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Hello all,
Just a quick update on where things stand at Chateau Viking...
I had the scope and everything setup last night (yay for a break in the clouds!) and tried my hand at (1) using the PoleMaster and (2) guiding.
The PoleMaster software is quirky to use, but once you get your head around their workflow it does the job quite well. The hardest part was realising that the 'template' for stars around Octantis are NOT the actual stars that make up the 'U' shape. Once I had that sorted, getting what looked like a good PA was easy.
I need to practise it a few more times to really get the hang of it, especially getting the mount back to it's 'park' position after doing the RA rotations. I might have been a bit off, which then impacted my tracking later in the evening.
Guiding was a bit of a failure. I suspect I need to tweak the camera settings (more gain?) to pick up more stars. As it was, Ekos was reporting 'RMS has exceeded value, refinding guide stars / Autoguiding started' every 30 seconds or so.
I managed to get about 20 minutes of IC2602 (The Southern Pleiades) before the clouds rolled in. I haven't looked at them yet to see how good the tracking was - hopefully this evening.
Cheers,
V
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