First play with NEQ6 and Guiding (and questions!)

[Marky1973]

Finally, the last couple of nights have been clear - best part of a week with the NEQ6 and only just been able to play!

First impressions? It's a big fellow! Fair dwarfs the EQ3-2.

I have read a lot of comments about the poor build quality of Skywatcher mounts and I am sure there are much better but, with just the EQ3-2 as a benchmark, it is pretty impressive to me. Big, heavy and rock solid. I spent a few days playing inside and following some of the AstronomyShed tutorials on YouTube to start getting it set up, polar aligned etc and then sorted out tube rings and guide scopes. The clocks are obviously going to be better than the EQ3-2 and have found them to be useful when setting up the mount and polar aligning. Can't recommend AstronomyShed enough.

Couldn't get any smaller rings, so settled with another set of SW80mm rings and beefed them up with some cork spacer that was left over from laying flooring.

Then grabbed some aluminium carpet joining bracket thingy (can't remember the proper name), doubled it up for rigidity and drilled it for the tube rings. Bit of a botch job, but it is pretty solid and was incredibly cheap - will do for now!

And then added the cameras ready to balance it all up

Then the test. Out on Tuesday night. Set it all up, balanced and a 2 star alignment with the handset seemed to work very well. Slewed to M13 and it was (almost) bang centre in the frame.

Had a play with some photos, just a few frames on the first night as I was just getting used to the mount and equipment.

A 3 minute unguided M13 came out quite nicely and was reassuring as I never managed that long on the EQ3-2

(cropped from original)

When I pushed it up to 5 minutes then there was some trailing evident, so it was time to try guiding....

.... which is where it pretty much fell apart for the evening.

I haven't downloaded ASCOM yet, I am sticking with the handset while I learn the ropes, so ST80 with ASI120MM connected to the mount to guide via PHD2... which I couldn't get to work... and PHD, which I couldn't get to work... I just kept getting a very noisy screen. I played with the settings, gain and exposure times, but couldn't see any stars because of all the noise on the screen. If anyone has any suggestions how to get past this, they would be very welcome!

Found some comments on line about using ASCOM, but I didn't really have time to go through that on the night, so will save that for later. Ended up downloading Metaguide which I stumbled across in my frustration and that, after some hassles, seemed to work and allow me to guide. I clearly have some learning to do with the guiding software. PHD/PHD2 did eventually seem to work, but they would lose the star almost as soon as I tried to start guiding so I gave up as Metaguide was working.

Just for the hell of it I went all out with 10 minutes and got a fairly decent result on Bodes

(cropped from original)

and the Whirlpool - although trailing was evident in that effort - 10 minutes may be pushing it for now! (Although I did trip on the back door grate which might have caused the image to jump )

(cropped from original)

And that was it for Tuesday... back out on Wednesday and had a go at Bodes. Saw trailing on a cheeky 10 minute sub, so dropped back to a sensible 5 minute guided sub. Was limited for time, so only took 10 frames (one discarded because of satellite) and the requisite calibration frames.

I did think I would get a bit more information with a series of 5 minute subs, so was a little disappointed with the outcome as per these two efforts with slightly different processing (and heavily cropped)

When compared to a previous effort with 90 second subs (also cropped)

I presume that there (perhaps) wouldn't be a massive leap as the overall time in the stacked images is fairly similar, so I am probably expecting too much on the first night out. I guess the images are also going to be tricky to process well as the original images are so small on the DSLR sensor and need considerable. They are also fairly faint so probably need to stick to some brighter, larger targets while using a DSLR.

But, overall, very impressed with the NEQ6 and the Synscan handset. The extra weight means I have to set up the mount in pieces but, this is balanced by the much faster location of targets via the GOTO software - the first time I tried to image Bode's I struggled for about 45 minutes to find it - this time around it was obviously much easier!

Can't wait to get out and have another play... if the clouds ever clear again.

[glowingturnip]

that's a good read,  I'm taking delivery of my brand new AZ EQ6 GT next weekend, can't wait, should be quite a step up from my current CG4 with synscan kit

The noisy PHD screen might be because the guidescope/cam weren't in focus ?  If you're only slightly away from focus then the cam won't really see anything, and then PHD just stretches and stretches the signal to try to make something out of nothing and you end up with that noise.  If you've got a well-focused star then the noise should just drop away to black.

Don't discard subs with satellite trails in them, make sure you're using a sigma-clipping stacking algorithm and it will remove outlier pixels like those from the trail, and use the rest of the frame.

Good luck with the new toy !

[Marky1973]

Hi Stuart... I think you might be right with the focus - the second night I thought I had left everything locked up to be close to focus, but that didn't work, so have now marked the tube on the ST80 and locked the focusser so will be a bit easier next time.

It's funny how angry you can get trying to make things like this work, but then can't wait to get out and try it all again!

Have fun when the AZ EQ6 comes next week - i'd be jumping up and down impatiently... well, actually I was when waiting for the NEQ6.

[Pompey Monkey]

And when you jump up and down in frustration, it wobbles the mount making things even worse! LOL. You will get there, I'm sure!

[Marky1973]

Ha! I am pretty sure the trail on the whirlpool was related to me tripping on the iron grate at the back door - stood on the corner and the whole thing lifted up and slammed down on the floor...which probably didn't help.

On the Tuesday night, I even had a visit from a hedgehog that wandered over and had a sniff around my feet before snuffling off into the bushes! At one with nature AND the universe!

[wxsatuser]

Your well on your way now, I can see some good images coming.

[Marky1973]

thanks Mike - even if they end up being of the Hedgehog.....

[glowingturnip]

don't forget to dither your hedgehogs

[Marky1973]

although the kids will get upset if I bin them

[kenny k]

Congratulations on your new mount im sure you will get to grips with it no time.

Make some square feet platforms for your tripod legs which help dampen any vibrations.

Goodluck & enjoy your new toy

Kenny

[Pompey Monkey]

Well, I just pulled the trigger on an ex-demo one from astroboot (£300 less than RRP) for my 150 PDS. 

I think a pier would do it justice ! :) 

[glowingturnip]

t-4 days for mine and counting :grin:

[Marky1973]

Well, I just pulled the trigger on an ex-demo one from astroboot (£300 less than RRP) for my 150 PDS. 

I think a pier would do it justice ! :)

Great price PM, I should have waited if one came on for that price!

t-4 days for mine and counting :grin:

t-15 days until the clouds clear by the look of it! 

Enjoy!

[Pompey Monkey]

Great price PM, I should have waited if one came on for that price!

t-15 days until the clouds clear by the look of it! 

Enjoy!

My mistake - It was the AZ-EQ6GT that I bought - I posted in the wrong thread! lol

It's still really a NEQ6 at heart though!

[Marky1973]

Ha-ha! I nearly had a heart-attack! There are some great bargains to be had from Astroboot! Pretty swift delivery too, so hope you get a chance to try it out soon!

[glowingturnip]

so I got my new toy this weekend !

Here's my big mount, little mount pic:

and a few with the full setup

 

 

 

true to form, I was promptly plagued by thin cloud for the rest of the weekend, though I did manage to have a play last night - very impressive so far, PHD calibrated sooo easily, and I was getting rms errors of around 0.4" despite a pretty poor polar alignment.  

Well chuffed 

[Marky1973]

Looking good! Let us know if you have any questions about it... or tips! Still getting to grips with mine, but it is a pleasure to use... set up is so much quicker now.

[glowingturnip]

haven't really had a chance to use it in anger yet, and the test the other night wasn't really a fair one as it was the last night of our long weekend and we were the best part of two bottles down already (hence the rubbish polar alignment) !  Still, going through the motions and setting up the guiding was very pleasing, easy calibration and the flattest graph I've ever seen.

I was relieved to find that it still works with the older Celestron ASCOM driver, 5.0.23 iirc.  The newer 6.0.xxx driver on the ASCOM website doesn't support Synta mounts any more.

I upgraded the handset firmware as I'd heard early releases of the AZ-EQ6GT didn't track properly in AZ mode (though I think I'll always be using it in EQ mode).  Noticed there's a new 'Flipping Mode' in one of the menus - auto-flip, force-flip or no-flip being the options.  Anyone know what they do ?