Is goto needed

[Shaun]

Hi all,

I am sorry for bugging the hell out of everyone these last few days, but the decisions i am trying to make are not the easiest to make when it comes to money.

My question is do i need goto to do astrophotography or will a mount with drives and a guide port (mod if needed) be fine?

From the things i have read a HEQ5 would be the bare minumum mount for my 8" to do astro stuff.

[sheeny]

I'm not sure Shaun.

Back when I had a non goto scope (20+ years ago ;)) I had an RA drive and separate drive corrector. If I was going to guide I had to do that manually, with adjustments in RA speed through the drive corrector and adjustments in Dec by the normal manual slow motion controls. There was no option to auto guide.

I think if you want to auto guide, you will probably need goto.:shrug: I hope that if there are non-goto drives that can be auto guided someone who knows will chip in...

Al.

[Shaun]

I was thinking about this http://www.store.shoestringastronomy.com/eq_mod.pdf

I think it works with none goto mounts

[peter_4059]

Shaun,

I did that mod to my original EQ6 (non-goto) handcontroller. It adds an autoguider port that works but not as wel as the real thing as the minimum guide speed is still 1x from memory. If you get the synscan goto system you can guide at 0.25x - so smaller mount movements. This shoestring mod does not provide goto functionality.

Peter

[Glenhuon]

I had the modified clock drive system on my EQ5 initially. But it was a bit iffy, upgraded to the Synscan Goto system and found it much better.

Bill