First Autoguide test on homemade GEM

[kinetic (Steve)]

This is a first for me.
After a few half hearted attempts at getting my
Bartels stepper drive GEM to autoguide, tonight I made some
big steps towards serious autoguiding.

Using Phil's Orion SSAG mounted on the main 12" Newt , I used
PHD and fed commands to the generic LX200 scope drive via serial.
Guide scope was the 50mm MiniGuideScope.

The main imager was the DSI II pro mono at 1524mm FL!!!!

Here is a set of 60 sec exposures stacked. This field is very small!
Stars are round

Happy chappy

[rustigsmed (Russell)]

nice one steve - must be a satisfying result!

[Paul Haese]

Well done Steve. You are well on your way. Its always cool knowing you actually put it all together. Not like us lot that buy gear ready to go.

[kinetic (Steve)]

thanks guys,

I'm hoping in the next few nights to give the QHY8/MPCC a run on the 12"
because that will give me a bit more real estate than the
DSI to test with:

DSI II = 1.12"/pixel FOV 14'x11'
QHY8 = 1.05"/pixel FOV 53'x35'

We've got showers in the next day or so...figures

Steve

[kinetic (Steve)]

Well I did a quick set tonight, racing against time as a huge band of
cloud swept in.

This set demonstrated to me that my SSAG is working like a friggin charm!
Guide speed corrections are good enough. A little polar alignment that
shows in dec drift evident. (DEC AG was disabled, RA only for this set)

Bodes well for wide field with the ED80 / QHY8 combo, piggybacked on
the 12" OTA.
30s exposures on the QHY8.
Comments/ suggestions welcome, for this autoguide beginner!

Steve

[kinetic (Steve)]

Another set.
I'm very happy this all works so easily.
Here is a set with the QHY8 under a moon free sky.
Stars quite round, still a drift in DEC evident from the lack of
dark calibration. (the hot pixels drifting N-S after the stack)
Solved in 10 secs online using astrometry.net.

Now to choose some targets

Steve