Postmaster or this scope

[Neilsermk1]

Hi all, 

I am  new to astrophotography and am stil! looking to build up my equipment. I have an HEQ5 Pro to go mount and 200pcs Skywatcher OTA. 

I want to primarily focus on DSO,s (pardon the pun)

I am thinking about my next purchase and am torn between a postmaster for accurate alignment or  a guidescope.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Best regards

Neil

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Anton Astro]

They’re not really comparable - but if you are confident you can polar align to at least a reasonable accuracy already then definitely guiding will give the biggest bang for your buck of the two.

[Neilsermk1]

That's part of the problem. I'm not that confident I'm getting good alignment. 

 

 

[AngryDonkey]

I assume you mean this (Polemaster):

and not this:

Sorry couldn't resist ?

To answer your question, personally I think the Polemaster is a great piece of kit and makes polar alignment really easy. It is however expensive and similar alignment can be reached with other (cheaper) means, which might however take a bit more effort to setup. So if money is an issue then I would definitely spend it somewhere else.

If you search the forum you will find a lot of people are using SharpCap (which is free) to polar align with a short fl guide scope and a cheap CMOS camera. This might tie in nicely if if you want to invest in a guide scope and camera. A good thread is here:

https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/298664-polemaster-diy-build/

[steppenwolf]

The best improvement in your imaging will come from adding auto-guiding to the mix so this would be the better choice. I have a Polemaster and it is excellent (I liked it enough to write the UK manual for it!) but there are plenty of other ways to polar align if your current budget will only allow you to have one of your two choices!

[carastro]

Yes I agree with all the above reasoning.  To be honest, and I shouldn't really say this, but if your polar alignment is fairly close but not perfect the guiding will probably compensate for a small amount of error.

Carole 

[Stargazer33]

Also with a guide scope you can use Sharpcap to get very good polar alignment. Sharpcaps polar alignment works best with a focal length of 200mm so a finder/guider setup would be ideal.

[Neilsermk1]

Thanks all for your help. I think the autoguiding option with sharpcap in the mix is the way ahead for me. Let's see what Santa brings ??

 

 

[wimvb]

The skywatcher synscan has a very decent polar alignment routine, that doesn't require polaris to be visible from your location. So +1 for a guide scope + camera.