Skywatcher AZ GTI mount owners thread

[AstroNebulee]

6 minutes ago, herne said:

Picture below, minus the bird's nest of cables!

I have tried mounting the ASIair onto the scope (and thus the mount) to help with cable management, but that was definitely causing weight issues on the AZ-gti, so I tend to just perch it on the tripod leg spacer (not really ideal).

I also took some Moon pictures the other night - I was ready for a DSO imaging session but the Moon was full and ridiculously bright so DSOs were out.  As I'd done my set up and PA I figured I may as well have a crack at the Moon for a change.  I had no idea how the AZ-gti would track it, especially on the eq wedge, but to my (very) pleasant surprise it handled it very well indeed.  I'll include a final picture of it as well - c.300 1/200th shutter speed stacked photos @ ISO200 using everything else as described above (minus the guiding).  I also left 4 seconds between each frame to allow the camera to settle and reduce shake, so overall c.20 mins elapsed time, during which there was a negligible amount of drift of the Moon between the first and last frames.  I was quite impressed by that.

Superb. 👍 I'm loving the artisan counterweight system too, it's like a work of art. As you say tracking the moon in EQ mode is a breeze and hardly shifts at all in my system 

[herne]

23 minutes ago, AstroNebulee said:

I'm loving the artisan counterweight system too

Hahaha, very well put!  I needed some counterweights during lockdown and there was zero supply available, so ordered a rod, nuts & washers off the internet.  Cut it to size with a hacksaw and Bob's your uncle.  Honestly I wouldn't change it now.  Saved me a few pennies too.

Edited April 18, 2022 by herne

[Elp]

3 hours ago, herne said:

The only other issue is payload capacity.  The above set up is right on the limit of weight (possibly even a little over) in my experience.

I have a very similar setup to you barring the dslr is instead a filter drawer and a cooled astro cam with the asiair on top of the scope, total weight I think is around 3.2+1.5kg for the counterweight and bar. Recently I changed the zwo/svbony 30mm guidescope to a 50mm and due to the change in centre balance added a cat handle to the centre of the Z61, this then required an additional 0.75kg to be added to the bar for Dec balance. So total probably added another 1kg or thereabouts, still guides fine, in fact with the 50mm my guiding has gone from 1-2" typical to 0.45-1.5" on a still night. Adjusting the altitude however for PA has become a bit more of a pain due to the added weight whereas before it was fine, a similar situation to what @AstroNebulee had.

[RayWUK]

A few updates to my rig in the last week or so. Firstly the ASI AIR firmware updated to the latest Version (1.9), Secondly I sold my Star Adventurer so had to find a substitute for the 1kg counterbalance weight i was using on the the AZ-GTI in the form of a 32mm length of 40mm Dia. steel bar with a 6mm hole in the centre to bolt on the end of the counterbalance rod. Lastly and most excitingly a new ASI533MC Pro camera to replace the Canon 600D.

I had to re-balance the RA and Dec axis using the method shown on here a few pages back.

First night out with the new rig to night, polar aligned, focused and guiding on M81 within 15mins, the ASIAIR is brilliant and a real game changer in this respect. Managed and hour of imaging before i had to call it a night as i have an early start in the morning. Guiding was below 1.0" for most of the session and the previews of the images look promising. 

Here's a sample 30sec sub from the ASIAIR. Hoping to find time to process them tomorrow. 

[AstroNebulee]

4 hours ago, RayWUK said:

A few updates to my rig in the last week or so. Firstly the ASI AIR firmware updated to the latest Version (1.9), Secondly I sold my Star Adventurer so had to find a substitute for the 1kg counterbalance weight i was using on the the AZ-GTI in the form of a 32mm length of 40mm Dia. steel bar with a 6mm hole in the centre to bolt on the end of the counterbalance rod. Lastly and most excitingly a new ASI533MC Pro camera to replace the Canon 600D.

I had to re-balance the RA and Dec axis using the method shown on here a few pages back.

First night out with the new rig to night, polar aligned, focused and guiding on M81 within 15mins, the ASIAIR is brilliant and a real game changer in this respect. Managed and hour of imaging before i had to call it a night as i have an early start in the morning. Guiding was below 1.0" for most of the session and the previews of the images look promising. 

Here's a sample 30sec sub from the ASIAIR. Hoping to find time to process them tomorrow. 

Excellent Ray. That's some brilliant guiding figures there indeed, you should be well happy with them. I agree the asiair is a real fantastic piece of kit, gets you up and going in no time and making it so simple. I'm looking forward to you first light images with your new 533mc pro. 👍

[bomberbaz]

7 hours ago, RayWUK said:

A few updates to my rig in the last week or so. Firstly the ASI AIR firmware updated to the latest Version (1.9), Secondly I sold my Star Adventurer so had to find a substitute for the 1kg counterbalance weight i was using on the the AZ-GTI in the form of a 32mm length of 40mm Dia. steel bar with a 6mm hole in the centre to bolt on the end of the counterbalance rod. Lastly and most excitingly a new ASI533MC Pro camera to replace the Canon 600D.

I had to re-balance the RA and Dec axis using the method shown on here a few pages back.

First night out with the new rig to night, polar aligned, focused and guiding on M81 within 15mins, the ASIAIR is brilliant and a real game changer in this respect. Managed and hour of imaging before i had to call it a night as i have an early start in the morning. Guiding was below 1.0" for most of the session and the previews of the images look promising. 

Here's a sample 30sec sub from the ASIAIR. Hoping to find time to process them tomorrow. 

well done ray, can you screen shot your guide settings and also what were your subbing times please? Look like 30 seconds and did you dither?

[RayWUK]

11 hours ago, bomberbaz said:

well done ray, can you screen shot your guide settings and also what were your subbing times please? Look like 30 seconds and did you dither?

I'm hoping to get out again this evening so will do a screenshot of my guiding settings for you. Subs were 30 seconds, no dithering as yet. Last time i tried it took too long to settle between dithers so gave up but i didn't really know what i was doing then so will give it another try in the coming weeks. Theres just so much to learn with all this new kit but its all fun 😀

Another addition today. I was never happy with the SW vixen clamp on the AZ-GTI so i've substituted it for a Williams Optics clamp, another eBay purchase.

 

[LaurenceT]

Ooh, the William Optics clamp looks great, never really thought about one of those.

[RayWUK]

15 hours ago, bomberbaz said:

well done ray, can you screen shot your guide settings and also what were your subbing times please? Look like 30 seconds and did you dither?

OK Baz (Steve), here's some screen shots of my guiding settings, hope this helps.

 

 

Edited April 22, 2022 by RayWUK

[Elp]

Is your guiding fine at 0.5x? I've always had mine on 0.9x, even on my other mounts.

[AstroNebulee]

7 hours ago, Elp said:

Is your guiding fine at 0.5x? I've always had mine on 0.9x, even on my other mounts.

I've always set mine to 0.9x too. 

 

8 hours ago, RayWUK said:

OK Baz (Steve), here's some screen shots of my guiding settings, hope this helps.

 

 

Nice guiding again Ray, do you have the total rms guiding figure that's in the guidelig on AAP. I usually have my guide stability 4" and 3 secs as I dither (but that's just my set up and not a suggestion to you 😊) I can't remember what scooe you have again? I'd go for longer subs now 2 - 3 mins should be a breeze. Nice work though Ray for your second time with it 👍

Edited April 23, 2022 by AstroNebulee

[AstroGS]

Morning.

I am debating with myself the need to buy a full go-to portable mount and replace my Star Adventurer. Probably I will be getting the new SW Adventurer GTi when it will be available later this year.

Currently, I do have a SW Staradventurer with a WO Wedge which I’m using with WO Redcat51, Mini120 guider and Asiair Plus, combined with an ASI533MC.  My question is, which one would you consider best option for DSO astrophotography - for 2mins to 4 mins subs? Is the AZ-GTi superior to the the SA?

I am asking as I will be flying to Greece this summer and I am preparing a portable rig that I will take with me. To be honest, the one thing that always frustrated me with the SW SA is the need to frame correctly the target but, after that I could easily do 3mins subs with 1”-2” PE.

Edited April 23, 2022 by George Sinanis

[RayWUK]

1 hour ago, AstroNebulee said:

I've always set mine to 0.9x too. 

 

Nice guiding again Ray, do you have the total rms guiding figure that's in the guidelig on AAP. I usually have my guide stability 4" and 3 secs as I dither (but that's just my set up and not a suggestion to you 😊) I can't remember what scooe you have again? I'd go for longer subs now 2 - 3 mins should be a breeze. Nice work though Ray for your second time with it 👍

I started out with the guiding rate at 0.9 but found that I was getting a lot over overshoot in the corrections, reducing it to 0.5 seems to have smoothed it out a bit. I guess it’s one of them things you can fiddle around with and still get reasonable results whichever rate you choose.

Ill be downloading all my images and calibration files for the last two nights from the AAP this evening so will have a look at the guiding log. I’ve never opened a log so don’t know what I’m looking for, any pointers?

[RayWUK]

28 minutes ago, George Sinanis said:

Morning.

I am debating with myself the need to buy a full go-to portable mount and replace my Star Adventurer. Probably I will be getting the new SW Adventurer GTi when it will be available later this year.

Currently, I do have a SW Staradventurer with a WO Wedge which I’m using with WO Redcat51, Mini120 guider and Asiair Plus, combined with an ASI533MC.  My question is, which one would you consider best option for DSO astrophotography - for 2mins to 4 mins subs? Is the AZ-GTi superior to the the SA?

I am asking as I will be flying to Greece this summer and I am preparing a portable rig that I will take with me. To be honest, the one thing that always frustrated me with the SW SA is the need to frame correctly the target but, after that I could easily do 3mins subs with 1”-2” PE.

I think most of us on here started out with the Star Adventure and progressed to the AZ-GTI. I would say the AZ-GTI is every bit as good as the SA performance wise (if not better) but with the added go-to ability. My imaging equipment is the same as yours so you shouldn’t have any problems there although I am pushing the load limits. Still others here push it even further and still get good results.

As for the Star Adventurer GTI, if you can wait and can get over the double price tag of the AZ-GTI then I’d go for it. For me it doesn’t offer anything more than I already have so I’ll be sticking with the AZ-GTI until I feel the need for a bigger scope. But then the SA GTI wouldn’t forfill that requirement anyway.

Edited April 23, 2022 by RayWUK

[AstroNebulee]

31 minutes ago, George Sinanis said:

Morning.

I am debating with myself the need to buy a full go-to portable mount and replace my Star Adventurer. Probably I will be getting the new SW Adventurer GTi when it will be available later this year.

Currently, I do have a SW Staradventurer with a WO Wedge which I’m using with WO Redcat51, Mini120 guider and Asiair Plus, combined with an ASI533MC.  My question is, which one would you consider best option for DSO astrophotography - for 2mins to 4 mins subs? Is the AZ-GTi superior to the the SA?

I am asking as I will be flying to Greece this summer and I am preparing a portable rig that I will take with me. To be honest, the one thing that always frustrated me with the SW SA is the need to frame correctly the target but, after that I could easily do 3mins subs with 1”-2” PE.

I can't comment on the new SA gti as no one knows enough yet on how it will compare to the az gti, it does have slightly more teeth in the RA gearing over the az gti and is heavier than the az gti. Though it will be expensive compared to the az gti even when you factor in the addons which most you have eg. Wedge, guiding, AAP. Just add the counterweight and bar and your there. My set up including cw is 5.9kg so over the mount suggested payload but still ok. All I'll say with the az gti it's goto...   and in EQ mode with a counterweight system I can get 3 min subs easily, never tried 4 as I'm comfortable with that but could do it even 5 mins I expect when guided. 

Cheers 

Lee 

Edited April 23, 2022 by AstroNebulee

[AstroNebulee]

55 minutes ago, RayWUK said:

I started out with the guiding rate at 0.9 but found that I was getting a lot over overshoot in the corrections, reducing it to 0.5 seems to have smoothed it out a bit. I guess it’s one of them things you can fiddle around with and still get reasonable results whichever rate you choose.

Ill be downloading all my images and calibration files for the last two nights from the AAP this evening so will have a look at the guiding log. I’ve never opened a log so don’t know what I’m looking for, any pointers?

Hi Ray

If you download the PHD2 log viewer here
PHD2 Log Viewer - PHD2 Guide Log viewing tool (adgsoftware.com)
 you can open the logs from the AAP into this and view your guide graph, calibration , check out all sorts of your settings used. I don't understand much of them to be fair but may prove useful. They have a total rms value for the whole imaging session and whilst I regularly guide around 1-2 rms or so I thought it works out to 3 rms normally even thought the RA and DEC get under 1 rms.  Just a bit of fun for me and we know the az gti cant be comapred to other big boys rms.  I'm not saying mine is right (which it most definitely isn't haha) but I like to look at it every now and again. I'd like to check mine out wurh the new meshing alterations I've done, when clear skies allow and sensible imaging nights without work. 😁

Edited April 23, 2022 by AstroNebulee

[Elp]

I've done 5 minutes when doing narrowband. Stars do start to become a bit oblong I've found so I tend to stick to 2-3 max to reduce amount of bogus subs.

[RayWUK]

6 hours ago, AstroNebulee said:

Hi Ray

If you download the PHD2 log viewer here
PHD2 Log Viewer - PHD2 Guide Log viewing tool (adgsoftware.com)
 you can open the logs from the AAP into this and view your guide graph, calibration , check out all sorts of your settings used. I don't understand much of them to be fair but may prove useful. They have a total rms value for the whole imaging session and whilst I regularly guide around 1-2 rms or so I thought it works out to 3 rms normally even thought the RA and DEC get under 1 rms.  Just a bit of fun for me and we know the az gti cant be comapred to other big boys rms.  I'm not saying mine is right (which it most definitely isn't haha) but I like to look at it every now and again. I'd like to check mine out wurh the new meshing alterations I've done, when clear skies allow and sensible imaging nights without work. 😁

I presume that a Windows PC application. I'm a Mac user myself so i'll see if i can find something similar for the Mac. If not i have an old Windows laptop i could probably get it onto.

I think a lot of people get hung up on guiding accuracy and the need to spend all your money on a decent mount, as far as i'm concerned (and i'm no expert on the subject) if your guiding is less than the image scale of your imaging equipment then it should be possible to do reasonable length exposures (1-2min) without running into problems. My image scale with the Redcat and DLSR was 3.54 arcsec and now with the ASI533MC Pro its 3.1 arcsec. So as long as my guiding is less i should be ok. Thats my theory anyway which seems to be borne out by the images i'm currently getting. 

[AstroNebulee]

14 minutes ago, RayWUK said:

I presume that a Windows PC application. I'm a Mac user myself so i'll see if i can find something similar for the Mac. If not i have an old Windows laptop i could probably get it onto.

I think a lot of people get hung up on guiding accuracy and the need to spend all your money on a decent mount, as far as i'm concerned (and i'm no expert on the subject) if your guiding is less than the image scale of your imaging equipment then it should be possible to do reasonable length exposures (1-2min) without running into problems. My image scale with the Redcat and DLSR was 3.54 arcsec and now with the ASI533MC Pro its 3.1 arcsec. So as long as my guiding is less i should be ok. Thats my theory anyway which seems to be borne out by the images i'm currently getting. 

There is a mac version of the software on this page. 

https://adgsoftware.com/phd2utils/

Yep quite agree Ray, as long as we are happy with our images at the end that's all that matters 😊

Edited April 23, 2022 by AstroNebulee

[david_taurus83]

I've been busy concentrating on my main pier mounted setup that my little GTi has been a bit neglected. @geeklee I stripped it all down last weekend and loosened up the retaining ring that made it too stiff. Swings free as a bird now 👍 Also meshed the gears up and regreased while I was at it.

I pulled the finger out today and finally made a homebrew counterweight. A few rough calculations, scope at 3kg and approx 150mm from fulcrum needs around 1.8kg counterweight at around 250mm from fulcrum. So a concrete cylinder of around 100mm diameter at 100mm deep is about bang on the money. I may need a slightly longer bar but will see what it's like tomorrow. 

 

[herne]

On 18/04/2022 at 15:21, herne said:

The only other issue is payload capacity.  The above set up is right on the limit of weight (possibly even a little over) in my experience.  It will track/guide targets just fine, but the PA process can sometimes be a bit tricky as the mount occasionally stutters or even stops mid-60 degree rotation, which interrupts the PA process meaning I have to start over.  It will also, very occasionally, go all crazy ivan when slewing to a target, meaning I have to turn everything off and start over from scratch.  I think all of this might be weight related and I certainly wouldn't consider putting a larger scope on it.

A little update on this.  After further tinkering the weight doesn't appear to be the issue, it's the power and (probably) servicing.  I've been using an old 12v 2amp adapter I found lying around in a drawer (god knows where it came from originally).  It's worked ok for the best part of a year but it's showing it's age now.  Connecting it to a more suitable power supply works nicely.

I probably also need to give the mount a service as dec especially is feeling pretty stiff and doesn't really turn freely when loosened.

I'm also experimenting with how to attach my ASI air to the mount or scope, rather than leaving it lying loose on the tripod spacer plate, with associated trailing cables.  There seems to be sufficient room on the end of my Z61's dovetail, mounting it underneath.  A little awkward to get at the hex bolt, but not impossible.  I also have a load of metal L brackets from a DIY shop which may be useful - kind of like @AstroNebulee's DSLR L bracket but much more home made.  Something to try out and will post a pic once cobbled together.

[Olli]

This thread has been extremely helpful. I just have a couple of questions, hopefully hasn’t been asked. I am looking at a Eq wedge for the mount and have seen the star adventurer or the wo mount which is nearly double the price. What mount would you recommend out the two? Also when trying to set up SynScan on my phone the app constantly  crashes when searching for the scope.  I have managed to set it up on my iPad but would prefer to use the phone I tried downloading it from the website but still no joy.

[Elp]

46 minutes ago, herne said:

I'm also experimenting with how to attach my ASI air to the mount or scope

Are the two sets of mounting screws (M3 or M4 size I think) on your Z61 near the focus tube being used? I've got two mini dovetail saddles there, I used to use one for a mini 30mm guidescope, the other for the asiair. They sort of balance each other out for Dec balance.

[Elp]

16 minutes ago, Olli said:

What mount would you recommend out the two? Also when trying to set up SynScan on my phone the app constantly  crashes when searching for the scope

Having owned both SA and WO one, I'd recommend the WO, I was in the same position and baulked at the added cost and got the SA one first. Many people have used the SA very well, I got annoyed with it. Now I can PA within 2 minutes sometimes, usually within 5 to less than 30 a/s, closest I ever got before stopping was 4 a/s.

Synscan pro app, are you installing v1.19 or another version? I've used this successfully on Android 11 and 12. Any prior version just turned off (crashed/minimised itself) immediately upon loading.

[RayWUK]

17 minutes ago, Olli said:

I am looking at a Eq wedge for the mount and have seen the star adventurer or the wo mount which is nearly double the price. What mount would you recommend out the two? 

If you can afford it, get the WO wedge. I've used both, the SA wedge is ok with a light setup, but a pain to use compared to the WO wedge when loading up with a few kg of imaging equipment.