A mixed night

[vineyard]

Hello,

Having watched the forecast the prior few days, I knew it was going to be a clear night so I set up w much excitement last night.  I'd recently got my hands on a belt-modded HEQ5 Pro so I was looking fwd to putting my 4" frac on it w a guide scope & going on a journey.  Have to say it was a mixed night.

The good bits:

• I got polar alignment to work from the bottom of the garden, and w EKOS' PA module.
• I got the guidescope (Evo50) to focus.
• The mount is solid and easily held all the gear (my other one is an old GP2 which is brilliant but unfortunately not quite sturdy enough for imaging with the TV102 w all the rest of the paraphernalia).
• I even got guiding to work, and it was pretty accurate on the EKOS internal guider.
• The plate solving worked with the guidescope (once I realised that somehow astropy was in a different location on my laptop now, and so I needed to change the python path in EKOS astrometry configuration)

The not so good bits:

• the ASI178MC on the main scope was showing weird things (lots of moving white pixels) even after taking darks which meant the platesolving just wouldn't work
• once polar-aligned, the scope would suddenly think it was pointing somewhere completely different rather than polaris (and so it moved off to the wrong place, and with platesolving not working on the main camera...)
• at one stage, EKOS was taking the scope in diametrically the opposite direction!  (I set it to go to X Draco and instead of moving eastward, it went westward...)
• then when platesolving with the guidescope camera, tried to take it one of the UMi stars, and after a first attempt, it suddenly went off towards the horizon!
• after that, I thought maybe the mount thinks its in the S hemisphere (hence also not pointing at polaris when parked?) and changed the DEC - and when I parked all of a sudden the OTA starts moving downwards...😂😱)

By this time it was late and I decided to pack it in.  Glad to have got some things to work, but more than a bit disappointed at not having been able to see anything in particular.

Back on the horse this morning (inside the house), and after googling, saw an old SGL post that made me think that perhaps the mount was using an old park position from the previous owner.  So I parked, then took off the brakes and manually moved it back (ie counterweights down, and OTA pointing at Polaris), cleared all parking data & reset this as park.  And now it seems to work properly, it slews in the right direction by the right amount with multiple destinations tried (including meridian flips) and returns to the proper (Polaris) park every time.

Of course the moment of truth will be when its outside again (next week maybe?)...I really hope it works then otherwise I'm going to be gutted again since w all this self-isolation, the stars are even more important!

Cheers,

Vin

(PS - I meant to say, if anyone recognises any of the "not so good bits" from prior experience and has some advice, it will be gratefully received).

(PPS - I think I've also found that everything - cameras, mount etc - needs to be switched on and connected before I fire up EKOS on the laptop?)

 

 

Edited March 17, 2020 by vineyard
Added the hyperlink for the old SGL post

[MarkAR]

Nice report.

Also had a not so good bit last night trying to get my ex-demo SG Pro iPolar to plate solve. I reckon I should have re-set the camera.

 

[vineyard]

Thanks Mark, hope you manage to fix it.  Probably a stupid Q from me, but how do you reset a camera (in case that's the problem with my ASI178MC)?  I just figured that would happen when you dismount it & switch it off?  I did test the camera again this morning with daylight viewing, and its capturing images fine.  Maybe it was one of those nights!

My silver lining is that if the guidescope platesolving continues to work, I can put BV's into the main scope and have go-to tracked BV'ing to my heart's content  

Cheers