Star Adventurer and auto guiding

[waroffice]

Morning folks,

As per subject really, is it worth auto guiding my star adventurer, I did lose about half my frames from this weekends activities.

I will eventually go for a ZS61 but for now I will stick with my Pentax K5.  If auto guiding is the future, can I modify a webcam I found in a drawer, its a decent logitech one

[Davey-T]

Just my personal opinion but I think the SWSA works quite well enough without complicating it with guiding, when used up to it's stated capacity .

Dave

[ronin]

Isn't this the one where it has a "guide" port but no drive in Dec (unit has the RA drive only) so guiding is not really possible? If the guide star goes what is in effct up or down then the mount is unable to follow.

One of those odd ones where it makes little sense.

[newbie alert]

I know of someone that guides with his adventurer all the time.. and looking at his results it's not doing him any harm

[geordie85]

2 hours ago, ronin said:

Isn't this the one where it has a "guide" port but no drive in Dec (unit has the RA drive only) so guiding is not really possible? If the guide star goes what is in effct up or down then the mount is unable to follow.

One of those odd ones where it makes little sense.

A correctly polar aligned mount should only need RA corrections. 

[ronin]

2 hours ago, geordie85 said:

A correctly polar aligned mount should only need RA corrections. 

Agreed but then if correctly poalr aligned no need to guide. And yes I know people get good results with the mount alone, so in that respect it implies the RA drive is pretty accurate.

Point was very simply that the mount has no Dec drive so in that respect it cannot be guided with regards to that component of movement. So "auto-guiding" of a Star Adventurer is not the same as autoguiding of a EQ5 Pro for example. No compensation seems possible for corrections in the Dec axis.

Question: If there is a requirement for a Dec position correction to the tracking can this be perfomed via the Auto Guide port on the Star Adventurer, will the Star Adventurer perform a Dec axis adjustment?

If Yes it can then I am wrong. if No it cannot then I am right.

The point was made so that the OP does not go off thinking they can perform full RA and Dec guiding on the Star Adventurer.

[geordie85]

That's true. So I suppose the star adventure should be known to be semi-guided, if anything. 

[waroffice]

ok, thanks for the info guys.

I guess I will save my cash until I can get a better mount with more than one motor!