First Star Adventurer

[jimmyjamjoejoe]

10 minutes ago, Davey-T said:

Zoomed in those look more like lens aberrations.

Did you have the lens stopped down.

Dave

I did, think it might have been f8 (from f3.5) because i know the lens isnt the best and it makes focusing less critical. 

I mean, i'm pretty happy with the images. At 180secs there doesnt seem to be much trailing. At 200mm it might be more apparent but i'm still waiting for another clear night to test.

I had no reason to suspect a problem until the 24hr test... 

If it tracks ok for 180secs at 200mm i'll be a happy man. I could even live with 60secs. So long as it does that the longer term shift isnt really an issue - i'll probably dither a bit anyway.

I'm just concerned that eventually i might end up sitting a zs61 on this, at 360mm... and i dont wanna be using 30sec subs with that... 

[RayD]

I'd agree with @Davey-T in saying that looks like the lens and not the mount.  The shape of the trailing at the edges, but not in the middle says lens as they would be similar all over if it was the mount tracking.

[JimothyC]

Thought I'd test mine out of curiosity and I'm wondering if I've got a duff one as well. I've only used it a couple of times and even though guiding seemed to give me good subs, after a stacking it was clear that things had moved down and to the right over the course of the evening. Set mine up unloaded and used a spirit level to check it was level and left it on over night. Just come back to it and it have maybe moved 200 degrees over 24 hours and appeared to have stopped even though the lights were still on. 

I've reset the firmware back to standard in case that was interfering with anything, hooked it up to external power and set it off again. I've had mine since June from Tring Astro. Seems a bit of a long time to take it back now. Do you think a tune up at DarkFrame would sort issues out if mine is faulty?

[RayD]

One thing worth checking is power.  I noticed with mine originally that I tried it from one of the little battery pack things, but it is a smart one, and because the mount was drawing so little power the output was switching off.  I plugged it in to a standard USB wall power outlet (phone charger) and worked a treat.

[JimothyC]

Power should be good, it had a new set of AAs in there. The external power is Talentcell pack I use for my bigger mount, it's got a switch to turn it on and limited brains, so hopefully should keep trucking all night.

[Thalestris24]

Out of curiosity, I just did a sidereal day test on my old SA with just a laser pointer. Over the period it went ~37mm too far. That's probably not too bad with no load and just running on batteries. There might be a case for attempting to resurrect it and trying to fix the usb connector which I'd managed to break... I did actually replace the socket (as best as I could) but power isn't getting through - At the same time as ripping out the connector, I also damaged the tracks when I caught my foot on the usb cable nearly 3 years ago . Anyway, if I can get non-battery power to it, I'll give it another test with a decent load.

Louise