So it's been over a year of trouble with the second hand Meade LX850 mount with Starlock I purchased. Long story short I purchased a new StarLock scope and on my first night it appears to be working .... well sort of. I took many 180 sec images on the first evening most of which were $%^# massive star trails. After many hours of trial and error I finally got closer. The two I have attached are from a series of 20 exposures. The first image did not guide well and the second not too bad. This continued for the 20 X 180 sec subs one good one bad one good one bad .......... any ideas why this pattern happened. I did not do any more images as the clouds rolled in so have not been able to see if it will be the norm.
The gear used
mount : LX850
guiding : StarLock (no PEC done on this evening)
OTA : Esprit 80mm
Camera : D800 ,Using Nikon Camera control 2 software, subs 180sec with 5 sec interval, mirror up, ISO1600, full frame.
Maybe I should have a larger interval between subs. It might let the sensor cool down a bit as well. These two images are crops (about 1/6 of the total image) as Lightroom would not reduce full size subs to 200Kb
Any ideas
PS. I did not try to image any target, I just pointed to the heavens. The third image is a crop from the middle of the full frame of the 20X180 subs. Over exposed I know but I find it cool that this was in the center of my frame while trying to get the guiding working.
Pretty good for getting up and going first night there's still a little drift in the third shot, but nothing you can't work on by the sounds of things!
there's still a little drift in the third shot, but nothing you can't work on by the sounds of things!
