Heq5 pro not tracking. please help!

[barrie greenwood]

I'm imaging 

I have to agree with you to some point though the more cash your spending on your mount is money we'll spent. 

But in fairness the eq5 pro is capable if giving decent results...provided care and time is taken in its set up. 

I think the op is having issues with the basics of the set up and needs to mark the mount in the home position to enable a same start point every time this would help them from the off .

Below are taken when I started up with the eq5 Pro unguided with my dslr  a cheap as chips set up as your going to find 

[Tomatobro]

On 26/02/2021 at 17:38, michael8554 said:

Not sure I agree with the 3000mm = 393mm on the wall.

Opps its pi X d not r.......my mistake

[malc-c]

Barrie the images are really good, and I agree, if you have the scope nicely balanced, and nail the polar alignment you'll get acceptable results, and I would suggest that you also have the advantage of a decent dark site.  But there are noticeable tracking errors in the images if you inspect them at a level of detail, which some people may run to (presuming that the images are single subs and not a stack, which may explain the errors I found).

For example taking the image of the Orion Nebula, inverting you can see the stars are not round and tend to show drift, backed up if you zoom in.

 

 Now I'm not saying the images are poor in any way, far from it.  A lot of people will be more than happy to achieve images like that... but a lot of people would equally reject subs with that level of error (again assuming it  a single exposure and not an alignment issue due to stacking).

What would be interesting would be to see a single 5 minute  unprocessed and unguided exposure taken with your EQ5 to see how precice you can get with these mounts.

[Hendrik - Nordic Light]

Thanks Malc.  I am getting the HEQ-5 tracking 4 minutes without guiding.  60%-70% of the frames are good.  However, I have decided to invest in guiding in order to get longer exposures. 

[Thorriz]

I had the same problem, but I shamefully have to admit. That in the hazy twilight, at a new position in the garden, I managed to polar align on Kochab. 

[Hendrik - Nordic Light]

In the last few weeks / months I have worked hard to improve the tracking. In finally  bought a WO 50mm / 200mm Guide scope with the ASI290mm guide camera. I pair this with the WO ZS81 APP and the ASI294MM Pro.  I am guiding with the ASIAIR Pro and get easily 7 minutes exposures without any tracking error.  The Guiding RMS error is on avg. 0.65".  After the full moon I will guide with 10 minutes with Ha.