from you. There are loads of people with a 200P EQ5 kit that up until now thought serious imaging couldn’t be done on a budget. Well done!

[Quatermass]

Thanks Pix

I hope all those with the eq5 and 200p on a budget will feel inspired to have a go as well. I could have gone the safe route and saved up for the HEQ5 with its built in ST4 port and better gears but this has saved me money and the results mean I can do those longer exsposures needed for fainter targets. Total cost was 180.00 to buy a new mount and guide scope and camera would be well over 700.00 so thats a fair bit saved

Sent from my GT-S5670 using Tapatalk

[pixueto]

Well, the way I see it now is that if you have the money (well over £700 as you said for a HEQ5), you may just as well save it (with your DIY, you would save over £500) and get a nice and lighter 80mm APO refractor which would be a good addition to your modded EQ5 to have a go at wide field imaging. In my case, I don’t have the money so this is out of the question. I already had the dual axis motor and a webcam for planetary imaging so your mod would cost me just under £100… not bad! Already ordered the guide port conversion. Why on earth is the GPUSB adapter so expensive!!!! The thing that is holding me back is using the PHD software (maybe you can elaborate a bit in your website about your settings and thinks to watch out for) as when Stan and you discussed the different parameters I didn’t understand what you were talking about! Also, with auto guiding, I must learn drift aligning. I’m sure it will take me a while to get it right and it’s too cold at the moment!!!

[Quatermass]

Hi Pix

PHD has a pretty good manual with it and once you have gone through that it starts to make a bit more sense. The setting I changed that started to put things right were altering the RA aggressiveness to a lower setting at 60 instead of 100 on the graph and also changing the capture speed to 0.5 instead of 0.1

Once you start using it after having read through the manual it makes sense and is easy enough to use. Your main aim is to get the graph tracking to be as smooth as you can. My suggestion is download PHD and then read through the manual and play around with it. The manual is found under help/contents and is easy to understand.

Yes that GPUSB adapter is expensive for what it is but you have to have it. Some one did post on this thread how to make one for yourself at a cheaper price but I can be bothered with any more soldering so it was easy to just buy it and it works very well..

As for drift aligning I did not do this just a rough polar alignment by lining the north star up with the reticule inside my polar scope and it still did a good job.

When I post all my results and instruction on my blog I will also put up the setting I am using on PHD. I am impressed with PHD it works very well and is easy to use which I like.

I was put off from doing this modification by the though of having to solder and use new software and a laptop but having done it I can assure any one out there who feels the same it was easy to do and I'm the kind of person who would run a mile if you showed me an electrical diagram and a soldering iron.

Also Doug from Shoe String Astronomy is a very helpful guy and the st4 port kit and adapter were all in good working order and delivered on time.

So for a small amount of effort and outlay I have now got myself a guided system for my eq5 and skywatcher 200p that has got to be worth it.

I think I will do a utube video showing the whole set up and how it all works for people as well as a complete run down of the whole thing on my blog. I'm all for saving money and making the most out of what I have and I'm sure many eq5 owners will be interested in doing the same.

[Ags]

So for a small amount of effort and outlay I have now got myself a guided system for my eq5 and skywatcher 200p that has got to be worth it.

I think I will do a utube video showing the whole set up and how it all works for people as well as a complete run down of the whole thing on my blog. I'm all for saving money and making the most out of what I have and I'm sure many eq5 owners will be interested in doing the same.

That would be good to see. Great to hear you have it all working now.

[pixueto]

That Youtube video would be brilliant! Really liked the ones on using PS. By the way, how many minutes is the Horsehead nebula stack that you show in your curves and levels tutorial? I only managed to get 7 mins on this target so far and I don’t see any sign of the horsehead.

QM, notice that I’ve read somewhere that although PHD will correct your Dec error if you don’t choose to drift align, the Dec error keeps building and it will affect your images with field rotation. I understand that the RA tracking error created by the mount can be corrected but not the Dec caused by a bad polar alignment. Are you aware of this or is this only a problem for subs of over 10 mins?

[Quatermass]

Hi Pix

Well get that video done next week, the Horse head nebula is a faint target so you will need a good dark clear night for it. I did mine with my unguided set up last month and it took about 60 subs at and ISO of 800 and 1600 with shots ranging from 60 seconds to 120 seconds, I was lucky to have a good polar alignment and my tracking though unguided was very good that night. Other nights I was lucky to get under a minute.

I think the dec error will be more down to your gears having slop in them this can be fixed by adjusting them so there nice and tight certainly worked for me.

And a good polar alignment of course. The one 5 min sub on my guided system shows that a longer shot will start to bring out the horse head but you have to take about 50 or more and stack them to get better results. This is my unguided shot of the Horse Head.

[stan26]

Well done QM, A great write up of which I'm sure will be a great benefit to others wishing to do astrophotography on a moderate budget. I was going to do a thread on my whole EQ3-2 project, but I think this one covers all aspects of guiding with these lower end mounts.

I shall keep a look out for you images in the deep sky section.......

Clear skys!

Stan

[Quatermass]

Thank you very much Stan if it was not for you encouraging me to carry on with this mod I might well have not got started but I am very glad did. As a final tweak to my set up I took all the slack out of both axis gear shafts buy adjusting the grub screw and two adjusting bolts which has made it much better. I also made myself a laser finder scope with and old bit of plastic tube 6 screws filed flat at the ends, a block of wood and 2 cable ties works great. Also ordered two 10 meter cables for the st4 port and the webcam.

Thank you for all your help and input and wishing you all clear skies and great images.

QM:icon_salut:

[The_PSY3NTIST]

Got the dec motor changed solid as a rock now just a tiny bit of slack to take up in the ra and I'll be a happy man

[The_PSY3NTIST]

Laser guide looks good. I need to build a 12v supply for mine as its got a 230v one at the minute :s not ideal.

[Quatermass]

Got the dec motor changed solid as a rock now just a tiny bit of slack to take up in the ra and I'll be a happy man

Glad you got the motor sorted out Dave, take up that slack in the RA and DEC axis is a must. I went back to my mount and realized that I still had a lot of slack in both RA and DEC when turning the control handle there was a good half inch of loose play on both of them so I went to work on the grub screw and side bolts that tension the gears in place. Its now 100% better with no play at all. Posted a video of how to adjust the slack out on YouTube here...EQ5 mount removing slack in gears - YouTube

Tonight is looking good, the snow is all melted away so I am going to have a go at the Rosette Nebula NGC2244. With the chance to do longer exposures this is a good target to try out. With all that slack taken out I am sure my guiding tonight will be better then last time so looking forward to getting out there again

[1981suede]

Quick general guiding question. Does it make drift alignment unnecessary?

[Quatermass]

Quick general guiding question. Does it make drift alignment unnecessary?

You can do a quick polar alignment by just lining the north star up with the circle in your polar scope reticule, but I would advise doing a drift alignment although PHD seems to do a good job in ironing out any slight errors.

For most people I would say doing drift alignment would be recommended when doing astrophotography although I have never done it myself having got away with a quick polar alignment up to now.

[Quatermass]

For those who want a summery of this thread in easy to follow manner I have now posted it on my blog. Here is the link.

Star Gazing

[pixueto]

QM, I had a look again at youw website. Thank you very much mate for your help. You are making our life much, much easier. About your video about fixing slack in gears chapeau! Maybe it would have been even better if you had showed a mount that needed fixing but I'm being greedy here!

The only thing I would like to do different compared to your setup would be a less DIY solution for the finder/guider. Do you know of any adapters for that model finder that can be used to insert eyepieces? I could then use it as a finder and a guidescope without much trouble. I am really clumsy at DIY! I wonder what's the resulting focal length of the finder to calculate the magnification after you use a eyepiece of 25mm.