faster polar alignment with asi120mc

[Wirral man]

Hi yet another question i have the asi120mc for guiding last night it seamed to take a while before it would detect enough stars before allow me to polar align i played around with the gain and exposure but noticed in the settings you can select raw 8 raw 16 mono 8 and another one cant remember now which would be the best and is there anything else i can do to speed things up thanks 

[kens]

RAW16 is better but generates more data. If that's a problem use RAW8. For polar alignment, you could  use your imaging camera instead. The PHD2 polar alignment tools only require you to use one star to polar align (well technically two for drift alignment but only one at a time). The fastest polar alignment tool is Polar Drift Alignment (PDA) - not the most accurate but good enough for most purposes.

[Thalestris24]

Hiya

Mono 8 bit is fine for guiding. Can you remind me what your asi is fitted to for guiding? (It's useful to put your equipment in your sig  ). You probably want ~2s exposure time. You also have to be aware of the sky conditions e.g. maybe no clouds but transparency is poor and you can't see many naked eye stars - I get that here all the time...  )

Louise

[Wirral man]

23 minutes ago, Thalestris24 said:

Hiya

Mono 8 bit is fine for guiding. Can you remind me what your asi is fitted to for guiding? (It's useful to put your equipment in your sig  ). You probably want ~2s exposure time. You also have to be aware of the sky conditions e.g. maybe no clouds but transparency is poor and you can't see many naked eye stars - I get that here all the time...  )

Louise

im using the skywatcher 9x50 finderscope and yes will update my sig thanks

[Thalestris24]

7 minutes ago, Wirral man said:

im using the skywatcher 9x50 finderscope and yes will update my sig thanks

 Are you managing to focus ok?

 

[Wirral man]

5 minutes ago, Thalestris24 said:

 Are you managing to focus ok?

 

yes i bought the proper adapter for it and modded it myself

[Thalestris24]

At 1280 x 960 pixels and the 50mm finder you should see plenty of stars - so not sure why you were having trouble unless transparency was poor.

Louise

[Wirral man]

dont think the moon helped much 

[david_taurus83]

Transparency was poor around the Midlands the last couple of nights. Moon and Jupiter visible only and could only just make out it's moons through the haze in my binoculars. I'd say your nearly there but just the weather letting you down now.

[newbie alert]

Must say Mr Wirral man 10 out of ten for enthusiasm..we all learn abit from each other

[Wirral man]

On 29/05/2018 at 18:30, newbie alert said:

Must say Mr Wirral man 10 out of ten for enthusiasm..we all learn abit from each other

I absolutely love this hobby i have had many different hobbies over the years but more fads as i look back but astrophotography is something else and i intend to perfect this over the coming years!!