Quote:
Originally Posted by The_bluester
The only thing you would have to watch there Alex is I reckon for an Espirit 150 you would still want an OAG even with the CEM70G. I reckon guiding something that long FL with a 120mm FL guidescope built into the puck would be a challenge. Though at least a big frac would have the advantage of internally stable optics. Anything with possible mirror movement would be a real hassle I reckon.
The common wisdom seems to be with good rigidity, the inbuilt guider should be good to something like 600-700mm focal length. The real selling point for me was that I am setting up two rigs and while I am imaging at 480mm FL it allowed me to get USB3 connectivity and better electronics integration while kicking the cost of a second OAG and guide cam down the road a bit. So long as the inbuilt guider turns out to be a good thing.
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I was thinking about it earlier. I have always tuned my mounts as good as they can be and my old eq6 I did an 11 minute run with the 80mm once ...It needs work again but my point is I think of guiding differently to most folk in so far as I expect corrections should be needed only say at 30 second intervals and the Ioptron seems to be very smooth and easy to achieve really good balance..the fact the polar is between two bearing says to me it should be rather good...anyways being always on the rush in the past and often having to settle for 30 second subs I see now reason why I can't manage.
And I found with the ZWO that you can get away with crazy high gain and short subs.. I was looking at some HA of something I did last night..30 seconds at 450 gain..not really flash but after StarTools the noise was not anywhere as bad as you would expect and as I combined that one with others with less noise it Sortta was quiet acceptable...maybe not to others but I make no pretence I just want the best I can do with whatever exposure and gain it takes...I have yet to incorporate dark and flats so I have many areas that I can improve upon...and in the future not being rushed can go for less gain, dark etc.
And like you I will be running two rigs that need guiding, three rigs all up and possibly a four if I bring the "cube" up here..over kill ..not at all.
But if the mount guide works it will be terrific.
EQ6 unguided with two DSLR cameras one with HA and a normal one that hopefully I can combine..still working on that one but two doing different things at least, the HEQ 5 with the 80 mm maybe a one shot colour, the 115 mm with the zwo 1600 and the new set up whatever it turns out to be....and possibly a secondhand mount and camera for the eight if I get the cube up here...
My reasoning is simple..to get good photos you need perfect conditions and they are rare so when it's perfect I will gather data like there is no tomorrow..also I find that late nights are getting to me so I want to shut down around midnight and be able to avoid sleeping all day...I have many things to do so I have to manage time smarter..and so it is perfectly logical and sensible to have four rigs running on a good night.
Soon everyone will be doing it...I have even been thinking three scopes one the new mount S, H and O but it's is not a simple as I would like data management wise.
The ioptron seems a sensible choice ..well it is if it suffers no issues...I will think more but there may be three of us in the Ioptron club.
Thanks for all your help I am most grateful.
Alex