Guiding

[George]

Got my bits today from Shoestring http://www.store.shoestringastronomy.com/

Only took 10 days which considering the postal strike I think is pretty good.

I'm intending to use the ST80 and Toucam to cut my teeth in guiding, I bought the parallel port converter and cable as my USB and serial are already being used (USB already complains sometimes about being overloaded )

I tried the test proggy thingy and it seems to be working so providing tonights clear I'll have a play, I have KCCD3, Guidedog & PHDguide so I'll see which suits me for my setup.

If anyone has a similier setup perhaps youd like to throw me a few pointers

George

[Kaptain Klevtsov]

Pointers for K3CCD:-

Use the CCD calculator and set your 'scope and CCD details to allow it to work out the size of the error. Once set this stays where it is so you don't need to worry about it again. You can do this in daylight.

Line up the guide cam so that RA moves the star left - right. Use the reticle that you get in the guiding bit to get it spot on. Close works, but gets the Dec. moving when you don't need it to. The angle working out bit works OK but the stopping and starting the tracking is a pain and can be avoided.

Get the guide star centred and click on the "guide" box to start it going. You might want to uncheck the Guide Dec box until you get used to it.

Drive the mount manually off target a bit and see what happens. The guiding should kick in and bring the guide star back. If you have the direction reversed it'll quickly go badly wrong. You should unclick "guide" to stop it. On the top row of the window with the graph, there are two arrows. Clicking these will revere the guide direction of the mount. Click on these and your rapidly disappearing star should come back when you start guiding again. Repeat this for Dec. guiding after clicking the box to eneable Dec guiding.

Then you fiddle with the numbers to get the line flat if you can.

If the seeing is poor, you will get lots of small wiggles as the star wobbles about on the chip. This is normal and can't be avoided.

Kaptain Klevtsov

[Beyond_Vision]

Hi there,

Im using Shoestring USB guide box on my Orion Sirius EQG mount (same as HEQ5) and found PHD a free guiding program very easy to use as it calibrates the set up automatically.

Regards.

Kevin

[beamer3.6m]

Am I right in assuming tha you all have GOTO mounts or will this work on the standard HEQ5 and if so how?

Cheers guys.

[Kaptain Klevtsov]

See this thread Beamer.

http://stargazerslounge.com/index.php/topic,18439.0.html

Kaptain Klevtsov

[steppenwolf]

Am I right in assuming tha you all have GOTO mounts or will this work on the standard HEQ5 and if so how?

Cheers guys.

Before I upgraded my EQ6 to GoTo, I autoguided mine with a small and simple mod. to the handcontroller. This works with a non-GoTo HEQ5 as well. There is an article on my website that describes this:-

http://home2.btconnect.com/astro-site/home_built_autoguider_project.htm