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Hi Eskimo
I took up Astro Imaging this year and went down the Sky Watcher ED100 and HEQ5 route, from Andrews after a brief and unsuccessful daliance with a Meade AX125.
No regrets, however I had a hard time with polar alignment so went for an illuminated reticule for drift alignment which resolved 7 months of trailing stars in one evening.
In celebration I hammered brackets into my lawn around the legs to mark the spot and went off to admire pin sharp unguided 2 min subs, so for me the HEQ5 definately does the trick. I have it loaded up with the scope, an ST80 guide scope, starshoot autoguider and a half ton of Nikon D200.
Oddly though when I was packing up, I looked at the Longitude scale on the side of the mount and it was pointing at 38 degrees and I am fairly certain that sydney north shore sits around 33.47 (as per iphone compass and most web sites). If it turns out the latitude scale has been stuck on in the wrong position I am not going to be a happy bunnie.
Anyone had this issue before? or am I seriously wrong with latitude in central Sydney?
Your other comment was about PEC. This is periodic error correction, PE being caused by irregularities in the mounts worm gears. All motor driven scopes are going to have a bit of PEC but the HEQ5 and EQ6 and probably quite a few others have the functionality to compensate for this by "training" the mount. Have just got to the bit in the manual about this hence awesome knowledge. Given I now "know" how to polar align and am going guided then will want to make sure the resultant images will be as brilliant as the ones on this site and that they dont have trails caused by PE.
Road trip up North tomorrow for the holidays, astro gear in tow and hoping to get some clear skies for once...
ps, trick to new hobbies is to have accessories sneak in to the house every so often.less sticker shock for the spouse. I have a LowePro camera rugsack absolutely choca bloc with must have widgets and wotsits which apparently are crucial and are all used, including the very cheapo windows laptop purchased because none of the good astro software will run on a MAC!
Enjoy the new hobbie
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