Thanks a lot everyone for the comments!!! They are all greatly appreciated.
It took me a long time to save up for this equipment; I'm very happy with it.
Some have kindly commented on some potential problems, some suggested fixes, with the main problem of a sneaky tilt somewhere has eluded me so far. May be at the camera? I'm not sure how to measure this kind of error, or to figure out where or how much it is? I have CCDInspector, but the results confuse me as they float about from image to image. My original documentation from SBIG suggested a tilt, an amount and the position was in my paperwork. Maybe I should just start there and shim it by the suggested amount? I cannot collimate it out. The error is sometimes very noticeable, and possibly enhanced by a particular camera angle.
Any way, I like working at challenges like this, it makes the hobby interesting. I'm also listening to friends to move away from the eyeball and hairy arm method for focusing (as described by p ward), to FocusMax. I can already see focusing this way is a better approach with only four V curves done. I did a comparison where I achieved my focus to FWHM 3.20 (CCDInspector) by hand, and within 179sec after with FocusMax to 2.28FWHM. I did the test twice afterwards and had similar differences. So that convinced me. I just need more V curves apparently.
I'll work at the tilt, it may just take some time to figure it out.
Cheers all,
Steve
