Starlight Xpress STAR2000 help needed!

[lukebl]

Does anyone have any positive experiences with using the Star2000 self-guiding setup, as I had a fruitless night last night getting to grips with using it with a Starlight Xpress MX716 camera?

It's my first attempt at using it, and I was trying to image the moons of Uranus (perhaps that was a bit ambitious for a first attempt!), with my 200 Skywatcher plus a 3x Barlow (i.e. working at f/15). Basically, when using the self-guide settings the guide star (in this case Uranus itself) wavered all over the place. The result was that after even a 1 minute exposure the image had trailed everywhere (I'm at work now, so can't post an example image). Could this be because Uranus is not a point object like a star and the software couldn't get a proper 'fix' on it. Or maybe the magnification was too high and it's simply not possible to get sufficiently accurate tracking with my setup. The unguided images were much more accurate, but not good enough to pick up any of the moons.

Also, the instructions say you should ensure that the camera is aligned so that the camera bracket is lined up east-west. However, with the camera at right angles to the tube using a Newtonian I couldn't work out which way to orientate it. So maybe the camera was aligned 90 degrees out.

Hope this makes sense to someone!

Kind regards,

Luke

[barkis]

I would drop an email to Terry Platt as SX.

Terry is a very helpful guy.

Ron.