Dlift aligning and guiding

[Kaptain Klevtsov]

Got set up now with a guidescope on the big 'un, so I need some dark to test it out.

Question 1 - drift aligning

I need to get very close to polar alignment and having read about it but not actually had a go I wonder if Arcturus and Vega are in the right positions for doing this? They are bright enough that I don't need to wait for the real dark to happen before I can see them.

Question 2 - auto guiding

If I get this to work, I'm hoping that any inaccuracy with the polar alignment will go away. Does that mean that I can be off by a tiny bit, or just drag the mount out and get going after pointing it in the general direction of north?

Question 3 - K3CCD tools guiding

I have this and the help files seem to be clear enough, any tips?

TIA

Captain Chaos

[MartinB]

Since no one more knowledgeable has answered CC I will have a go myself since I am thinking about some similar things.

1) Drift aligning is a real pain this time of year. It's so late before it's properly dark. On the other hand, cos it gets dark very slowly, if you use bright stars you can get going well before you could image anyway. Arcturus is good at dusk. Vega is too high but Altair isn't that bad. So Arcturus and Altair will be my choice.

Using the polar scope on your Eq6 should give you a pretty decent alignment esp if you line up polaris properly http://www.trutek-uk.com/takahashi/takahashib.html contains a couple of polaris finder programs which are very useful. You should be able to get 90 secs easy esp at lower F/Rs. Warning - dont spend too long on that site without blue chip finances!!

2) If you want to do longer exposures I guess you will still need a good alignment. The autoguiding will have to deal with periodic error, flexing, and other gremlins. Having it deal with poor alignment is probably asking too much.

3) It really is neat software that works reliably for me. Crank up the gain and brightness and focus on short exposures. Then turn the brightness to half way. Step back the gain and increase exposure time. Increase exposure time as much as your tracking will permit. the lower the gain the better esp on these warm nights which are really too much for fan cooled chips. I am getting a fair bit of noise with the Atik. Ideally get down to near zero gain and use the amp off button. Longer exposures really do work to bring out fainter detail. Get lots of subs.