Quote:
Originally Posted by Somnium
i hate to break it to you Chris, you are on a slippery slope. you will always need better gear. at some point you have to be happy with what you got and try to improve with it. when you get a guider you are going to hit the problem of noise control with a DSLR, especially on hot nights, so you will want to cool your camera. you are going to hit sky glow issues which mean you want to use Narrow band filters. you will want to get better resolution so you will go for a bigger and longer FL scope. then you will need to get a coma corrector, laser collimation, ccd.  |
Oh I'm extremely, painfully aware of that already. I started with $200 boinoculars, then a $600 Dob, now a $2k mount & refractor, soon a $4-500 guiding system, then probably a $1k Newtonian & coma corrector, then I imagine a $1k CCD, then when I get frustated with the flexure of the metal Newt I'll need a $6k carbon fibre truss, which should probably get a better guiding system, the combined weight of which will necessitate a $5k EQ8 or pier, at which point I'll probably decide I should just spend a few grand on a dedicated observatory.
THEN I'll be happy. Right?
For the other stuff I have no real idea what the various software you all mentioned are actually for. The way I imagined it would work is that the guidescope camera connects to the laptop running PHD2 which then connects to the mount. What are all these other things for? Does PHD2 have an alignment process or is it absolutely necessary to go down the plate solving route?
I'm fine with using my DSLR and intervalometer for now (until I get frustrated with the noise, at least), so I'm not that fussed about controlling the camera. It's a bit fiddly but nothing I refuse to deal with. What am I missing there?
And what about Stellarium? It seems like a great program but I don't know where it fits in with CDC / PHD2 / EQMOD etc.