Quote:
Originally Posted by johnnyjetski
Lee, very interesting thread.
A few months ago I also searched for 'perfect' polar alignment with my equipment which compared with others on this site you could only describe as basic (EQ5 pier mounted)
The best I could achieve was 2 min exposures unassisted, but one thing I did experiment with to achieve the best result I could, was to put a 0-100 ohm potentiometer inline from regulated voltage suppy to motor control.
yup..not conventional but it helped. Went from 30 sec to 2 minutes.
John
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That is interesting, John. I'd heard that if your power source starts to run low you can get more tracking issues, so that does make some sense in that you need a stable source of power.
Thanks again everyone for your advice, I really appreciate it. As soon as I have the budget I'll be getting an OAG (likely) or a guide scope (less likely), and from the sounds of it, that combined with reasonable alignment should do the trick.
The alignmaster software looks very promising, so I might give that a shot too, now that I'm stuck with Windows for imaging anyway (Nebulosity gives me horrible amp glow, Artemis CCD doesn't).
I was out last night and able, for the first time, to take exposures over 30 seconds. I was able to get a perfectly tracked 2min exposure with good alignment (I've done better, but not by much) and no guiding, but the ratio of keepers would have been terrible. For the moment I'm limited by guiding regardless of alignment so that's the first thing on my list.