Recently I purchased an EQ6 goto mount and although it is intended to give me some portabitity, I have mounted it on a pier to see just what its strengths and seaknesses are before venturing out into a dark sky site.
Ok, so I have spent a fair amount of time drift aligning it; I can not see SCP because of huge cypres Pine
, I can't use a compass because of close proximity of colour bond fences and pool safety fences
. I used the goto function to locate SCP for me and then drift aligned it until it is drift aligned period.
A 1 star alignment puts Sirius onto a webcam chip using an ED80.
I have tried PEC but with limited results.
I'm wondering if I have been holding the manual upside down or something; here is what I do:
Center a star using webcam and K3CCD-tools, with crosshairs active and zoom at 'full screen', I then start pec training. The star image is kept to within its own dia. , (about 1/3 at most). When complete I select Tracking speed =Siderial +PEC. But the Star image still wanders East/West by about 1 dia. or more.
I'm wondering what other EQ6 owners are doing with PEC?
Below are a couple of test images of (more or less) NGC2422. The first is 120 sec unguided, the second is a median combine of 6 unguided 120 sec + 1 240 sec unguided image, manually aligned. Of the series, 3 images looked more like a basket of eggs than a star field and were discarded.
If I could get PEC to replay as it was recorded, I could image unguided, but as is I can't. All these tests are done before the mount is parked and switched off.
Any suggestions welcome. (the images are for guiding tests not images for images sake)
cheers,
Doug