Guiding software for an Alt/az mount

[Concept]

Hi All,

There's a lot of guiding software out there, but which will guide a celestron alt/az goto mount?

I believe PHD is EQ only, but could I put it through ASCOM which allows celectron at/az mounts? 

An help would be most appreciated.

Regards Trevor 

[IanL]

Take a look at this thread.

http://stargazerslounge.com/topic/117667-auto-guiding-an-alt-az-mount/

You can guide an alt-az mount, but to do long exposure imaging you'd need a camera rotator otherwise you get field rotation; the stars start to form curved arcs on the image with the centre of rotation where the guide star is located.  Camera rotators are not somewhere you want to go from what I've heard, expensive and difficult to use, probably only worth it for very large scopes where you are unable to mount them equatorially (either with a GEM or wedge and forks).

Whether you can get your mount accepting guide commands in alt-az mode depends on its firmware/drivers as per the thread I have linked.

[Merlin66]

PHD did a good job guiding my ol' Lx200 in Alt-Az mode.

Others have said that the Celestron forks didn't accept Alt-Az guiding.

Field rotation is an issue (well, not so much when you do spectroscopy using a slit on axis guider)

[rpg850]

I can only get PHD2 to connect to my NexStar mount if I select EQ North tracking in PHD2. Haven't tested it in the field yet, but I suspect that it's not going to work well.