I've got a conundrum here, any advice?

[Daveskywill]

Hello:
,
I've got a Meade LX200GPS 10" F10 scope and recently had trouble with

flexture of my mount (it was only mounted on a tripod and on a SuperWedge).

And achieved a pic of M51 that looks like this posted. And wondered if I

could ever get better as displayed. And my friend Terry Hancock says, to

achieve better, I've got to sell my Meade and buy a cgem mount. PS: are

German eq's really much better? Should I do this?

I mean I got at best, PhD to do a guide for a really long time with moderate

periodic error. But I hear pe of alt-az scope mounts like the Meade LX200

series is very bad. Could I tune this all out using PEMPro?

Should I really save up money for a German eq?

I thing I'll soon be able to at least afford a Celestron cgem and I've

heard that one person did a 30 min exposure on one.


Thanks.
David

[Merlin66]

What guider set-up are you using?
also, do you regularly use the x0.63 reducer?
I found, with a 12" Lx200 mounted on the HD wedge and a cut-down HD tripod I could get good guiding with an OAG/ PHD.....
Getting the OTA and mount in good balance, and pretty good polar alignment is a prerequisite.

[Daveskywill]

Hi:

Sorry my own larger pixelled CCD I mainly use is my 2 mp ST-2000XCM

which is dual sensor. However I'm up for trying something new. And

to me sounds like at F6.3 that would tame down things.

However my setup does consist of the 10" F10 Meade SCT and an F7 80mm

APO, and use those 2 using the 2000, a T2i, a Nikon D800 such cameras.

So maybe I should buy a stand-alone guider put it on my APO and take the

images with the SCT. And ps: by the way I'm updating my tripod to a concrete pier.

Wo-Hoo.

David