ioptron Polemaster and QHY Polemaste

[P.Rees]

Hi 

I have been doing astro photography for a number of years. Currently I am using a Skywatcher neq6 mount  an Altair 80mm triplet Atik 314l and filter wheel. I autoguild with QHY5 on a 400mm camera lens. I also have a 200mm newtonian f4 750mm fl which I used for imaging before my refractor. I have SC Celestron which I use mainly for visual.

    When I was using my Newtonian the auto guilder would work for an hour or so before loosing the guide star. I have since found that with my refractor that I can guide for hours. I am not sure if my polar alignment technic has improved or the shorter focal length has helped?

I see that ioptron and QHY have polemaster the QHY is more expensive but has greater accuracy ? I use an old lap top to run all my astro apps which uses Windows XP will these devises work on this version of Windows? I also have an astro trac which I believe you can buy an adapter for to use the polemaster?

I would be pleased to hear any opions regarding these 2 Polemaster Many thanks Peter

[david_taurus83]

Before splashing out £££ on a Polemaster how about a look at Sharpcap for polar aligning? £10 a year for the Pro licence and it has an excellent routine for polar aligning?

[Adreneline]

I own an iOptron CEM25-EC mount and recently bought the Polemaster system as opposed to the iOptron system. My reasoning was I may one day change my mount and by buying the Polemaster all I would need to do was buy a new adapter.

Experience with the QHY system is so far very positive. Once you've got the hang of the software achieving an accurate PA takes only a couple of minutes. I say 'accurate' on the basis that my guiding (when I do it) is now much better with a far smaller RMS error that previosuly achieved prior to using the QHY system.

I have struggled with the SharpCap system. The software is great but the resulting alignment always seems well off from the polarscope alignment. This may well be due to me using my ring mounted guidescope with SharpCap and maybe I have a degree of misalignment between the RA axis and the guidescope axis - I'm not sure. I am confident the QHY camera is very well aligned with the mount RA axis.

Adrian

[P.Rees]

Many thanks for your replies. Do you know if Polemaster will work on an old Windows OS ie XP?  If not I do have a newer lap top I could use just for the alignment.  I find that using my old lap top is useful as all my astro software is on one computer

Peter

[carastro]

I had a vista laptop and Polemaster would not work on that there was a missing file on the operating system that is neefed to make it work.  Can’t remember what it was now, so l suspect XP being even earlier will not work.  
 

Carole

Edited April 13, 2020 by carastro

[P.Rees]

Thanks for your replies.  Is it possible that my guide scope 400mm camera lens f6.3 and QHY5 autoguiderwill work with the mentioned sharpcap?

Peter