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AP disaster..........

nephilim

By nephilim
in Getting Started With Imaging

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nephilim

nephilim

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To cut a long story short, I went out to late last night to have a crack at AP for the first time, it wasnt pretty, between wres falling out of laptops & laptop cutting out half way through an imaging run (the only one attempted) it was an out & out failure. Anyway, the main problem I had was PA, when I viewed Saturn through the scope it constantly drifted out of view in RA, manually turning the ra knob on my EQ5 PA was perfect. When I finally got home at 5am this morning something clicked in my head, I use the dual axis motors & I may have had the ra wire in the dec connection on the mount (yes i know ...Durrrrr....) an the dec wire in the ra connection. I take it that this would cause the object to drift regardless of the speed on the controller. Is that the case & also what speed is correct for imaging, 2x,4x or 8x??......Aside from that I saw M13 for the first time which was nice & M51 :grin:

Steve

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emadmoussa

emadmoussa

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Lol...that's for Saturn.

And seriously, I agree...you might have swapped them around. When you have a lock on your target on your computer screen it seems drift much faster than in the EP. Then again, AP is all about making mistakes and learning from them :D If I had a nickel every time I messed up everything...

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emadmoussa

emadmoussa

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Thanks, it hadnt registered until i got home, so frustrating after it took so long to get everything working. Oh well, live n learn. Still had a great nights observing so not all was lost :smiley:

Steve

Did you get in shots of Saturn after all?

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nephilim

nephilim

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Did you get in shots of Saturn after all?

The whole night was doomed from the start, after the AP debacle I thought at least I could get a nice webcam avi of Saturn.........I'd left my poxy barlow at home so packed up in a sulk, went home, went to bed.!!! Haha.
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nephilim

nephilim

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This is what happened with me few weeks ago...2 hours of lunar imaging...was very happy with the results. Packed up, checked my files...all gone... arrrgh!!!

Gutting mate, its so frustrating haha, I wasnt that bothered about my power going halfway through the image run as i knew that without proper PA I'd have got nothing of much use, I just want to get that first 'something' so i've something to work on & towards. Sunday night may be good (Hmmmmmmm.......) so i'll just try again.

Steve

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watersblue

watersblue

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Threads like this give me hope lol!

It was lovely to get out for once last night, wasn't it/ I was lying down on a carpet (out of my car boot) at the side of a lonely mountain road. One guy stopped his car to ask if I was ok. Well, my family think I'm nuts, anyway.

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WaveSoarer

WaveSoarer

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Steve,

I use the same setup. The dual axis RA motor will start running at the correct speed as soon as it's switched on (on the N setting). The x2, x4 and x8 speeds are only for slewing with one of the 4 slewing buttons pressed. You should feel the RA knob nudging in a rapid tick-tick-tick way as it tracks. It's pretty easy to use. Incidentally the RA plug is a bit of a pain to get out of its socket when you're finished due to the housing (the hole isn't all that big for my fingers). I've put a piece of tape on the lug of the plug which helps me extricate it.

Dave

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Freddie

Freddie

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I would have thought that if you had the wires crossed it would have drifted in both RA and DEC. When tracking you would only drive the RA motor, so if you have the wires crossed it would have drifted in RA as you would not have been driving that motor as you should have been, but would have also drifted in DEC as you would have been driving that motor when you shouldn't have been.

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nephilim

nephilim

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Steve,

I use the same setup. The dual axis RA motor will start running at the correct speed as soon as it's switched on (on the N setting). The x2, x4 and x8 speeds are only for slewing with one of the 4 slewing buttons pressed. You should feel the RA knob nudging in a rapid tick-tick-tick way as it tracks. It's pretty easy to use. Incidentally the RA plug is a bit of a pain to get out of its socket when you're finished due to the housing (the hole isn't all that big for my fingers). I've put a piece of tape on the lug of the plug which helps me extricate it.

Dave

Thanks Dave, thats what I needed to know. I'll have to check it out later on in the daytime to make sure everything is working as it should (impossible to see in the dark when its freezing cold & everything is shaking (bodywise haha)

Cheers

Steve

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nephilim

nephilim

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I would have thought that if you had the wires crossed it would have drifted in both RA and DEC. When tracking you would only drive the RA motor, so if you have the wires crossed it would have drifted in RA as you would not have been driving that motor as you should have been, but would have also drifted in DEC as you would have been driving that motor when you shouldn't have been.

That also crossed my mind, I just ended up pressing the 2x,4x etc not realising that as Dave's mentioned is just for slewing (pretty new to this haha) so maybe my PA was not as precise as I thought, but when i was manually using the RA knob with the motor disengaged Saturn stayed in view with no tweaking needed. Better get more practise.

Steve

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earth titan

earth titan

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We've all had nights like this when imaging. It's what makes it fun!!

My favourites are as follows:

1. Left the bahtinov mask on for 2 hours while chunking out subs, after I had rechecked focus.

2. Reinstalling QHY5 drivers, PhD and finally some USB drIvers because it wouldn't show stars when set to loop mode..... Left the lens cap on the guide scope.

3. Strange streaks through my images, only to discover my dew heater tape was turned up to maximum by mistake..

Typed by me on my fone, using fumms... Excuse eny speling errurs.

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WaveSoarer

WaveSoarer

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Also, make sure that the clutches are nipped up after you've roughly centred on an object manually (using the knobs). I was out in the cold snapping subs for half an hour before I realised this. It happened twice on the same night on different objects.

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