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Southern Hemisphere!!
Hi, thanks for having me, I'm all newly registered...
I am a novice, of a couple of years, have what I think is some decent kit, but still need to get back to basics. Permission to ask a bunch of questions??
Last night I gave up drift aligning again, just used the polar scope on my G11 and turned off my auto guider. Produced my best ever image of Orion. Have never had luck with AG, I suspect that although my mount's motors are tracking the right way, PHD2 isn't.
one of my challenges is that my G11 is non goto - digital drive; push-to. And every piece of software is either setup for GOTO and slewing, or instructions are for up north. Questions I have are along the lines of;
- If my camera (DLSR) is upside down on a right side up refractor, pointing West, then with my mount turned off, star trails should start heading down on my monitor right?
- Should my SSAG be right side up or upside down in relation to my refractor, given that the 50mm OTA it is on is a frac itself? Or is there a method of determining how PHD2 is reacting? Last night I tried to Drift align and the lines were pointed downwards, and the adjustment lines were frantically and constantly in the opposite direction, then it told me my mount was not reacting fast enough, even though it calibrated OK.
- To drift align being a Southy I want to start at my Eastern Horizon with hardly and DEC so OTA is pointing toward where the celestial equator meets east right? And this is to determine Azimuth? With my scope in the config mentioned above, which way do I adjust mount in relation to where my star drifts?
- Next I go overhead, to approx where Orion is at the moment, OTA still perpendicular to Celestial equator right? Then this is Altitude adjustment?
- Unguided I can do almost 120sec with rough alignment and still get nice round stars, as soon as I try auto guiding, its a jagged mess! I have ASCOM driver using shoestring GPUSB, as I thought there may have been an impedance issue with SSAG and ST-4 port on my DD. Results are no better.
I have Esprit 80mm Triplet, G11, SSAG, CentralDS cooled 600D, and another large scope that I'm not going near until I get things sorted.
Software; PHD2, PEMpro v3 beta and AstroART which I got to try Drift aligning in conjunction with PEMpro beta with new ASCOM driver since I have a DSLR - I can also try the SSAG but I don't like the larger pixel/sec on this for PEMpro as the goal was to get the PE as good as I could. I can't use PEMpro for polar aligning, because there is some software glitch that keeps not taking images after a promising start.
In a nutshell, I have an OVISION worm coming, and bought PEMpro to get my PE as low as poss - but first I have to figure to how to drift align as it seems this is the most fundamental aspect of AP.
End goal post alignment is to get PE as low as mount allows, then start guiding so I can get 3-5min exposures for the projects that I have in mind, and also maybe start using my big OTA one day.
Thanks for reading,
Stew
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