Tracking Motors

[Stu]

36 minutes ago, Sland said:

When you are tracking you have already set the correct declination but the object you are tracking is moving left to right not up and down so Declination is not required

Well it is actually moving in RA which is what the motor is tracking, not horizontally or vertically, but yes if correctly polar aligned the mount only needs to track in the one axis, DEC is not required

[Stu]

1 minute ago, Stu1smartcookie said:

Ok .. I will re align them, thanks  .. can I ask , if the Dec doesn’t move whilst tracking is there any purpose having power to that motor ? And , looking at the handset controller I am presuming that tracking stars requires the slowest speed , I.e the 0.5 setting . 

The tracking speed should be independent of the slewing speed. Dec is needed if the object drifts due to PA error for instance, or if you want to pan around an object. I often use a Dual axis driven mount to view the sun or moon, and although it is tracking in RA i still use both axes to pan around the surface, then when i get to the required position it remains there because of the tracking.

[Cornelius Varley]

Under normal operations (tracking) the DEC motor doesn't need to be used, it's there to help centre the target in the eyepiece. The 0.5 rate is a guiding speed which is used when the handset is pluggeg into an autoguider when imaging. It doesn't have any effect when the mount is simply tracking.

[Stu]

9 minutes ago, Cornelius Varley said:

It doesn't have any effect when the mount is simply tracking.

Does it not set the manual slewing speed when you press the Up/Down/Left/Right buttons Peter? That's how my Vixen DD-3 controller works, you have a choice of slewing speed.

[Stu1smartcookie]

34 minutes ago, Stu said:

Does it not set the manual slewing speed when you press the Up/Down/Left/Right buttons Peter? That's how my Vixen DD-3 controller works, you have a choice of slewing speed.

I don’t want to sound like I know what I’m talking about but the higher speeds does indeed have a bearing on slewing the scope . 

[John]

I use the Skywatcher EQ5 dual drive set on my Vixen GP DX mount. When you switch to a higher rate (ie: 2x, 8x, 16x etc) this does effect DEC as well as RA slewing speed.

 

[Merlin66]

Yes. On my HEQ5 and NEQ6 setting the slew rates affects both the RA and Dec.......

 

[Cornelius Varley]

9 hours ago, Stu said:

Does it not set the manual slewing speed when you press the Up/Down/Left/Right buttons Peter? That's how my Vixen DD-3 controller works, you have a choice of slewing speed.

}I misread the blurb.  The handset has 3 tracking speeds 0.5 , 2x and 16x. The handset would be set to 0.5x sidereal for guiding through the ST4 port and 2x and 16x for normal use. 

[Stu1smartcookie]

A quick update . Tonight the mount is tracking well ... not perfectly though ... I have to say the balance isn’t 100% , but I did polar align and level the scope .. I had it tracking mars and a few stars and it held them in view for about 30 minutes or so ... I know this isn’t quite right but I will look at the gears later when I bring the scope in . I’m sure that I’m on the right track now ( pun intended ) 

[Stu]

Sounds plenty good enough for visual. I quite frequently pan around anyway using the slew controls anyway so perfect alignment does matter so much. Imaging is a very different matter obviously. Getting the balance right should help too.

[Stu1smartcookie]

58 minutes ago, Stu said:

Sounds plenty good enough for visual. I quite frequently pan around anyway using the slew controls anyway so perfect alignment does matter so much. Imaging is a very different matter obviously. Getting the balance right should help too.

Yes , I do intend to do some photography so I need to get it spot on . But , earlier on it was great not having to move the scope around whilst I was using it for visual