I am after some advice about an autoguiding setup to use.
I can get around the 45 sec mark with just polar alignment but while the wife is in an allowing mood I thought I might look at an autoguiding setup.
I currently have a Vixen VC200L with a GP mount with dual motors. Mount can hold about 10KG. Tube weighs 6KG and I have (its on the way for Xmas present to myself) a Nikon D750 which with the rings etc is about 1 kG(Just under) which leaves me 3 kg to play with at most.
I was looking at getting a ZWO ASI120MM camera and an 80 x 400mm or simlar scope. I know bintel do a package with this for $599.
My budget is around the 1000 dollar mark (I would really like it to be alot less ...)
Does anyone have any advice about this setup or an alternative guiding setup ?
Like many, I use a piggybacked 80x400 guidescope and guide cam (QHY5L-II) quite happily at 1625 focal length with no major differential flexure problems.
I think my guide cam sensor is the same as you're contemplating, so I'm pretty confident that with a f/5 guide scope you should have no problem finding guide stars at 1.0s exposures or less.
Autoguiding with a guide scope will add a couple of kilos though so your mount might struggle to track reliably enough for imaging if 10kg is its max load.
NEQ6/HEQ5 owners usually go up to about 2/3 of maximum payload for imaging. For example the NEQ6 specifies a 25kg load for visual, but 18kg for imaging. HEQ5 is 15kg visual, 11kg for imaging.
I don't think anything terrible happens when imaging close to the maximum visual payload, it's just that accurate guiding gets more and more problematic.
Seymore, I'll echo what Sam said, rather than one of those tiny 50mm scopes you're better off with more aperture, something like a ST80 and with one of the ZWO or QHY cameras. Ideally you want your guide scope focal length to be a third or longer of your main scope.
Yep, 80mm F5 and a ZWO 120 mc in my case. With PHD2 I can just about go enny meeny miny mo with the stars. It just auto setup itself at first install. I just tweaked the box size to give the hunt and find a bit more room to move. Next I'll just go auto and let it find it's own star.
I am after some advice about an autoguiding setup to use.
I can get around the 45 sec mark with just polar alignment but while the wife is in an allowing mood I thought I might look at an autoguiding setup.
I currently have a Vixen VC200L with a GP mount with dual motors. Mount can hold about 10KG. Tube weighs 6KG and I have (its on the way for Xmas present to myself) a Nikon D750 which with the rings etc is about 1 kG(Just under) which leaves me 3 kg to play with at most.
I was looking at getting a ZWO ASI120MM camera and an 80 x 400mm or simlar scope. I know bintel do a package with this for $599.
My budget is around the 1000 dollar mark (I would really like it to be alot less ...)
Does anyone have any advice about this setup or an alternative guiding setup ?
Cheers
Seymore
If you are interested I have a 80 mm f5 skywatcher st and a qhy 5l ii that are not being used,. Both are in great shape and quite new. I could be convinced to part with them if you are interested
I use a converted finderscope with the QHY5l2, the equivalent of the ASI. always have a guide star at 1 sec exposure and it guides very well with 0.91arcsec main scope sampling.
MyAstroShop is selling a very low cost camera with a related chip that might be suitable if you want to go for a very low cost solution.
From my limited experience, if I had to use a guide scope, then I would get something small and light and as rigid as possible (minimises flexure), but preferably would go an OAG path. OAG is a powerful ally....
Better if FL of guide scope is at least .33 of main scope.
I bought a second hand F5 sw 102 achro and fitted it with an SSAG - it returns very good guiding for my F9 100 ED
Seymore the ASI cameras work fine for guiding. You don't need OAG right now, start simple. The ZWO guidescope (f4.6) is cheap and works well with the ZWO ASI cameras. Try Metaguide, It's free and I like it much more than PHD and it works with ASI cameras with native model setup vua a drop down box in the setup screen. Don't make it more complicated than it needs to be.
