Quote:
Originally Posted by AdamJL
Hi Martin
Are you referring to Star Alignment here?
That's interesting, as I tend to only do 1 star alignment, after polar aligning (with PoleMaster), and usually on Jupiter because it's so bright currently 
I've been able to track 4 mins unguided, albeit at shorter focal lengths (550mm).
No idea if this is "good" or not, as I'm still a newb, but I'm happy with the accuracy for now.
Haven't started thinking about autoguiding, but I guess I'll have to when I need to go deeper (and then will likely require more star alignment points?) |
Adam,
I was referring to alignment when you use EQMOD and Stellarium to navigate across the night sky , not Star alignment using a Synscan handcontroller etc...
As your using a relatively short focal length system super accurate alignment is not so critical
Not quite sure what you mean by track for 4 minutes unguided ? Tracking on what ? And what frame of reference ?
We usually test out polar alignment on a bright star say magnitude 0.75 to 2.0 and good polar alignment keeps the star stationary in the centre of our reticle for at least 3 to 5 minutes until you see some drift but again this at a certain image scale where the star is “zoomed in “
It all depends if you want to take 30 sec to 60 sec sub exposures ( unguided ) when imaging or from 1 minute to 10 minute sub exposures where guiding is an absolute must