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Old 02-04-2008, 12:14 AM
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g__day (Matthew)
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Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: Sydney
Posts: 2,901
No PEC, no guiding, no focus - and few worries!

Finally my luck may be changing! After 3 months struggling with polar alignment rather than imaging I switched the mount to unaligned polar mode, with only 2 stars calibrated yesterday - and a feeling polar alignment is getting close now. Well I am not yet sure if its the switch to polar unaligned mode - or all the polar alignment with PEMPro, but things are looking up!

I came home switched on the mount and camera and executed a slew to M42 - dead on target. Then I did a slew to Acrux and without adjusting aim at all I did some 10 minute unguided shots with PEC off and no guiding and no changes to focus for a fortnight. Here is an example of the end result.

I can see the scope needs a bit better colimination - hopefully I'll get BinTel to do that soon and swap in Bob's knobs to boot!

Next I'll drift align just a tad more - as I do see slight drift at 15 minute unguided shots - but as of now I am so pleased!

So for this shot all I have done is in Photoshop CS2 levels to darken the sky glow - no more processing than that to evaluate tracking on a 2,350 mm OTA!
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Click for full-size image (Acrux v1 600 secs unguided PS1 medium.jpg)
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