Good morning
A few nights ago I started having some issues with tracking / guiding on my mount. On occasion the scope would jump around slightly and PHD would drop the guide star temporarily. From what I noticed this would occur every few minutes making long exposures impossible.
The setup is an EQ6 Pro with an ED100. Guiding is done via a Orion Starshoot autoguider and PHD through a ST80. So there is nothing special here.
The mount was setup to a 5 minute drift alignment, so I am pretty sure that drift would not be the problem.
I also checked that everything was balanced but still had the same problem after adjusting slightly.
I have included a sample frame and a sample screenshot of the PHD graph while the frame was being exposed. (Please ignore the focus and colour)
The following link also shows a sample of the debug log from PHD if it's of any use. I have done some quick graphs of the data in excel and there definitely looks to be a pattern. Beyond that I don't know exactly what I'm looking at.
http://completelyserious.com/pics/mo...og_30Dec10.txt
Basically, I'd like to know what could cause this?
I am tending towards a problem with one of the gears though before opening up the mount I'd like to hear what others can suggest.
Thank you for any info you can provide.