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Help please. Need advise on taking pictures of orion nebula

adavies8900

By adavies8900
in Getting Started With Imaging

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ardbeg74

ardbeg74

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Hi Mate,

We have the same scope and mount, Just in from a session, first one since getting the polar scope. Probably the best £32 ive spent in a while. 45sec subs no trails. 50 to 60sec some trails and occasional bad one (wind probably or me stomping around). Before packing up i checked the alignment again, and i was out a bit... so with practice and patience maybe 60sec possible???

Installing it, calibrating it and aligning it to the mount wasnt too bad either, nowhere near as bad as i thought it was going to be.

So well worth it, dont hesitate to get one :)

HTH

Mark

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Alien 13

Alien 13

Posted
Posted

I am another EQ3-2 user and the polar scope and motor was the best money i ever spent too.

The EQ3-2 sometimes gets a bad press but it realy sings with the right scope or camera/lens combo 2 min subs is not impossible.

Alan

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Russe

Russe

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I'm not completely sure I ever have perfect PA. But then I haven't really done it often as I'm still new to astronomy. As far as I'm aware this is how I do it. Get latitude correctly set, set polarscope so the Big Dipper is roughly matching its orientation in the sky. Then adjust alt/az and te two bolts to fix Polaris in the "Polaris" circle. I have a sneaky suspicion that it drifts out if alignment, but will check next time. I guess I should check PA often and re-align?

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Sounds good - except for the part that you need to rotate your mount to bring the Polaris circle to the right "time" first.
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malc-c

malc-c

Posted
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let me try and explain the TIME that Russ is on about.

Polaris oribits the north celestial pole, taking 24 hours to complete one orbit (naturally).  If you don't set the small circle on the polar scope reticule to the same position that Polaris is in it's orbit then you could end up way off alignment, well enough to give tracking errors. For example, looking at the orbit and using the orbit as a normal 12 hour clock face, lets say polaris is at the 3 O'clock position on our clock face  ( ie as far to the right of it's orbit).  If you have the small bubble on the reticule set to the far left (ie 9 O'clock on our clock face) and place that over Polaris, the telescope axis will be twice the radius (about 2 degrees) out off.

Actually the clock face is 24 hours, so in the above example polaris HA would be 6 hours.  I would suggest you download a small but useful application called Pole Finder (http://myastroimages.com/Polar_FinderScope_by_Jason_Dale/ ) which will give you the correct orbital position for Polaris at the time you are observing.

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ardbeg74

ardbeg74

Posted
Posted

I am another EQ3-2 user and the polar scope and motor was the best money i ever spent too.

Alan

Yep i'll second that on the motor.

ra motor, polar scope, bahtinov mask and something to control the camera from the laptop with live view and zoom. All 'must have' items IMHO and hope to add auto focuser to that list soon but a clothes peg does the job right now :).

Hands free on the wobbly 3-2 / pl combination is a game changer. Get a comfy chair and a good brew, your days of standing are over :)  ( I am  sooo made for an obsy :grin:   )

Mark

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Alien 13

Alien 13

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Yep i'll second that on the motor.

ra motor, polar scope, bahtinov mask and something to control the camera from the laptop with live view and zoom. All 'must have' items IMHO and hope to add auto focuser to that list soon but a clothes peg does the job right now :).

Hands free on the wobbly 3-2 / pl combination is a game changer. Get a comfy chair and a good brew, your days of standing are over :)  ( I am  sooo made for an obsy :grin:   )

Mark

My thoughts exactly, i have pondered if i could get an old toy remote control car motor with the right gearing to become my hands free focusser.

Alan

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Russe

Russe

Posted
Posted

If you'd use EQMOD - your laptop would move the little circle to the exact position. I've tried polar alignment like yourself initially. The trouble is - the bigger circle doesn't have "hour markers". Therefore, since you are crouching beneath the mount, you might just be looking at things at an awkward angle.

To get a bit more accurate with "eyeballing the small circle position":

Move Polaris into the middle of the center cross. Then move only azimuth or altitude in one direction, until Polaris meets the circle. Depending on which screw you moved, Polaris will now be either at 3, 6, 9 or 12 I'clock. You could then move the little circle to the "time" given to you by your app. Followed by adjusting azimuth and altitude until Polaris is at the right point.

Good luck! Saturday looking good!!

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ardbeg74

ardbeg74

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My thoughts exactly, i have pondered if i could get an old toy remote control car motor with the right gearing to become my hands free focusser.

Alan

In principal i guess it could work. Be good to control everything with the rc controller. I was wondering something similar myself, having everything coming into the one control panel powered by 12v tank.. but using the rc controller... yea that would just be class :)

Russe - yea its looking good for the weekend!!!

Everybody - remember to fully charge your camera batteries tonight!!!!!

Mark

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Andy Milner

Andy Milner

Posted
Posted

Having g problems tracking here. I think it's because I balanced the scope and mount prior to putting on the DSLR. As sometimes I get great tracking and other times after slewing to a different target the tracking is way off. Any tips for a list if pointers to look at? I know polar alignment looks good so I doubt it's that.

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malc-c

malc-c

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If the scope is slewing and finding targets then that would suggest that polar alignment is ok and it's more like a balance issue causing the motors to mis-track.

Have a watch of Dion's video on balancing a scope - might help resolve the issue

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