Quote:
Originally Posted by Kal
Long term I can see autoguiding will still be the cheaper, adequate for 99% of people, and more common solution used, but I can also see the demand for this technology from some specialist applications.
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Andrew et al,
I am in the 1% tail you posit because of the following:
1/ I want portability and quick setup/pulldown time.
2/ I am a "serious" visual observer, not a "serious" imager. A matter of personal preference. Thank goodness many others are different otherwise I wouldn't get to see their wonderful images.
3/ I like to push/go-to my Stellacam3 to objects and then have the image come up straight away on the monitor without fussing about. The portable mount combo gives me bang on pointing and polar alignment good enough for 1-2min exposures, with the TDM in the background I should be able to approach 10min, which I think is pretty cool.
4/ I like to set my truss dob up at the same time as the SC3 on either the M809 or ED80 (usually the big one tho...) and have both pointing at the same object. Fun at star parties but a bit of a work load, autoguiding is just out of the question unless there's help....
When I finally decided that the MTS-3SDI PE correction was not going to work well enough for me I contemplated upgrading my mount to a G11 or even a Mach1. Fortunately sanity kicked in
and I went looking at what I could do to implement autoguiding. After much thought I decided the xtra weight was going to kill my GPD (the M809 is about the limit visually and is okay with the SC3, probably not for a STL-11000CM
...) and the extra setup, operating and pulldown time was going to kill me. Then I came upon the TDM around fall and haven't looked back since. Fits my needs
perfectly .
Cheers
David