Quote:
Originally Posted by raymo
Why on earth are you autoguiding Malcolm? You need to get all the basics nailed first. Accurate focus, accurate polar aligning, using your stacking
software to it's best advantage, basic image processing, etc:
When you are getting good unguided results, then it's time to move
on to guiding.
raymo
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It is a reasonable question. Short answer is because I had the gear so was curious to see how it worked. But I have been working through a planned process of evaluating my gear. I have done quite a few shots with the scope and mount straight out of the box. The stars were horrible but I wasn't sure if was lack of guiding or collimation that was causing them to be extended. The "tails" on the stars all pointed the same way so I thought is maybe either or a combo of both, so I have tweaked the collimation, done some shots, then added in guiding and will now do a bit of a comparison to determine what I an find out.
The lack of sharp focus is almost certainly related to the collimation issue. Visually on axis stars hen I had first light were horrible, could not get them to a focus and there were wild diffraction patterns if focus went either side of best focus by even a tiny amount. That has settled down a bit and I am seeing rounder stars in the images. Guiding has also improved them, but there is some work to do yet.
I think I will have to have a go at a Tak collimation scope, unless someone has one they could lend me for a few days!!
Cheers
Malcolm
