Sitech ii how much of the high tech stuff do you really need.?

[tomato]

After digesting the forums for 6 months I have purchased a Mesu 200 with Sitech for the following reasons:

1. Being a previous Old School Astrophotographer ( manual guiding and actual film) I fully appreciate the engineering requirements of a good mount, and in my humble opinion the Mesu is without doubt well engineered.

2. I also wanted goto functionality but am quite happy to stay with the scope during imaging sessions ( which are pretty short anyway in the North of England)

I have read through the Sitech manuals and and have got overwhelmed by all of the high tech stuff, however I think I have got the hang of the offset init and cal star routines. So my question is do I really need to get to grips with all the other stuff or can I just PA and then get on with imaging? Do I need to worry about plate solving, horizon modelling and auto meridian flips etc?

Maybe I'm guilty of not using the full controller functionality but the way I look at it is the engineering comes first and that never comes cheap.

[Kropster]

If you use guiding you might be able to forget most of the complex gubbins.

[ollypenrice]

Quite honestly you sound a bit like me! I have the Argo Navis version which is proving far more reliable the the SiTech ones so far as I can tell. (I follow the Mesu threads with interest because I was a big early advocate of the Argo Navis version and reviewed it for two magazines.) That doesn't mean you will necessarily have problems with the SiTech and, no, you don't need all that fancy stuff. It is mainly there for robotic users who are not next to their scopes. 

My own routine is incredibly complicated. (Ahem.) After drift aligning a couple of years ago I do a one star alignment to start the evening, use the Go To to go to, switch on the autoguider without bothering to recalibrate it and image all night wih a guide trace that looks like a pencil line. Life is sweet. While the SiTech works when it works, every Mesu problem I've ever read about has been a SiTech-Mesu problem.

Olly

[StarryEyed]

Are you interested in the other stuff?

I think most people have two requirements from a mount. It appears your are meet.

[steppenwolf]

I have the SiTech II controller on my Mesu and have tried all the extra 'goodies' to see what they actually do but, no, you don't need to use them. Drift alignment, Offset Init at the start of the session, select an object to image and slew to it using your planetarium software or the built in mini planetarium software, set your autoguider running and enjoy great long exposure imaging. The SiTech II controller works faultlessly for me with no awkward hand controller to get in the way! I have enjoyed running fully automated all sky modelling but the Mesu/SiTech combination works so well that even this goodie isn't mandatory.

[tomato]

Thanks for the feedback.

I must say so far the Sitech/Mesu have performed faultlessly, I have set up, carried out an Offset init, Polar Aligned with AlignMaster, and can achieve sufficiently accurate gotos coupled to Stellarium for visual observing. I currently only have a DSLR for imaging and need to get an external power supply for it to enable extended exposures.

So for now I'll just concentrate on trying to capture some photons.