Skywatcher AZ GTI mount owners thread

[AstroNebulee]

22 minutes ago, LaurenceT said:

Did you only take lights or some calibration frames?

I took 30x dark, flat and flat darks, I've added it in the post now, sorry 

Edited March 26, 2022 by AstroNebulee

[OK Apricot]

Thanks for the reply badhex, I appreciate the time and thought gone into it. 

I'm using the 7Ah skywatcher power pack, charge it up after each use, sits around the 13.8V mark after charging. As far as I know the power is reliable. 

It could be failing to save, but that would be an intermittent fault - it has failed once or twice before, only once in separate occasions, its only recently it has failed multiple times. No other issues once I do get an alignment. I don't try any other methods now, as 3 star has been getting consistently accurate goto. North level just seems to do its own thing, 1 star not write accurate enough. The only thing I think was different when alignment was successful was this: the app suggests what I assume to be the optimum stars for alignment. Last night initially it was Vega, Arcturus and Procyon. On the alignment run that stuck, it was Vega, Arcturus and Capella. 

In the mean time I'll check out some more threads on this mount. Cheers! 

[SuburbanMak]

Tried the AZGTi in a new configuration last night on a Manfrotto 55 with an ST80.  I was going for a lighter weight bike back packable set up and this worked perfectly. 
Very stable and with the ST80’s wide field the GoTo dropped every target in the eyepiece.  Another application for this super mount. 

[happy-kat]

On my synscan mount with the wifi dongle I'm using 1 star alignment, choose the star centre and accept then I go straight to 1 star alignment again and choose a different star (have restricted views) centre and accept and repeat selecting 1 star alignment again choosing either another star or the first star then centre and accept. This method of building my own stars for aligning with what I can see on a given night has so far given me good goto.  For the OP with alignment issues.

Edited March 26, 2022 by happy-kat

[OK Apricot]

4 hours ago, happy-kat said:

On my synscan mount with the wifi dongle I'm using 1 star alignment, choose the star centre and accept then I go straight to 1 star alignment again and choose a different star (have restricted views) centre and accept and repeat selecting 1 star alignment again choosing either another star or the first star then centre and accept. This method of building my own stars for aligning with what I can see on a given night has so far given me good goto.  For the OP with alignment issues.

Doesn't sound like a bad shout - I will give that a go next time, cheers 👍

[AstroNebulee]

13 hours ago, SuburbanMak said:

Tried the AZGTi in a new configuration last night on a Manfrotto 55 with an ST80.  I was going for a lighter weight bike back packable set up and this worked perfectly. 
Very stable and with the ST80’s wide field the GoTo dropped every target in the eyepiece.  Another application for this super mount. 

Amazing and great to see, that's a great lightweight set up. I hear great things about the st80 for visual 👍

[badhex]

15 hours ago, OK Apricot said:

Thanks for the reply badhex, I appreciate the time and thought gone into it. 

I'm using the 7Ah skywatcher power pack, charge it up after each use, sits around the 13.8V mark after charging. As far as I know the power is reliable. 

It could be failing to save, but that would be an intermittent fault - it has failed once or twice before, only once in separate occasions, its only recently it has failed multiple times. No other issues once I do get an alignment. I don't try any other methods now, as 3 star has been getting consistently accurate goto. North level just seems to do its own thing, 1 star not write accurate enough. The only thing I think was different when alignment was successful was this: the app suggests what I assume to be the optimum stars for alignment. Last night initially it was Vega, Arcturus and Procyon. On the alignment run that stuck, it was Vega, Arcturus and Capella. 

In the mean time I'll check out some more threads on this mount. Cheers! 

No problem, hope some of it might be helpful. Doesn't sound like a power issue then. Normally I think the app suggests the brightest visible stars, rather than optimum per se. Were the two runs at different times? 

Regarding potential inaccuracies of other alignment methods: as far as I understand it, the mount either creates a new sky model (if one doesn't already exist) or adds to an existing one based on your initial alignment, and then continues to do so as you pick Goto targets throughout the session, refining each time when you make adjustments and 'confirm center'. This sky model exists in the individual instance of the app on your phone (or I think in each handset). Do you use a dedicated device for this? Could it be that the location is somehow not updating in the app/phone? 

In theory, after a few successful targets, any method you pick should be reasonably accurate. This is exactly what @happy-kat is describing above, and it matches my experience as well. Worth noting as well that the existing sky model seems to only be completely wiped if you choose to reset alignment, so if you have a working sky model in one evening, you shouldn't need to reset alignment every time. FWIW I have never needed to reset alignment apart from when being in a completely different timezone and lat/long. 

Much of what I am saying here is based on personal experience plus other stuff talked about in this thread, but seems to also match the findings in the post I found yesterday on CN - well worth reading. Maybe I will grab the content and post here if the owner is comfortable with it. 

 

Edited March 27, 2022 by badhex

[LaurenceT]

14 hours ago, SuburbanMak said:

Tried the AZGTi in a new configuration last night on a Manfrotto 55 with an ST80.  I was going for a lighter weight bike back packable set up and this worked perfectly. 
Very stable and with the ST80’s wide field the GoTo dropped every target in the eyepiece.  Another application for this super mount. 

Funnily enough I've also had the mount on my 055CXPro3 tripod using an ST80 and like you say was able to centre stars easily. I did find there was a fair bit of wobble so I added a 4Kg kettlebell weight to the rig and it was better but took away the lightweight portability.

[Grant Fribbens]

I purchased my AZ GTI quite a while ago but have had some failed attempts so far. I have got an 12mm to 8mm thread adapter so I can fit the StarAdventurer counterweight shaft in and also got some EQ3 weights and 3d printed a small reducer so they fit on the SA counterweight shaft. The GTI is on a William Optics wedge and I got the 3/8" Skywatcher tripod to go with it to make sure it was nice and sturdy.

I finally got it out again last week and was trying to get my Raspberry Pi 4 working again and I tried it with Astroberry, IdigoSky and then StellarMate OS but with each of these I found something else would crash and not be reliable enough.

So I bit the bullet and got a Beelink U59 Mini PC and set it up in exactly the same way as my XCY X31 Mini PC on my EQ6-R mount with the following software:-

ASCOM 6.6

Altair camera drivers latest

ZWO Camera Drivers latest

ZWO ASCOM drivers for EF and EFW

N.I.N.A 2 beta 55

GS Server 1.0.4.1

ASTAP with h17 DB

PHD2 2.6.11

Stellarium

This did not take too long and did it before it got dark and after polar aligning I was then able just to use the setup exactly the same way without any crashing which was great. After my initial test night I was not entirely happy with the tracking performance or the stiffness in RA and DEC that made it so hard to balance so I did the same strip down and rebuild as Astrobloke did and it made it so much better!

Here are my Mono and RGB setups imaging the Leo triplet near M66!

 

[AstroNebulee]

2 hours ago, Grant Fribbens said:

I purchased my AZ GTI quite a while ago but have had some failed attempts so far. I have got an 12mm to 8mm thread adapter so I can fit the StarAdventurer counterweight shaft in and also got some EQ3 weights and 3d printed a small reducer so they fit on the SA counterweight shaft. The GTI is on a William Optics wedge and I got the 3/8" Skywatcher tripod to go with it to make sure it was nice and sturdy.

I finally got it out again last week and was trying to get my Raspberry Pi 4 working again and I tried it with Astroberry, IdigoSky and then StellarMate OS but with each of these I found something else would crash and not be reliable enough.

So I bit the bullet and got a Beelink U59 Mini PC and set it up in exactly the same way as my XCY X31 Mini PC on my EQ6-R mount with the following software:-

ASCOM 6.6

Altair camera drivers latest

ZWO Camera Drivers latest

ZWO ASCOM drivers for EF and EFW

N.I.N.A 2 beta 55

GS Server 1.0.4.1

ASTAP with h17 DB

PHD2 2.6.11

Stellarium

This did not take too long and did it before it got dark and after polar aligning I was then able just to use the setup exactly the same way without any crashing which was great. After my initial test night I was not entirely happy with the tracking performance or the stiffness in RA and DEC that made it so hard to balance so I did the same strip down and rebuild as Astrobloke did and it made it so much better!

Here are my Mono and RGB setups imaging the Leo triplet near M66!

 

Very nice set up there. 👍What scope and camera do you have on your AzGti? 

[Grant Fribbens]

2 hours ago, AstroNebulee said:

Very nice set up there. 👍What scope and camera do you have on your AzGti? 

Thanks, I have the William Optics ZS61 fitted with the FLAT 61A, ZWO ASI EAF (new version no 12v) and an Altair 26C camera

[LaurenceT]

On 23/03/2022 at 19:15, bomberbaz said:

I reckon one of these would do quite easily having looked at mine. The grooves in the bottom should take the bolts quite well 

StellaLyra 335mm Universal Vixen-Style Dovetail Bar | First Light Optics

It arrived today and it's a perfect fit, long enough to get balance on my mount and also room to add my Asiair Pro and TP-Link mini router 👍 Thanks again for the suggestion. I now have to spend another £40 odd to get the ZWO clamp😅.

[AstroNebulee]

49 minutes ago, LaurenceT said:

It arrived today and it's a perfect fit, long enough to get balance on my mount and also room to add my Asiair Pro and TP-Link mini router 👍 Thanks again for the suggestion. I now have to spend another £40 odd to get the ZWO clamp😅.

No need to spend the big notes Laurence 😉I used a cheap dslr L bracket for mine 👍

Edited March 28, 2022 by AstroNebulee

[Grant Fribbens]

Here is my image that I captured of the Leo Triplet on the AZ GTI the other night

 

[LaurenceT]

2 hours ago, AstroNebulee said:

No need to spend the big notes Laurence 😉I used a cheap dslr L bracket for mine 👍

Had all the makings of a good idea, I've 7 million dinky bolts and none of them really fitted and I was wary of stripping threads so I've abandoned that project, got to bite the bullet it seems😅

[LaurenceT]

Interesting Youtube video made by Andrea Minoia on balancing the AZ GTI. I've followed this Belgium based Italian scientist extensively in relation to this mount and I've found his recommendations to be sensible and practical.

 

Edited March 29, 2022 by LaurenceT

[badhex]

2 hours ago, LaurenceT said:

Interesting Youtube video made by Andrea Minoia on balancing the AZ GTI. I've followed this Belgium based Italian scientist extensively in relation to this mount and I've found his recommendations to be sensible and practical.

 

Very useful. I thought about something similar, like screwing in a short 3/8" bolt into the bottom and using the bolt head as the fulcrum, or perhaps even attaching the mount to something vertical so that az becomes alt and balancing that way, and making marks on the cw shaft. Never got round to it though! 

[Grant Fribbens]

He also has a good website with all the details on as well https://www.astropills.com/azgti/sky-watcher-az-gti-vs-star-adventurer-pro-2i-which-is-better

[Pile of Jam]

Hi everyone,

New to this forum and have found this thread an excellent resource.

I have recently bought an asiair plus to use with my az-gti in alt az mode but have had trouble with alignment. I perform 2 star alignment through the Synscan app which works fine. Then in the asiair app (connected as Eq mod mount), I select a target and it slews far away from where I want it. On checking the RA/Dec co-ordinates between each app they don't match, so it seems to be a problem syncing between the apps. Any ideas on how to resolve this?

Attached pic of M51 taken after I'd given up and gone back to Sharpcap.

Taken with an Evostar 72ed, 64x30s frames, no calibrations (it was late and I was cold!)

 

whps-DeNoiseAI-clear-low_res-scale-4_00x-gigapixel.tiff

Edited March 30, 2022 by Pile of Jam

[LaurenceT]

2 hours ago, Pile of Jam said:

Hi everyone,

New to this forum and have found this thread an excellent resource.

I have recently bought an asiair plus to use with my az-gti in alt az mode but have had trouble with alignment. I perform 2 star alignment through the Synscan app which works fine. Then in the asiair app (connected as Eq mod mount), I select a target and it slews far away from where I want it. On checking the RA/Dec co-ordinates between each app they don't match, so it seems to be a problem syncing between the apps. Any ideas on how to resolve this?

Attached pic of M51 taken after I'd given up and gone back to Sharpcap.

Taken with an Evostar 72ed, 64x30s frames, no calibrations (it was late and I was cold!)

 

whps-DeNoiseAI-clear-low_res-scale-4_00x-gigapixel.tiff 185.83 MB · 4 downloads

I've only had my Asiair Pro a few weeks and I'm still navigating my way around the app so my knowledge and experience is very limited but one thing jumps out immediately, why are you using the Synscan app for alignment instead of doing the whole thing in the Asiair app?

Have you seen this?:

ASIAIR Pro on Alt-Az mounts PART 2: How to take the first images - Telescope Mounts Explained

I know he is using a different mount and also using a hand pad but I'm not sure that makes a difference. To be clear I've only ever practised this in EQ mode and not AZ mode.

Edited March 30, 2022 by LaurenceT

[AstroNebulee]

11 hours ago, Pile of Jam said:

Hi everyone,

New to this forum and have found this thread an excellent resource.

I have recently bought an asiair plus to use with my az-gti in alt az mode but have had trouble with alignment. I perform 2 star alignment through the Synscan app which works fine. Then in the asiair app (connected as Eq mod mount), I select a target and it slews far away from where I want it. On checking the RA/Dec co-ordinates between each app they don't match, so it seems to be a problem syncing between the apps. Any ideas on how to resolve this?

Attached pic of M51 taken after I'd given up and gone back to Sharpcap.

Taken with an Evostar 72ed, 64x30s frames, no calibrations (it was late and I was cold!)

 

whps-DeNoiseAI-clear-low_res-scale-4_00x-gigapixel.tiff 185.83 MB · 8 downloads

Hi

I agree with Laurence. I'm not sure why you need to use the synscan app. The AAP should do it all for you. Could the eq mod mount connection be conflicting with your az gti (I'm probably being thick here, which isn't hard for me). I only use my 72ed and asiair pro in EQ mode so not really sure on the use with a alt az mounted scope. 

Is there a way of using the plate solving ability on the AAP to help you align the scope to bring your target to the centre? 

Cheers

Lee

Edited March 30, 2022 by AstroNebulee

[Elp]

One of the issues which sticks out immediately is that you've aligned in synscan in altaz mode, but the asiair is designed to work in EQ mode via polar alignment so alignment will be wrong straight away.

I think once you've managed to plate solve a target you know is accurate you can press the sync to mount button.

A guide better for your needs there's an alt az tutorial here:

https://telescopemount.org/asiair-pro-on-alt-az-mount-part-1-how-to-set-up-the-system/

Edited March 30, 2022 by Elp

[Pile of Jam]

Thank you for the replies.

When the skies clear I'll give your suggestions a try and report back.

[bomberbaz]

On 28/03/2022 at 15:31, LaurenceT said:

It arrived today and it's a perfect fit, long enough to get balance on my mount and also room to add my Asiair Pro and TP-Link mini router 👍 Thanks again for the suggestion. I now have to spend another £40 odd to get the ZWO clamp😅.

No worries pal, glad it works

[adyj1]

16 hours ago, Pile of Jam said:

perform 2 star alignment through the Synscan app which works fine. Then in the asiair app (connected as Eq mod mount), I select a target and it slews far away from where I want it.

The mount is really just the arms and legs - it's the controller that is the brains and contains the star database and programs for alignment and slewing. With the AZ GTi we are spoiled for controllers - synscan over wifi, hand controller or PC through EQMOD (or similar). 

The controllers are independent of each other, so if you switch controller you start again with alignment, etc. 

(if you've used a certain controller for polar alignment of the mount, then obviously that is still valid when you switch controllers, as you haven't moved the mount)