Guiding and Narrowband

[griz11]

I will have the equipment here in a couple of days to set up a guider. I'm using a 50mm mini Borg and a lodestar with my Losmandy mount. Anyone have any experience with this camera for autoguiding? Are there any gotcha's I need to be aware of with set up, drivers etc? I'm going to use PHD. I'm doing this so I can do some narrowband imaging. Is there a rule of thumb as to how much longer you expose say Ha vs just a light frame on a DSLR? I'm going to use the clip in filters from Astronomik. Didn't want to get into step and step down rings and all that these are a lot less to deal with. I assume since they such a narrow filter that the moon wouldn't effect them as much is this correct? That would be nice since there are lots of nights with the moon up. I've heard some grumblings about the guiding cable on the lodestar. Anyone have any experiences with that? I'll eventually get them all but I'm going to start out with Ha 6nm that seems to be the biggest bang for the buck amongst them. Add in the others later.

Griz

[steppenwolf]

As I'm on an iPhone and about to go to sleep, I'll just tackle the Lodestar query!

I have one and love it - set it to 2 X 2 binning for best results. If you can pulse guide your mount rather than use an ST4 cable then that would be the best method of guiding (with any guide camera). I have never had an issue with the connectors but then, I put a small loop in the cable and cable tied it to the body of the camera as a strain reliever and this worked perfectly,

Good luck.

Sent from my iPhone from somewhere dark .....

[kalasinman]

Is your Canon filter modded? If not, 90+% of Ha will be cut out, so exposure times with an Ha filter could be extremely long.

[swag72]

The Lodestar is a good guiding camera - used by many.

Good luck with the Ha filter!!! They're a devil to focus on the DSLR, but doable. Exposure wise, go for as long as you can.