Guide Scope Kit For Star Adventurer

[daveangie0110]

Hi All,

Can someone tell me what is a good Guide Scope and Camera to be used with a Star Adventurer please. this will be my first time trying to guide the Star Adventurer, i have a budget of about £350.00

Many Thanks

[John78]

Isn't this a effort in futility?  You can only guide on RA axis, you and you have to mount it all on the SA somehow increasing the weight and compromising the tracking. 

That said - if you have your heart set on trying it - QHY miniguidescope kit looks like its the right ticket and will come in under your budget and massively so if you already have a QHY5 or something similar to poke in the end of it or source one second hand.

With the lenses in your sig you're not going to want much more than a minute subs surely, and the SA will do that already for you with proper PA.

[ronin]

I see there is an auto guider port but cannot see how you actually guide it.

As best I know it is driven in RA only and has no Dec drive. I notice also the lack of any comment in the FLO description concerning "guiding". The load it is capable of is only 5Kg so any guide scope and camera will need to be small+lightweight.

The Skywatcher manual says:

Auto-Guider: Star Adventurer also contains auto-guiding interface to accept single axis (RA axis) auto-guiding signal to provide more accurate celestial tracking for better quality of astrophotography. The RJ-12 6-pin outlet is for connecting an autoguider. It is compatible with any autoguider with a ST-4 type interface. This function only works in Mode . For other modes, the auto-guiding signal has no effect.

So unless you are almost perfectly aligned such that there is no Dec movement any target will drift up/down and I suspect that is the Dec is accurate then the RA will be also.

Seems enabling guiding in one plane/axis only is a bit irrelevant. In a way it means their motors may not be driving very well in RA so you have to add guiding to compensate. Seems a bit strange to have a guide port on this item. Maybe I am missing something (a few marbles I suppose).

[John78]

5 hours ago, ronin said:

I see there is an auto guider port but cannot see how you actually guide it.

As best I know it is driven in RA only and has no Dec drive. I notice also the lack of any comment in the FLO description concerning "guiding". The load it is capable of is only 5Kg so any guide scope and camera will need to be small+lightweight.

The Skywatcher manual says:

Auto-Guider: Star Adventurer also contains auto-guiding interface to accept single axis (RA axis) auto-guiding signal to provide more accurate celestial tracking for better quality of astrophotography. The RJ-12 6-pin outlet is for connecting an autoguider. It is compatible with any autoguider with a ST-4 type interface. This function only works in Mode . For other modes, the auto-guiding signal has no effect.

So unless you are almost perfectly aligned such that there is no Dec movement any target will drift up/down and I suspect that is the Dec is accurate then the RA will be also.

Seems enabling guiding in one plane/axis only is a bit irrelevant. In a way it means their motors may not be driving very well in RA so you have to add guiding to compensate. Seems a bit strange to have a guide port on this item. Maybe I am missing something (a few marbles I suppose).

Well, if you get your mount level, and properly polar aligned it should only really need RA guiding (dec guides are to compensate for poor PA or levelling) - however on a mount like a star adventurer level is going to be difficult, polar alignment posing a significant challenge - but when you are going to use a 135mm F2 sharp lens; unless your house is on the outside of the hubble - its not going to be dark enough to matter - what the SA offers out of the box will be long enough exposures.