First light with guiding.

[Budgie1]

Since unpacking all my Astro kit a month or so ago and getting back into Astrophotography, clear nights have been few & far between up here in Scotland. So I concentrated on getting all the software updated onto a new laptop, learning the basic of how CdC, APT & PHD2 worked. In the few clear nights I've had, I started connecting my EQ5 to the laptop and ran it with EQMOD through CdC to get the hang of it. Then I introduced APT and found I needed the catalogues, so left that for another cloudy night.

Finally, last night I stuck my head outside at about 23:30 to see stars, all be it with a thin covering of high cloud. So I took the opportunity to get PHD2 running and practice guiding with my Celestron 9x50 with a SPC900 connected to it. The main task was to get the guide scope focused and guiding. I didn't even both getting my camera out to start off and just used an eyepiece.

The high cloud made this interesting because every time I got onto a bright star for focus, the cloud in that area of the sky became thicker and blocked the star. Anyway, after about an hour I managed it, had PHD run through the calibrations and it started guiding.

I left it there while I went inside for a coffee and when I came out it was still guiding nicely and the high cloud had nearly gone, so I thought I'd do some test shots with my Canon EOS 2000D (un-moded) to see what it was going to be like when guided.

I've had up to 3 minutes exposures with it unguided and that may have improved as I took the EQ5 apart last week, cleaned and re-greased the gears and took out the slack in the worm drives. 

Anyway, I connected the camera and started in the direction of M82 & M83. Awful images, stars jumping around all over the show, and that was only with a 1 minute exposure to check I was on target! I forgot to re-calibrate after I slewed the scope.

The clouds started to get thicker in that direction so I picked a target on CdC, M57, slewed round and re-calibrated PHD2. Started guiding and waited for it to settle down, I did a couple of short exposures to make sure it was guiding okay then thought I'd try a 6 minute exposure, just as an experiment to see if it was tracking correctly and to see what the camera would capture.

Here you go, not bad for a single exposure tidied up in Photoshop.

   

There's a bit of start trail at the edges, but that's to be expected, and the Celestron 102mm Wide View makes the nebula a bit small, but it's only a test image, so I'm not worried about that.

After seeing this image, and with it pushing on for 02:00, I thought I would have one more go and picked The Witches Broom Nebula, only this time I went for a 10 minute exposure. Again, I wasn't too worried what it looked like, I wanted to see what my setup was capable of.

The high clouds had started to come in again when I started this image and PHD2 kept bleeping that it had lost the guide star. Fortunately PHD2 found it again quite quickly a never really had to make too many big corrections.

So here's the 10 minute image of NGC 6960. You can just make out the nebula and, if anything, the star trailing on the edges is better that in the 6 minute image.

 

Now I'm happy with CdC & PHD2 working together and that the guiding is good with the EQ5, next on the list is to connect the camera to APT. That will make life easier with plate solving and focusing.

Thngs to do:

• I've now got a USB hub to attach to the EQ5 tripod, to connect the guide camera, imaging camera & Serial to USB cable for the mount. I've only got two USB ports on the laptop and with the wireless game controller for the fine adjustment, it wasn't all going to get connected directly.
• Buy an EQDIR lead so I can do away with the hand controller. I'm not using it anyway now, so no point having it on there just to act as a connection.
• Get a proper table and a box or something to put the laptop in to stop the dew from covering it and to cut down on the light it puts out, even though I've got a NV theme running on it.

Thanks for reading this and I'm happy for any comments from the more experienced members to help me along.

 

Martin.