[OzEclipse (Joe Cali)]

I just have the early model Sky Watcher Star Adventurer.

The attached image is a stack of 5 images each 4 minutes long taken with a 135mm lens. I stopped the lens down to f 5.6 because I was testing just how long I could track without guiding corrections. I just left the tracker to do its thing, no guiding corrections applied.

There is a bit of a lack of quality control. A friend of mine has one and he can only do 2 minute unguided exposures with a 70mm lens.

I don't use the declination axis and the long counterweight arm. I mount the camera directly on the optical axis as shown in the photo to minimise mechanical errors and flexure especially when I use the longer heavier lens. I suspect I might be able to get away with shorter exposures with an even longer lens, 1-2 mins with a 300mm lens but I have not tested this. I have a large precision equatorial mount and have no need to push things.

The polar finder is small but quite good and here in the southern hemisphere, there are two stars, mag 6.8 and 7.8 located just a few arc mins either side of the pole. The two stars can just be seen in the polar finder under a dark sky and make polar alignment a breeze. Use the brighter stars of the Trapezium to find the two fainter stars.

cheers

Joe