Would could be effecting these images?

[Quetzalcoatl72]

Below are consecutive raw pictures if the ring nebula I took with my canon 600da and RCT 8" with neq6 pro guided with sharpcaps polar alignment procedure on the 15th of this month at 1am. I have 20 of these all 1600 iso auto wb 2 minute exposures. The problem will become apparent when you closely examine them, tracking is almost completely broken. I only stacked about 8 of them as most of the frames are unusable, some are star trails, some are commas and some are double exposures. This has become standard and getting worse since I tampered with my mounts gears and backlash adjustment. I have never been able to get consecutive 3min exposures on this mount, and I got it new 6 years ago, and only used it less than 30 times. I have spent roughly 20 hours trying to get rid of the backlash, coffee grinding noise and knocking when I press the directional keys to no avail, when the keys are pressed I notice the image wobbles violently. The go-to is also not working to 100% efficiently, I have to do guess work if I want my image centred.

 

Edited April 17, 2021 by Quetzalcoatl72
They were 2 min exposures not 3

[Quetzalcoatl72]

I will insert the other 10 pictures just to see if anyone notices a pattern

 

[vlaiv]

1 hour ago, Quetzalcoatl72 said:

guided with sharpcaps polar alignment procedure

What do you mean by that?

Did you mean - you both guided and used sharpcap polar alignment routine, or did you mean by any chance that you "guided via sharpcap polar alignment routine".

I ask because there is issue with your guiding - subs appear as if they are not guided at all. You have problem with RA axis - what is most likely periodic error.

This is normal with budget mounts (and some more expensive mounts) - and that is the reason people guide. If you are indeed guiding - how are you guiding? What software are you using, what is your guide scope / OAG and guide camera and what is your RMS guide error in arc seconds?

[michael8554]

As vlaiv said.

Are you guiding or not ?

What software are you using for guiding ?

I believe there are videos of how to adjust the backlash, yours sounds horribly wrong.

You should make adjusting, that a priority, to eliminate the grinding noises.

Michael

 

 

 

[The Lazy Astronomer]

If you're not guiding, you are asking A LOT from your mount to do 2 minute exposures at 1600mm of focal length.

I'm only at 267mm focal length, and with 2 minute exposures I probably have to throw away 1 frame out every 4 or 5 due to periodic error.

[CraigT82]

All the frames you posted are suffering from the same thing... trailing in the RA direction (see screenshot below for RA direction angle: see how it matches the direction of trailing in your images).

Some of this is probably periodic error, guiding should be able to deal with that. But some of it is likely due to horrendous backlash and nothing is going to help with that apart from reducing the backlash using the three different types of adjustment on the EQ6. 

1) spur gear meshing. You need to get the gear on the motor shaft nicely engaged with the gear on the worm shaft. You will need to remove the motherboard and faceplate and use a screwdriver to loosen the motor mounting screws. Use your fingers to push the motor down/in whilst looking through the peephole (see second image below) and tighten the motors screws again when the teeth are well meshed.

2) worm gear/ring meshing. The worm gear is the shaft with the 'slanted teeth' which is turned by the motors. This engages with the worm ring which is a larger diameter gear and turns with the scope. This adjustment is done by loosening the 4 hex bolts in the worm housing slightly, and then adjusting the two recessed grub screws (tighten one, loosen other) which moves the whole worm gear block either closer or further from the worm ring, before tightening the 4 hex bolts again.

3) worm gear end float. This is the sideways movement of the worm gear shaft and is adjusted by turning the slotted ring under the small round black cap on the side of the worm housing (as seen in the pic). Too tight and the motors will stall and if too loose the shaft will move too much.

There is no concrete rule to which order you make these adjustments in, and you won't get it right by making just one adjustment to each... rather it is an iterative process with a lot of back and forth and moving the mount with the handset in-between each adjustment  to see if you have caused any issues with binding or motor stalling. 

There are plenty of vids on YouTube showing how to make these adjustments and a video is always better than written instructions imo! 

 

Edited April 18, 2021 by CraigT82

[Quetzalcoatl72]

22 hours ago, vlaiv said:

What do you mean by that?

I have a guide camera attached to my finderscope which is then plugged into my laptop and ran through sharpcaps polar alignment. I point at the home position and then it finds the stars, solution solved then I go 90 degrees in RA then adjust alt as till it tells me it's (excellent) polar alignment to at least 00,00,10. I was told that is guiding is it not?

Edited April 18, 2021 by Quetzalcoatl72

[Quetzalcoatl72]

11 hours ago, michael8554 said:

As vlaiv said.

Are you guiding or not ?

What software are you using for guiding ?

I believe there are videos of how to adjust the backlash, yours sounds horribly wrong.

You should make adjusting, that a priority, to eliminate the grinding noises.

Michael

 

 

 

I was told this is guiding, getting perfect polar alignment through sharp cap with a guide camera attached to the finderscope.

[Quetzalcoatl72]

9 hours ago, CraigT82 said:

2) worm gear/ring meshing. The worm gear is the shaft with the 'slanted teeth' which is turned by the motors. This engages with the worm ring which is a larger diameter gear and turns with the scope. This adjustment is done by loosening the 4 hex bolts in the worm housing slightly, and then adjusting the two recessed grub screws (tighten one, loosen other) which moves the whole worm gear block either closer or further from the worm ring, before tightening the 4 hex bolts again.

3) worm gear end float. This is the sideways movement of the worm gear shaft and is adjusted by turning the slotted ring under the small round black cap on the side of the worm housing (as seen in the pic). Too tight and the motors will stall and if too loose the shaft will move too much.

 

Thanks', I haven't tried no.3 because I don't have anything to remove those caps yet, (ordered circlip pliers yesterday) If it's RA then that makes sense because that's where the coffee grinding is at the moment. It was in DEC, took me many hours to fix that but I still get the knocking sound, I'm not sure which method fixes that one.

[Quetzalcoatl72]

Ok I might have gotten confused with guiding, I thought "autoguiding" was the thing people use for much longer exposures. and given the word "guide camera" to use for precise polar alignment.

[vlaiv]

1 hour ago, Quetzalcoatl72 said:

Ok I might have gotten confused with guiding, I thought "autoguiding" was the thing people use for much longer exposures. and given the word "guide camera" to use for precise polar alignment.

You have a guiding setup, but you are not guiding.

What you are doing with your finder scope and guide camera to polar align with sharpcap is OK and you should continue to do so, however, after you do that and before you start imaging - you should run guider software - PHD2 usually and let it command the scope by examining image from camera and then making corrections - that is what guiding is. What you are doing now is just camera assisted polar alignment.

There are several videos on youtube that you can watch that explain how to autoguide with PHD2 or similar guiding software. You should check them out, and if you have any further questions, just ask here - I'm sure people will be happy to help you.

 

[The Lazy Astronomer]

1 hour ago, Quetzalcoatl72 said:

Ok I might have gotten confused with guiding, I thought "autoguiding" was the thing people use for much longer exposures. and given the word "guide camera" to use for precise polar alignment.

Sounds like someone may have given you misleading or incorrect information. Whilst generally you would use a guide scope and guide camera to run the Sharpcap polar alignment routine, this is just polar alignment, not guiding/autoguiding.

Edit: vlaiv beat me to it by seconds! 😃

Edited April 18, 2021 by The Lazy Astronomer

[Quetzalcoatl72]

7 minutes ago, vlaiv said:

You have a guiding setup, but you are not guiding.

What you are doing with your finder scope and guide camera to polar align with sharpcap is OK and you should continue to do so, however, after you do that and before you start imaging - you should run guider software - PHD2 usually and let it command the scope by examining image from camera and then making corrections - that is what guiding is. What you are doing now is just camera assisted polar alignment.

There are several videos on youtube that you can watch that explain how to autoguide with PHD2 or similar guiding software. You should check them out, and if you have any further questions, just ask here - I'm sure people will be happy to help you.

 

Thanks, the main problem I have with this guiding is how my laptop will be able to cope and if I may run into errors installing the software etc I'm not a techy guy when it comes to computers, as it's loud 7 year old and takes a fair bit to get sharpcap running, stellarium crashes a lot and it's been through the wars, I just don't want to take my expensive gaming laptop outside. Once sharcap is running its ok but i usually turn it off when I'm done with PA. It should be ok though i played minecraft a lot on it, it's 6gb, 2.5 GHz Intel Core i5 and tb hardrive before ssds were a thing.

[Quetzalcoatl72]

21 minutes ago, vlaiv said:

You have a guiding setup, but you are not guiding.

PHD2 usually and let it command the scope by examining image from camera and then making corrections

 

Already at the first hurdle, my guide camera does not have an st4 port. what then?

[smashing]

5 minutes ago, Quetzalcoatl72 said:

Thanks, the main problem I have with this guiding is how my laptop will be able to cope and if I may run into errors installing the software etc I'm not a techy guy when it comes to computers, as it's loud 7 year old and takes a fair bit to get sharpcap running, stellarium crashes a lot and it's been through the wars, I just don't want to take my expensive gaming laptop outside. Once sharcap is running its ok but i usually turn it off when I'm done with PA. It should be ok though i played minecraft a lot on it, it's 6gb, 2.5 GHz Intel Core i5 and tb hardrive before ssds were a thing.

PHD2 is not particularly resource hungry for a laptop and if you want to guide you're going to need it.

I didn't want to use my gaming laptop outside so I got a cheap refurb from ebay which works a treat and I don't care if it gets bashed about.

[smashing]

Just now, Quetzalcoatl72 said:

Already at the first hurdle, my guide camera does not have an st4 port. what then?

Then, I believe anyway, you'll need EQMOD running on the laptop to control the mount so that the guide camera connects to the laptop rather than the mount directly.

There may be other ways that I'm not aware of though

[vlaiv]

11 hours ago, Quetzalcoatl72 said:

Already at the first hurdle, my guide camera does not have an st4 port. what then?

As have been mentioned - you'll need ASCOM and EQMod installed on your laptop and you'll need cable to connect the mount to your laptop.

You can buy ready made cable or DIY one yourself (not very hard to do - just connect some wires to connectors).

[KP82]

12 hours ago, Quetzalcoatl72 said:

Already at the first hurdle, my guide camera does not have an st4 port. what then?

A Core i5 and 6GB RAM are more than enough to run PHD2. If the laptop is unstable and you're not comfortable to do a full wipe yourself, just ask an IT friend or take it to a laptop shop to get it re-installed.

ST-4 port guiding while useable is not what most of us use in our setup. To guide a Skywatcher mount with pulse guiding through USB/Serial, there are two methods:

1. The most common one involves EQMod and an EQDIR cable. The synscan handset is removed from this configuration. You will need to install the EQASCOM driver and the EQMod software suite on your laptop, then connect your NEQ6 to it with the EQDIR cable. There are many tutorials and videos on the web to help you operate the EQMod software and set it up with PHD2 for guiding. The EQDIR cable can be bought from FLO.

2. The less popular way (I've used it before personally and it worked very well actually) is to guide through the synscan handset with the firmware update cable. This cable is included in the original package. Instead of installing EQASCOM and EQMod, you will only need the standard ASCOM driver from Skywatcher directly. You can carry on using the directional keypad and even GOTO on the handset, or a planetarium software on your laptop to control the mount. PHD2 works the same as method 1.

Edited April 19, 2021 by KP82

[alacant]

On 19/04/2021 at 00:12, Quetzalcoatl72 said:

don't want to take my expensive gaming laptop outside

Hi

No need. One of these will allow you to control everything you need for astrophotography via your 'phone, cheap tablet or your fast laptop anywhere there is an Internet or newtork connection. Indoors for example. Your local astro club will make one for you at a fraction of the cost of the commercial product;)

Cheers and HTH

 

Edited April 20, 2021 by alacant