[strongmanmike (Michael)]

I have to laugh when we all think hand guiding for an hour is so difficult..well?.. it is! However, this was what we all did before autoguiding became wide spread in the early 90's. Bofore the 90's it was not uncommon to hand guide a 2 hr exposure actually. Using a trusty drive corrector and hand dec ajustment knob, I personally guided seveal 1hr and even a 90min exposure with my 8" F7 newtonian back in the good'ol days of film with my eye glued to the guide eyepiece Argggg! In fact when I got back into this hobby again in late 2002, after an almost 14 yr break, trying to become the world's strongest man (got close ), I did a couple of 45min - 1 hr manually guided exposures with the 12"LX200GPS and the (excellent) off axis Lumicon giant easy guider. Well yep, it was the turning point for me, I decided I was locked in the 80's and I had to modernise! I had to learn about sub exposures, quantum efficiency, autoguidng blah blah blah...So from then on a CCD camera was in my sights... and the rest is history as they say

Hand guiding can never be as acurate as autoguiding and with the small pixel and high resolution available in CCD imaging, sub arc sec autoguiding is essential in my opinion. Having said that, those who do still hand guide and produce even reasonably round stars (even with a relatively low resolution DSLR) deserve a bloody medal

Mike