1st try at guiding

[wackyscot]

After many nights of wrangling with my old faithful CG5 mount trying to guide, I eventually gave up and sold it, I bought a second hand NEQ6 pro. I did a 3 star align, 1st go "align successful" - I then thought - ok time to try guiding. Having heard some of the problems with drivers for the guiding on the NEQ6, thought I'd just leave the celestron ones in place and see if they worked with the NEQ6. I did the normal phd cycle, waited a few minutes for the calibration to sort itself out, after a nervous wait, ch-ching, it was guiding, I loaded the graph, and it looked great compared to the previous attempts on the CG5 which looked like a 7 on the richter scale . I was struggling to contain my excitement, much to the bemusement of my girlfriend hehhehehe. Anyhoo, here is my 1st try at guiding result, and the screen cap. of the graph. The processing is a bit messy but I'm fairly happy at the result. 5 subs, no darks 5 mins each at iso 1600.. I think my settings must have been not far out, any comments/ criticism would be welcome, (be kind)

David

[symesie04]

Very nice indeed. Quite tight stars in there. Fancy with a bit more data and some darks, flats and bias that could turn a real nice piece of work. The NEQ6 is my next target so good to hear that it was easy, maybe ill just load some Celestron drivers to begin with What are you using for guide scope and guide cam? Also where did you manage to find a second hand NEQ6?

[wackyscot]

Thanks Symesie, I'm using a qhy5 guide cam attached to my celestron 9x50 finder. I got the NEQ6 from here, U.K. Astronomy Buy & Sell I'm not that well informed on flats, bias etc, that's my next step, to try out the full gambit of astrophotography. (also a mpcc would help)

David