EQ6 PEC question

[Black Knight]

The Skywatcher manual says to perform PEC training with a reticule eyepiece, which I don't have at the moment, so I was toying with the idea of using a webcam in its place. But, could I simply use a guide camera connected via ST4 and use PHD instead? That would make life a lot easier

BTW, I don't have the right cable (yet) to connect EQMod to the mount otherwise I would probably use that as opposed to the Synscan handset.

Some supplementary questions:

Once done, is PEC good for all areas of sky, or just the area in which you perform the PEC training?

Is the PEC training invalidated if the mount is moved, or if a subsequent star alignment is performed?

EDIT: Ooops I've probably created this thread in the wrong place. Sorry!

Thanks,

[johnh]

I woud get EQmod sorted out first as there are excellent videos about PEC on Youtube.

I would use K3Tools but I think you can use other software. The site below explains it extremely well for newcomers.

http://eq-mod.sourceforge.net/docs/eqmod_vs-pec.pdf

You can get PE down to +/-5 arc sec if your mount shows perfect PE rhythmn.

Regards, John.

[Ben Ritchie]

If you have a guide camera then i'd just autoguide - that'll remove any tracking error, and PEC isn't going to drop the error sufficiently to go unguided for any length of time unless the focal lengths are very low.

The only times i've ever bothered with PEC are either on my old AP1200, where PE with PEC enabled was sub-arcsecond so I could use 30s guide integrations, or in conjunction with autoguider tuning when trying to get a G11 imaging accurately at 2500mm focal length (never did succeed with that). In most cases I don't think PEC is worth the effort.

[Black Knight]

Thanks for the info guys, much appreciated