Quote:
Originally Posted by Jasp05
Hi Tareq,
What mount are you using? And I take it you have tried guiding but weren't getting good results?
You said you have a 60mm guide scope. This should work fine for any scope up to around 1000mm Focal length.
I don't think the guide camera is going to make too big a difference here for you. So any camera that has guiding capability should be able to guide your 80mm or 8 inch scope.
I struggled for quite some time with guiding also as it never seemed to tame the trailing enough.
Few things to double check on your setup before I'd worry about upgrading your equipment.
1: How good is your polar alignment? - Aim for less than an arc-min. Although mine is usually around the 1 arc-min or so as per PHD2 drift align tool.
2: Make sure your scope is balanced in both RA and DEC properly - I might balance the scope, sometimes I've had to adjust the counterweight on the RA to get guiding to behave even after the initial balance. (very minor tweak mind you).
3: Guiding settings - What program do you use to control guiding? Can provide some more details around this once I know what your using. If your using standalone guiders, hopefully someone else can help out as I've had no experience with using one.
4: Make sure your guide scope and imaging scope are aligned and point to the same are of sky. You ideally want the guide camera to point to a star in the field of view of the imaging scope. If the guidescope is not aligned this could cause some guiding issues also.
I think checking polar alignment and balance are the major things to do first. As Alex mentioned he can get 30-40 sec subs with no guiding on an 8 inch scope. so even with a basic guiding setup (50mm guidescope and as most beginners use a ZWO120mm guide camera) he should be able to get up to 2-5min subs quite easily. Although guiding an 8 inch scope is much more difficult than a small refractor from what I hear...
So there is no reason why your current equipment shouldn't be up to the job of guiding your scopes. It's just a matter and playing and getting things right now.
Took alot of frustrating nights for me to work out guiding as well Tareq. Almost to the point of throwing the towel in and giving up. But once I worked it out, it's the easiest thing and you wonder how you ever got it so wrong in the first place.  |
Hi [i don't know your name],
Your post is spot on.
Well, i don't know what to say, but let's say i didn't try to make guiding too much accurate many nights, i just followed the videos i watched and tried it with the values of my setup and i thought it will work just right away, if not then i wasn't interested to start over or try to find out, but i am sure my current setup is able to do guiding just fine because i saw many images with similar or even less setup and they are doing fine, it is just i feel if this setup is needed a lot of work or taking long time every time then i better choose another setup which make it easier, it is exactly same as using a polar scope for PA or using a Polemaster which i have, this Polemaster is always making the job easier and faster, i won't say the best accurate but accurate enough, and there is also drift aligning method but taking much longer time, so i was thinking the same in guiding, i got a recommendation about autoguiding because it is making things easier, and trying to make my current setup to work doesn't mean i will never think about upgrading, in fact even if i upgrade before i try again with my current setup it will be a big help than it is as a waste, but until that time coming i can try again with my current setup.
I am sure that polar alignment and balancing are the main or major issues here, i said i use Polemaster so almost polar alignment is done, it is only balancing, and i admit or have to confess that until now i have issues to balance my setup right either with lightweight gear or heavy one, most of the time when i see that i can't make it right on time like for example one hour before the night then i just leave it as it is at best what i can do, and i managed to get up to 2 minutes subs sometimes but not for long time, LRGB are fine for up to 60sec, it is just my NB filters that sometimes i need longer than 2minutes, i tested my PA unguided with lightweight setup, some nights i was able to get up to 3 minutes, if i tried 4 then it is very slight trailing which means it is not good, even with 3 minutes after few minutes or nearly half an hour i feel it lost good PA suddenly and then trailing back, but if i managed to get up to 2-3 unguided even as starting it means i was fine, just maybe balancing or flexture had effect afterwards.
I asked about guiding because i was thinking if i will stuck with let's say 2-5 minutes then guiding will solve it even if it is not good, after all this is what guiding for, i don't suppose to make my setup great for 3-5 minutes unguided so in this case i won't use guiding at all, but if i got problems with 2-5 min unguided then i thought adding guiding will fix this problem immediately, but i am not sure if i have bad PA or bad balancing will this affect about the accuracy or effectiveness of guiding too?
I think maybe i didn't align my guide scope with my main imaging scope, but i am sure they are both pointed to the same view, i am talking with 80mm, and 60mm guide scope, so they both have enough wide view after all, it is funny that if i make them at best to the same direction but then they aren't seeing the same view completely it is like i pointed each other completely different, but it is good to make sure about it, and that is why i bought side by side dovetail so i can use one side for imaging and the other for guiding to make sure both are exactly same direction.
My mount is SW AZ-EQ6.