Skywatcher AZ GTI mount owners thread

[Ed the Fox]

9 minutes ago, AstroNebulee said:

I think in the alignment screen somewhere is says to clear previous alignment I think, on this page in manual says alignment - reset alignment. I've included the manual to download too 👍

enmanual_20200721 (1).pdf 465.66 kB · 0 downloads

Read "most" of manual..........just not that part.

(Facepalms self, wanders off muttering something about being an idiot)

[Elp]

If you're using EQ mode please read page 12 of this thread where I've detailed a step by step workflow for setting the home position. It'll save you a lot of headache, I haven't had an issue since doing this though I tend to platesolve now.

Edited March 6, 2022 by Elp

[Ed the Fox]

50 minutes ago, Elp said:

If you're using EQ mode please read page 12 of this thread where I've detailed a step by step workflow for setting the home position. It'll save you a lot of headache, I haven't had an issue since doing this though I tend to platesolve now.

No mate I'm just using alt az mode.

[Ratlet]

Not an AZ-GTI owner yet, but very interested as it ticks a lot of boxes for what I'm looking for.  Could I ask a couple questions to you owners?

1.  Are any of you running it unguided in eq mode for astrophotography?  I was looking to do unguided with a 200mm focal length and crop DSLR and wanted to know the art of experience you have.  Possibility I might want to increase to 300mm down the road.

 

2.  What sort of payload are you getting for astrophotography unguided/guided?  Seems some people are getting good images from pretty heavy loads which on the face goes against the perceived wisdom of half the rated loading for imaging.

 

3.  Have any of you used a star adventurer or similar?  How would you compare the experience of it Vs the GTi?

 

Thanks for the great thread hugely helpful!

[OK Apricot]

A couple of useful posts here. Mines never been great but in the ballpark, but surely it can do better? 

I think I've been doing tings wrong by just switching it off when I'm done. Not bothered with clearing cache or resetting home position - this could improve things. 

[Elp]

@Ratlet

1. Unguided it's been tried but polar alignment is a bit difficult to do, I'm sure some people have achieved it. Once you've added a guidescope etc I think a lot of people end up going down the asiair/astroberry/stellarmate route where PA becomes much easier and thus autoguiding is utilised instead.

2. 5kg is the recommended, I'm using 3.5kg imaging train plus 2kg counterweight+bar.

3. I had a Star Adventurer. Once I bought the azgti the SA was sold as it's usefulness doesn't even compare. The SA is a good start but I found with all the add on brackets, the compact nature of the azgti+an EQ wedge was much better, higher payload (I would never use my refractor setup on the SA, dslr only), goto (this was the main differentiator), can use in altaz as well as manually, much more feature rich.

Edited March 7, 2022 by Elp

[AstroNebulee]

2 hours ago, Ratlet said:

Not an AZ-GTI owner yet, but very interested as it ticks a lot of boxes for what I'm looking for.  Could I ask a couple questions to you owners?

1.  Are any of you running it unguided in eq mode for astrophotography?  I was looking to do unguided with a 200mm focal length and crop DSLR and wanted to know the art of experience you have.  Possibility I might want to increase to 300mm down the road.

 

2.  What sort of payload are you getting for astrophotography unguided/guided?  Seems some people are getting good images from pretty heavy loads which on the face goes against the perceived wisdom of half the rated loading for imaging.

 

3.  Have any of you used a star adventurer or similar?  How would you compare the experience of it Vs the GTi?

 

Thanks for the great thread hugely helpful!

Hi

Welcome to the thread. 

1. I image guided with a sw 72ed (420mm) so cannot really comment on unguided.

2. My payload is 3.9 kg for scope, camera, guidescope, asiair pro then add 2kg worth of counterweights, so over the recommended. 

3. I have owned a SA but as soon as I got my az gti I never used it again. The az gti goto along with tracking in ra and dec (alt az) beats the SA for me. Just more versatile in my opinion and like Elp said I'd never put my scope on a SA. The az gti much sturdier. 

Cheers 

Lee 

Edited March 7, 2022 by AstroNebulee

[Ratlet]

Guys,

Thabnks so much for replying.

The info in this thread is great (I spent most of last night going through it all).  I'm pretty much sold on the mount given the feedback.

I've basically assigned myself a budget for an initial outlay (10 year anniversary so the wife is being generous) so I can scale down some things and scale up others (less lenses and guidescope for example).

But this thread is at least let me nail down the mount.

 

[OK Apricot]

So paying attention to a previous post, I made sure to set the home position. I'd come across numbers like these before, but before alignment this time I reset everything - now I have a lot of zeros. Just waiting for some cloud to clear now 🤞

Edited March 7, 2022 by OK Apricot

[Elp]

Good luck, I really wish this wind would off. Another wasted night.

[AstroNebulee]

2 hours ago, OK Apricot said:

So paying attention to a previous post, I made sure to set the home position. I'd come across numbers like these before, but before alignment this time I reset everything - now I have a lot of zeros. Just waiting for some cloud to clear now 🤞

Hope you get some clear skies to test it out, let us know how you get on 👍

[AstroNebulee]

2 hours ago, Ratlet said:

Guys,

Thabnks so much for replying.

The info in this thread is great (I spent most of last night going through it all).  I'm pretty much sold on the mount given the feedback.

I've basically assigned myself a budget for an initial outlay (10 year anniversary so the wife is being generous) so I can scale down some things and scale up others (less lenses and guidescope for example).

But this thread is at least let me nail down the mount.

 

Looking forward to having another az gti owner on board here and your generous wife. Can't wait to see your setup 👍

[OK Apricot]

Unfortunately the bank of low cloud I was tracking moving NW from London just didn't quite clear before I had other things to deal with. Typically, and as expected (once the kit was packed away) the clouds have thinned and the sparklies are out again. Will report back when the weather allows, but really hoping I'm on to something now 😁

Keeping keen having a good read of the ROG Moon gazing book - it's an excellent read! 

Edited March 7, 2022 by OK Apricot

[RayWUK]

Out again tonight, although guiding not quite up to last nights effort. 1-2RMS. I did tweek some settings which i thought may have improved it over last nights 0.8-1.5 guiding but it didn't pay off. It's a bit breezy tonight so that might account for it. Anyway here's my first attempt at the Orion Nebula from last night. Although its getting a bit low in the sky now i'm quite pleased with the result. 60x120sec subs. Still a lot to learn especially with processing.

 

Edited March 7, 2022 by RayWUK

[AstroNebulee]

51 minutes ago, RayWUK said:

Out again tonight, although guiding not quite up to last nights effort. 1-2RMS. I did tweek some settings which i thought may have improved it over last nights 0.8-1.5 guiding but it didn't pay off. It's a bit breezy tonight so that might account for it. Anyway here's my first attempt at the Orion Nebula from last night. Although its getting a bit low in the sky now i'm quite pleased with the result. 60x120sec subs. Still a lot to learn especially with processing.

 

It's brilliant Ray, well done, I expect the breeze would account for the differing rms, I'd be proud of your image and nice round stars too 👍 bit of green in the image but can be processed out, can't remember which processing software you use, but I'm still learning too 😊

Edited March 7, 2022 by AstroNebulee

[RayWUK]

17 minutes ago, AstroNebulee said:

It's brilliant Ray, well done, I expect the breeze would account for the differing rms, I'd be proud of your image and nice round stars too 👍 bit of green in the image but can be processed out, can't remember which processing software you use, but I'm still learning too 😊

Thanks, i'm using AstroPixelProcessor for calibration and stacking and StarTools for post processing. Being colour blind doesn't help 😀

Edited March 7, 2022 by RayWUK

[Ratlet]

1 hour ago, RayWUK said:

Out again tonight, although guiding not quite up to last nights effort. 1-2RMS. I did tweek some settings which i thought may have improved it over last nights 0.8-1.5 guiding but it didn't pay off. It's a bit breezy tonight so that might account for it. Anyway here's my first attempt at the Orion Nebula from last night. Although its getting a bit low in the sky now i'm quite pleased with the result. 60x120sec subs. Still a lot to learn especially with processing.

 

That's really nice.  I really like the pink shades in nebula rather than the blood red.

[powerlord]

22 hours ago, Ratlet said:

Not an AZ-GTI owner yet, but very interested as it ticks a lot of boxes for what I'm looking for.  Could I ask a couple questions to you owners?

1.  Are any of you running it unguided in eq mode for astrophotography?  I was looking to do unguided with a 200mm focal length and crop DSLR and wanted to know the art of experience you have.  Possibility I might want to increase to 300mm down the road.

 

2.  What sort of payload are you getting for astrophotography unguided/guided?  Seems some people are getting good images from pretty heavy loads which on the face goes against the perceived wisdom of half the rated loading for imaging.

 

3.  Have any of you used a star adventurer or similar?  How would you compare the experience of it Vs the GTi?

 

Thanks for the great thread hugely helpful!

1. thats how I started. first az, then setup in eq mode. no guiding, computers, etc. I could get 3-4 mins subs ok with my 200mm. As others have said, key is good PA. The way to get this is to go around the loop several times:

1. setup azgti and align. then pa align.

2. now turn it off/on, and clear calibaration, and do it all again (be quicker this time, and you'll get closer to PA alighment)

3. do it about 3 times should get you really close, and then start your imaging.

balance is the main thing for heavy loads, if it's all balanced, and you have a bit of weight on the screw, 6+kg is possible.

 

[AstroNebulee]

10 hours ago, RayWUK said:

Thanks, i'm using AstroPixelProcessor for calibration and stacking and StarTools for post processing. Being colour blind doesn't help 😀

I'm still learning with star tools and photoshop, I use dss for stacking but trying to learn siril. 

[AstroNebulee]

Whilst on a day off waiting for the the ground workers to address my mains water leak I decided to tune the Dec (alt) motor in my az gti as I was suffering with a lot of movement when the clutch tightened up and also when guiding the Dec would take ages to settle after calibration and after a dither be erratic. 

I'm showing the before and after of the movement on the motor. Its much tighter now and regreased it up with some white lithium grease, tested and appears no visual binding anyway. It'll need a test which I'm hoping to tonight. 

I have opened the mount before to solve the stiff RA (az) axis and previously tightened the spring loaded motor to the worm so the spring is obsolete. On inspecting the Dec spring loading motor is was meshed tight too (from the factory) so in an experiment I've altered this to have the spring working. Maybe together with the tighter meshing on the motor gears and the spring activation my Dec guiding will be better (probably be worse haha) if tis I shall do away with the spring loading and mesh again. 

Just thought it was worth putting on here to see the workings. 

And yep the after video has rotated, I'm a baffoon. 

[adyj1]

39 minutes ago, AstroNebulee said:

I decided to tune the Dec (alt) motor in my az gti

Can I ask whether you just tightened the grub screw on each gear, or stripped the mount down to remove the complete motor/gear assembly and adjust the distance between the gears by reseating the motor in its assembly?

Thanks

Ady 

[AstroNebulee]

7 minutes ago, adyj1 said:

Can I ask whether you just tightened the grub screw on each gear, or stripped the mount down to remove the complete motor/gear assembly and adjust the distance between the gears by reseating the motor in its assembly?

Thanks

Ady 

I removed the Dec motor assembly completely and adjusted the meshing of the two brass gears to be closer together. 

I followed Cuivs video for this. 

 

 

[adyj1]

3 minutes ago, AstroNebulee said:

I removed the Dec motor assembly completely and adjusted the meshing of the two brass gears to be closer together. 

Thanks 👍

4 minutes ago, AstroNebulee said:

I followed Cuivs video for this. 

Always makes me laugh that he's crouched on the floor with whatever odd screwdriver he had to hand. Very useful video, though, and excellent channel.

[AstroNebulee]

44 minutes ago, adyj1 said:

Thanks 👍

Always makes me laugh that he's crouched on the floor with whatever odd screwdriver he had to hand. Very useful video, though, and excellent channel.

No problems atall. It is a great video for the az gti tune up. Easy to follow and we'll explained. 

[badhex]

14 hours ago, RayWUK said:

Out again tonight, although guiding not quite up to last nights effort. 1-2RMS. I did tweek some settings which i thought may have improved it over last nights 0.8-1.5 guiding but it didn't pay off. It's a bit breezy tonight so that might account for it. Anyway here's my first attempt at the Orion Nebula from last night. Although its getting a bit low in the sky now i'm quite pleased with the result. 60x120sec subs. Still a lot to learn especially with processing.

 

This is beautiful! 👏👏👏