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Old 16-05-2020, 10:02 AM
xelasnave's Avatar
xelasnave
Gravity does not Suck

xelasnave is offline
 
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: Tabulam
Posts: 16,946
Welcome Jeff.
Your Moon image is most decent, you have no burn out spots and even seasoned veterans still will burn out spots.

Now no one gives me credit for this approach but I promise it will get you very close to a near perfect PA.
You can use you camera and your 70/200 lens or the camera thru the scope..personally I would start with the shortest focal length and gradually increase it as you center things according to my method.
First during the day set up the camera on the mount so that what you see thru your polar scope is what you see thru your camera. If no polar scope align the camera as best you can with the polar axis...now when dark point your gear to where you think is South..without turning on your mount..in others words..NO TRACKING..at this point...take a time exposure of five minutes or more and look at the result...you will see the stars making semi circles...the center of these semi circles is your CSP...you just keep adjusting the mount until the CSP or the center of your circles is in the middle of your screen on the camera.
I did it this way for years and sometimes could run very long unguided exposures...
When you have it as good as you can get switch the mount on and take a short exposure of a star, say 15 seconds, see if it's round, then 20 seconds and keep going until you notice trailing...now if you can only get 15 seconds start taking photos at 15 seconds..and as high an ISO as possible, actually higher than you feel good at...take 200 subs or more ..the fact the mount is a little off and the high number of subs will help with noise reduction.
Read up on drift alignment so perhaps you can make small adjustments..problems East West will almost be due to balance so make sure you adjust balance until East West is the best you can get before you adjust alt or as.
Others will also bring you up to date with software but my idea is so you can get things close and have the software work.
I now use pole master but so often I have to get things close using my method to find sigma.o and interestingly one night having centered things via my method running pole master showed that I lucked in and was spot on.
The key is to accept whatever crook PA you get and take photos..if you only get 10 seconds go for it...longer exposures may be a way off but that no reason not to start capturing..and for starters try high ISO and learn how to manage noise...You won't believe this but recently I ran 25600 ISO on a wide field and sure it could be better but it was way way better than I expected at such a high ISO...and with your long fl you may just need to go against some of your ideas about ISO.
I am about getting a good result with what I have at hand right now...
Good luck just hurry up and post something.
Alex

Good luck
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