OAG autoguider on C9.25

[hayju01]

I was looking through some posts about this and came across this one

http://stargazerslounge.com/members-equipment-gallery/179254-c9-25-oag-cameras-place.html

I have a meade dsi and an OAG and I'm thinking of adding

Baader LVI SG2

Baader Steeltrack focuser

Do I need to add anything else to make this work?

Thanks,

Justin

[ollypenrice]

Personally I wouldn't go for the all-in-one or 'standalone' autoguders. You are stuck with one product, one guiding package, and if it plays up you have nowhere to go. I would use as sensitive a guide camera as possible because there is less light going into an autoguider than a guide scope, so that would be a QHY5, Atik Titan, SX Lodestar... that kind of thing. After that PHD guiding software is free and you have alternatives. I guide one setup in PHD and two others in AstroArt. Having the guide control on a nice big PC screen is nicer than fiddling with a little box and you can really see what's going on - or not going on!

Another issue is dithered guiding. One of the cameras I use really needs this to deal with hot pixels and noise. Darks don't seem to work well with it. Using PHD wth Nebulosity, or Astro Art for capture and guiding, means you can dither easily. As far as I know it's impossible with standalone guiders because they can't communicate with the capture software.

Finally you are introducing a bit of hardware, the handbox, into the chain of things that could go wrong. Since with a regular guide camera this can be eliminated I would eliminate it!

Olly

[ncjunk]

I assume you are already using the meade dsi and oag so are no novice at guiding.

Therefore what benifit or advantage are you looking to gain by using the lvi instead?

The dsi is a very good guider so i am wondering what your thoughts are behind the lvi.

Enviado desde mi GT-I9003 usando Tapatalk

[hayju01]

Thanks for the info Olly, I'm a tetchy at heart and liked the idea it all being connected, I'm also in IT so know how unstable pc's can be but I suspected the 'all in one' approach to be less flexible.

@neil, I have no experience of guiding the dsi was brought when I was a buying frenzy at the beginning as was the oag and neither have been used for guiding. The thought behind the lvi was to minimise the cables to the PC and for it to 'take care' of the focusing.

And of course the idea of oag was to save me having to attaché a guide scope, but if you see another thread from me I might be better off replacing the finder with an ed80 and use that

I think the reality is that I am trying to get somewhere that I can't really go with out an obs keep on adding more and more kit which only means it takes me longer and longer to setup and more to go wrong and really in the UK that's just a waste of the very few clear nights we get.

[Tim]

The real beauty, or rather, just one of the real beauties of an OAG system is that you can keep the imaging setup all together in a case, and just drop it onto the telescope.

After initial setup, off axis guiding is faster, more accurate, and easier than using a separate guidescope, and lighter on the mount, but they do take a bit of getting used to. If you haven't guided at all, then you might as well learn the proper way instead of using a separate guidescope first.