FIRST LIGHT REVIEW SKYSCAN HEQ6

[CELESCOPE]

Ok finally got around to testing this new piece of equipment, this is really all new to me after many years of working in ALT-AZ, i must admit i was very nervous of moving over to the EQ Mount .

Today was spent setting up the polar scope section, having read the book everynight for the past week i became more and more confused  , but today was the day i had to get to grips with it , starting off this morning i decided to kick off with orienting the polar scope recticle, this seemed fairly straight foward following the instructions , ok so that did,nt take long , after that we had to move on to aligning the polar scope recticle, now this can be done using polaris or it can be done during the day  ,say using an object 500 yards or more away , i decided to use a tv aerial , fixing the top of the pole just under the recticle , afterthis i had to nove the scope in RA and watch the movement of the tv pole , the object of the game was to see if the tv pole tip remained in the same position as i rotated the scope , did it stay there !! did it heck , so this was a right pig of a job ,2  hrs i spent fine tuning it by 3 allen screws, the final result was , THAT WILL DO  , it was near enough , not perfect , but by this time may back was aching , fingers frozen and fed up .

Final crunch time tonight , the skies remained CLEAR !!HURRAY !!!! Set the scope up , nice and level, with the aid of a bubble nicely set in the mount, pointed the scope due north with the compass, then looking through the polar scope which was a bit daunting,as it appeared all red and made finding polaris a bit difficult, however i soon found it and proceded to centre it  slightly off centre to the recticle as stated in the instructions .

Ok having that all set up ,i put in all the coordinates, after which i decided to use the 2 star alignment for tonights test, choose the stars i knew best and aligned each one , however i  did find i had to alter the slew rate every time i aligned them , not sure if this was the norm or not .

So now the moment of truth , lets make it easy for the ole scope i thought , in goes the first object , M42  , away it went purring like a kitten , so quiet i had to put my ear to the motors,and even then found it hard to hear it.

Finally came to a halt  , and a sexy beep  told me it was on the subject , OH YEA I THOUGHT !! Looked in the eyepiece and ,COR BLIMEY MATE there it was , falls backwards , heck !! ok then Mr i thought , have some of this , Saturn , away it went , and !! Smack in the eye piece , tried a  few more , and all the same , One delighted Rog i can tell ya .

Ok lets try some imaging . M42 as its an easy subject , i used the Atik for this , trying a reducer on the ED 80  bought it down to about f6 i guess or there abouts , focused it in and run a 9 d sec exposure ,  looked good , tried a 26 sec exposure , still good , processed both , found no star trails or rotation , good ok , now  60 sec exposure , run 10 frames , processed them , and found no rotation , and no star trails , whoops clouds approaching  bandits at 10 0clock ,so had to rush now  90 secs , run 3 subs no rotation and no trailing , but this was the end of the session as clouds came over and finished my night, but i was glad as i,m tired , cold and had enough , but very pleased with the Mount , i,m sure it will be super with some more fine tuning , but even so it looks like its outperforming the fast star which worked out at F1.95, AND TONIGHT I WAS WORKING AT AROUND F6 OR MAYBE F5 , so it has to be good . anyway no images to show ,it was,nt an imaging session as such , but i can assure you i was well pleased.

My thanks to Russ , who has helped me get started with the Mount , and James for his support , thanks lads .

Rog

Oh nearly forgot Bern as well , would be lost with out his support .

[OXO]

Nice report Rog,

Sounds like you had a ball all be it for not as long as you would of liked but hell you got a result with the setup and it sounds like the Mount will track amazingly well for you and your imaging which is a Bonus for us waiting to see the fine images you will get from the setup .

Makes me wanna get my HEQ5 upgraded to Skyscan even more after reading your report(Yes me and goto lol)..

Regards

James

[GazOC]

Not just GOTO, the faster motors would be a big selling point for me.

Glad you lke the mount Roger, I look forward to the pictures.

(Aligning the polar scope can be a pig can't it? )

[Kaptain Klevtsov]

And you can train it to cancel out periodic error to make it better.

Nice report

Captain Chaos in cloudville

[tom.yates]

Good report mate

[lunator]

Rog

Good report.

Sounds like you have a great mount there.

Unfortunately your clouds have just arrived here

Cheers

Ian

[Mick.G.]

Glad to hear everything is going tickytyboo Rog

Mick.