Decent cold night up here, so got the gear out... I learnt a few things.
1. DO NOT TRY a Lodestar with the Orion mini autoguider scope - firstly, you need a fair few spacers to get a focus, and when you do, the focus is really soft and NOT accurate. Result = crappy guiding.
2. The Vixen GPD2 is a SERIOUSLY UNDERESTIMATED and IGNORED mount! Prior to guiding, I used it visually for alignment etc (I installed a 2nd hand EQ5 Goto kit on it). I slewed to Peacock to use it as my focus star, when nightly Miss 4 year old bedtime duties called. I was gone for 37 minutes. When I returned, Peacock was STILL dead centre, and that was NO AUTOGUIDING - just tracking. Admittedly I had tuned the worm a little and polished things somewhat, and made sure there was negligible backlash when I installed the Synscan kit, but seriously, 37 minutes unattended and it had tracked PERFECTLY. If I tried that with the NEQ6, Peacock would be somewhere other than the EP after 37 minutes (Kunama is a witness to that one - I texted him when it happened)
3.The Synscan motors when guide correcting on the GPD2 are almost silent - probably because half the time they aren't doing anything but tracking! The whole 4 hours I was out there, not a single beep from PHD, and that was at either 2 second guiding, or as low as 0.5 sec guiding. The seeing varied a fair bit tonight, and 2 secs was best to average it out (though earlier on, 0.5 secs was better)
4. For some reason, DSS decided to reset my debayer matrix. Now got to fiddle again. Grumble grumble... after loading in 3 hours worth of data, now got to start the stack again.
5. Do not guide on a GX central core... yes, the Lodestar is so damned light sensitive that I could see GX cores with ease, and accidentally selected NGC 6744's core once
OOPS! The choice of stars with a Lodestar is nothing short of INCREDIBLE, especially after using an Orion SSAG where I was always fighting to find one in my severe light pollution.
6. You MUST do Darks with the Lodestar. I could get away with not doing them with the SSAG (because all it saw was darkness
), but NO WAY JOSE on the Lodestar. DARKS, or else
7. Crocs are NOT very warm
Even with socks. All that ventilation
8. Wolf Blass DOES keep you warm... got through my LAST 39th birthday bottle.... Bugger!