After having pulled everything apart for cleaning and then reassembling all the imaging gear up on the AP1600GTO and collimating the AG12 (using Catseye tools), then becoming familiar with the operation of the new mount, it was time for testing the collimation, tracking and guiding.
This is
a simple 7 X 5min of Luminace (no flats or darks) using the SXVRH694 through the 1120mm F3.8 Newtonian = 0.83"/pix
The seeing was quite ordinary but all looks reasonably ok..? Some minor star wonkyness is evident, mainly top left and lower right, so a slight collimation tweek may be necessary..?
The tracking is good and the guiding excellent and the dither moves and recentering are very quick, sharp and responsive.
Gotos were a little off, but objects were at least landing somewhere in the 38' X 30' chip field and mostly in the central 50% including large crossing the meridian goto's. I have only polar aligned using the polar scope and my knowledge of the location of the SCP, so a PA tweak would likely improve things.
It was great being able to park the scope and turn it off and then when turned back on, it is ready to start pointing at stuff, no alignment star required, that's cool.
All in all it feels like a more modern, stronger, faster slewing and more responsive improvement on the NJP mount.
I have not routed the cables through the mount but I really probably should, as I have to watch where they are dragging during gotos to avoid them catching on anything or running out of length, which is restricting my northern sky access somewhat at the moment.
After having given me valuable hands free phone instructions/help last Sunday night, Logan Tudor (Logieberra on IIS), came over on WEdnesday night to help me sus out how to get the big beast of a mount to work properly... but as it happened I managed to work it out before he arrived. It was nice to finally meet him though and we had a great night non the less, thanks Logan
.
Mike