Quote:
Originally Posted by Poita
Make up an alignment jig for your compass like the one here:
http://astronomy.abigbluesky.com/ind...ithout-polaris
It gets you very very close straight away.
Actually, just follow the instructions on that page exactly, it is for the Southern Hemisphere and works a treat. |
Another night and no luck on even getting close.
I believe i am doing something fundamentally wrong, so ill try laying it out.
1) Setup tripod. Get it as level as possible using a level.
2) Move north leg to magnetic south. Then move it 11 degrees east. Check true north compass and its in line.
3) Attach the assembly, bring out the weight holding bar. Use a protractor and plumb line to get it as close to my altitude as possible (27.2ish degrees).
4) Attach weights, scopes etc and get it all weighted correctly.
5) More stuff i do here, not related.
6) Start the HEQ5, put in my latitude and longitude information, time, date etc. Dont do a star align.
7) Start up PHD, guide the scope. Stop guiding and turn off Dec guiding. Tonight i use Jupiter and Sirius for drift aligning, Jupiter being low in the west and Sirius being almost straight up.
Started with Jupiter. Started guiding and watched which way it went. Even though the graph is useless i can still see which way the star is moving.
Adjusted altitude screw but Jupiter just keeps going down SW (as looking through the scope) no matter what changes i make to the altitude (yes i do need to move the scope after changing the altitude screw to get it back into view so it is
moving). I also tried the screws for azimuth but was not having any luck.
Ok, lets try Sirius.
Found Sirius and tried to calibrate PHD so it can start guiding. Calibration failed, every time. Wasn't enough movement in DEC so it turns it off. Ok thats fine, it was going to be turned off anyway.
Again start drifting and again, no matter what i turn it does nothing.
I tried to use Alignmaster with EQMOD but thats yet another problem.
I have a shoestring EQ direct cable (from Bintel) but EQMOD fails to detect the mount. I was under the belief that the cable is all i would need to connect the mount to the laptop, but that will require further investigation (only got the cable yesterday).
Two hours later i get fed up and put the altitude back to what it should be and decide to move on to star alignment. Following instructions i did a two star alignment. First star: Acrux. Mount was off by a fair bit so i manually (with my hands) moved it so Acrux was centered in the scope. I then pressed OK to mark the location and then went to Sirius. Again it was off. This time i used the controls to move the mount and centre it. HEQ5 accepted it.
So i thought id start with something easy: M42. Told the mount to go.
Wow, it wasn't even near the right quadrant of the sky.
Reset the mount, parked it, and did the same stars again. Again i said goto M42. Away it goes - this time looking much closer, but still way off. It almost seems like the dec movement is reversed, as if it is doing -20degrees instead of +20degrees. If it had gone +20 it would have been very close. Anyone, something else to work on once i can confirm the mount is aligned.
Not wanting to lose the rest of the night i manually aligned to M42 and thought i would try guiding.
Yep, you guessed it - more problems! Maybe this is a result of polar alignment being out, but it doesn't appear to me to be so.
PHD setup and going. Start viewing the sky, select a not-too bright star and tell it to calibrate. It calibrates without too much hassle, no complaints there.
As soon as it is done calibrating it starts guiding. Only... it doesn't.
It says it is guiding but i see the star moving away... away... PHD complains the star has gone out of guiding range.
Once it starts guiding, its as if PHD isn't issuing commands to the mount to move, so it looses track. But it is issuing commands as it was able to calibrate itself easy. Turn on the history graph and the RA/Dec go out of bounds on the second image.
Included a SS of this:
http://core-au.net/astro/tracking.jpg
(star it should be tracking is moving to the SW in the image).
I could of sworn that guiding was working earlier in the night, but then again i wasn't paying it much attention back then.
Either way, i don't know why it was not tracking, but it can probably be solved once i get EQMOD working and use it for Scope rather than the autoguider port on the HEQ5.
On a good note: was able to get some terrible shots of M42 and the moon with the DSLR, so at least that is working ok.
If the weather holds ill head back out tomorrow night to try a few other things i have thought of, but failing that... Might be time to sign up to a local club and request some help
Cheers all.