HEQ5 Pro 'Tune' or upgrade to a better mount?

[Jonny_H]

Hi all,

I am currently waiting patiently for my Esprit 100ED to arrive albeit it could take a while. However whilst waiting it has got me thinking about my mount situation.

I currently have a belt modded HEQ5 Pro which I am fairly confident will cope with the 100ED and my other AP gear, however i don't believe I am going to get the best out of the scope with this setup.

So what are my options? Spend circa £80-£90 on upgraded bearings, quality grease and a few hours of my time to fine tune the mount. Or just upgrade to a better mount at significantly more cost? Something like a eq6-r or equivalent?

Of course I am not going to rush into it and will wait and see how it all performs. I might be pleasantly surprised and needn't do anything.

Interested to hear thoughts.

 

Clear skies

Jonny

 

[teoria_del_big_bang]

Apart from the 100ED what else is going on the mount ?

I upgraded to the same scope and with what I had in addition (guidescope, SX filter wheel, ASI 1600M  camera, USB hub)
I originally could not get balanced on my belt modded HEQ5 without either an extra counterweight or using an extension to the counterweight bar, neither of which are ideal.

In the end I removed a dual saddle and the SW adjustable gudescope saddle which both weighed a fair bit and then just achieved balance.
So I actually had a bit of cash then and did upgrade to a IOptron CEM60.

I think there are many with this scope and still using a HEQ5 but it is about on its limits and I think money spent on new bearings and grease will not make it any different.
Before this I did buy good quality bearings and grease and fitted them but the old ones were perfectly okay and it made virtually no difference to tracking.

Steve

[maxchess]

I have a belt modded HEQ-5pro with an Explore Scientific 102 and it performs great. Total RMS is usually around 0.5.  It is on a steel pier bolted to a concrete block in my roll off shed.  The belt and bearings upgrade was done by Dave at Darkframe, which had its challenges but it's good now. I also added an ADM dual saddle.  I also use a 8" SCT with a ST80 guidescope, focuser etc which comes to 10Kg and it works well too.   My view if it works, leave well alone.  Except that I am thinking about a heavier scope maybe a WO 132 or a C9.25  in which case I would look at the CEM70.  But unless I do the scope upgrade,  I'm sticking with the trusty HEQ5.  

[Jonny_H]

27 minutes ago, teoria_del_big_bang said:

Apart from the 100ED what else is going on the mount ?

I upgraded to the same scope and with what I had in addition (guidescope, SX filter wheel, ASI 1600M  camera, USB hub)
I originally could not get balanced on my belt modded HEQ5 without either an extra counterweight or using an extension to the counterweight bar, neither of which are ideal.

In the end I removed a dual saddle and the SW adjustable gudescope saddle which both weighed a fair bit and then just achieved balance.
So I actually had a bit of cash then and did upgrade to a IOptron CEM60.

I think there are many with this scope and still using a HEQ5 but it is about on its limits and I think money spent on new bearings and grease will not make it any different.
Before this I did buy good quality bearings and grease and fitted them but the old ones were perfectly okay and it made virtually no difference to tracking.

Steve

Thanks Steve,

This is useful to know. How do you rate the CEM60? I have been browsing the 45 and 70.

Re: other equipment - I have a evoguide 50ed with ADM rings. A 120MM mini guide camera and 533MCPro imaging camera. All powered by an ASIAir Pro. Going by the weights specified on various shops it seems the total weight will be circa 9.5 - 10.5kg (depending on which site/sites you look at). So very close to the max recommended payload for imaging.

Again I may be absolutely fine and if push comes to shove I can swap bits over to to make the setup lighter and/or remove things.

[Jonny_H]

3 minutes ago, maxchess said:

I have a belt modded HEQ-5pro with an Explore Scientific 102 and it performs great. Total RMS is usually around 0.5.  It is on a steel pier bolted to a concrete block in my roll off shed.  The belt and bearings upgrade was done by Dave at Darkframe, which had its challenges but it's good now. I also added an ADM dual saddle.  I also use a 8" SCT with a ST80 guidescope, focuser etc which comes to 10Kg and it works well too.   My view if it works, leave well alone.  Except that I am thinking about a heavier scope maybe a WO 132 or a C9.25  in which case I would look at the CEM70.  But unless I do the scope upgrade,  I'm sticking with the trusty HEQ5.  

Thank you for this.

I have been eyeing up the CEM70 also. Nothing like a bit of night time window browsing! 

Absolutely agree though - I'm not going to do anything for the sake of it. I'm going to wait and see how it performs and then make a decision from there. I do really like the HEQ5 Pro so hoping I can stick with it.

[vlaiv]

1 hour ago, Jonny_H said:

I currently have a belt modded HEQ5 Pro which I am fairly confident will cope with the 100ED and my other AP gear, however i don't believe I am going to get the best out of the scope with this setup.

Why is that?

What sort of guide RMS are you getting at the moment? What resolution do you expect to work with once you get your Esprit 100?

[teoria_del_big_bang]

59 minutes ago, Jonny_H said:

Thanks Steve,

This is useful to know. How do you rate the CEM60? I have been browsing the 45 and 70.

Re: other equipment - I have a evoguide 50ed with ADM rings. A 120MM mini guide camera and 533MCPro imaging camera. All powered by an ASIAir Pro. Going by the weights specified on various shops it seems the total weight will be circa 9.5 - 10.5kg (depending on which site/sites you look at). So very close to the max recommended payload for imaging.

Again I may be absolutely fine and if push comes to shove I can swap bits over to to make the setup lighter and/or remove things.

I really like the CEM60, but there again I was happy with the HEQ5, it was only that I really was on the limit and I had to strip what essentially were items I did not need off the mount to get it to balance properly.

So even before I took a couple of bits off it was literally just over what the counter weight would balance and I did run it a couple of times with an extension piece on the counter weight rod to get balance and it actually worked well (cant remember actual RMS figures but I was getting subs over 10 mins without issue.

I think because I had this issue and the weight was on the very limit AND I had a bit of a bonus from work for working over Christmas I felt I deserved a treat so used the cash to upgrade the mount, If I did not have that at the time I may well of stayed with the HEQ5.  

Steve

[Jonny_H]

40 minutes ago, vlaiv said:

Why is that?

What sort of guide RMS are you getting at the moment? What resolution do you expect to work with once you get your Esprit 100?

Hi vlaiv,

To be honest my only rationale is that I will be very close to or even just over the recommended maximum payload, so I have just assumed that I won't achieve the best results. Not to say that they won't be good.

My current rms error is between 0.7 - 1.0. However I have recently achieved a 0.44 which I was very impressed with. I think that was a fluke though! 😁

I believe with my 533 and the soon to own 100ed I am looking at 1.41"/pixel resolution.

I'm not really sure how to calculate the appropriate rms error from this?

[tomato]

Hi Jonny,

I think the general rule of thumb is the total RMS guiding error to be no more than half of the imaging resolution, so you are OK if your HEQ5 can continue to perform at the higher end of it’s demonstrated performance range.

[vlaiv]

21 minutes ago, Jonny_H said:

Hi vlaiv,

To be honest my only rationale is that I will be very close to or even just over the recommended maximum payload, so I have just assumed that I won't achieve the best results. Not to say that they won't be good.

My current rms error is between 0.7 - 1.0. However I have recently achieved a 0.44 which I was very impressed with. I think that was a fluke though! 😁

I believe with my 533 and the soon to own 100ed I am looking at 1.41"/pixel resolution.

I'm not really sure how to calculate the appropriate rms error from this?

Don't think that you'll be close to what the mount can handle in terms of weight.

OTA weighs about 6.5Kg - and camera is not very heavy. Guide scope + guide camera are not really heavy either - that is about 3Kg extra weight tops. Overall - you are at 10Kg and that is fine with HEQ5 given that scope is relatively compact (not large OTA).

You'll be probably a bit oversampling with 1.41"/px most of the time (2" FWHM seeing) - but in good seeing, you'll be quite close to optimum sampling rate (which would be around 1.55"/px - for your guiding and 1.5" FWHM seeing).

It can easily happen that you get consistently good guiding results with this ota as it is smaller and less prone to flex from wind.

I do think that something like CEM60 (unfortunately discontinued) is step up from HEQ5 - but I don't think that you need it right away. Just give HEQ5 a go with what you have once your scope arrives and I think that you'll find that it is working rather well as a combination.

Edited April 12, 2021 by vlaiv

[Jonny_H]

1 hour ago, vlaiv said:

Don't think that you'll be close to what the mount can handle in terms of weight.

OTA weighs about 6.5Kg - and camera is not very heavy. Guide scope + guide camera are not really heavy either - that is about 3Kg extra weight tops. Overall - you are at 10Kg and that is fine with HEQ5 given that scope is relatively compact (not large OTA).

You'll be probably a bit oversampling with 1.41"/px most of the time (2" FWHM seeing) - but in good seeing, you'll be quite close to optimum sampling rate (which would be around 1.55"/px - for your guiding and 1.5" FWHM seeing).

It can easily happen that you get consistently good guiding results with this ota as it is smaller and less prone to flex from wind.

I do think that something like CEM60 (unfortunately discontinued) is step up from HEQ5 - but I don't think that you need it right away. Just give HEQ5 a go with what you have once your scope arrives and I think that you'll find that it is working rather well as a combination.

Yes that is absolutely what I intend to do....just see how it goes.

I was just looking for initial thoughts just in case I need to make the decision in the future. Hoping that the heq5 will do me proud though.

[The Lazy Astronomer]

I too am waiting for my Esprit 100 (ordered back in early Feb, hopefully arriving in the next few weeks). Sounds like we will have very similar setups, except I've got the eq6r pro, so we could trade guiding performance figures in a few months to see if it's worth you upgrading.

[Jonny_H]

18 hours ago, The Lazy Astronomer said:

I too am waiting for my Esprit 100 (ordered back in early Feb, hopefully arriving in the next few weeks). Sounds like we will have very similar setups, except I've got the eq6r pro, so we could trade guiding performance figures in a few months to see if it's worth you upgrading.

Mine was initally ordered early Feb but then I postponed the decision until early March. Although I noticed a few days after I placed the order that the expected wait time jumped from 15-20 working days to 40-60. Not sure whether that means I just made the shorter timeframe or whether it is a blanket 40-60 across the board!

Anyhow....back to the topic, yes it would be good to share guiding figures.

Edited April 13, 2021 by Jonny_H

[Fedele]

A better improvement of a SW mount is called VIXEN mount