Perhaps I should have placed this in the begginers imaging section but this is my first go at guiding with an off axis guiders on the Horsehead. I honestly dont know how you deep sky guys can do it! I think my eyesight went blurry after 3 mins let alone the 10 mins I spent trying to guide an elongated blog humped over the top of my Newtonian for 10 very long minutes which felt like an eternity. Planetary stuff is way easier!
Anyhow, lots to learn yet, you can see why I desperately need an auto guider, just very happy to get some nice detail and nice colour in what I consider was a short exposure.
OAG on a newt Not too shabby at all John. I'm surprise you managed to get it to come to focus. I know Scott (tornado33) has a custom made one for his setup, have you gone the same way John?
Hi Paul,
my scope is on a truss tube with multiple focal points and a low profile focuser, so focus is not a problem, but OAG guiding on blobs is!!!
Looks like I'll upgrade to a Skinyx for planetary stuff and try and use this as an autoguider going forward. Otherwise will wait until the new SBIG stand alone auto guider comes out and try that.
I agree. I had no end of problems trying to find one with the standard 840 ToUcam. Depending on where I was pointing and the density of stars I found even a camera that could go for a full second at times had trouble getting a decent guide star. Needless to say I cut my losses and took the easy way out with a guidescope. Now though I'm just waiting for the clouds to clear to use the ST 7 with it's own built in guidechip. No more flexure, no more adjusting guiderings. Sweet as.
Great to see another OAG Newtonian user. This is mine http://www.users.on.net/~josiah/focuser/IMG_9933.jpg
the OAG/Focuser unit was made by http://www.aeroquest-machining.com/page9.html
Yes I get elongated stars, but the trick is to try and locate one where the elongation is at right angles to the RA direction. That way it is easier to detect drive errors as the elongated star moves off the reticle, and correct it. I have tried a modded webcam, but it isnt sensitive enough. One needs a monochrome webcam with a nice high Quantum effeciency. The DMK that Mike uses would be the go. I cant autoguide as my 20+ year old mount has no such provision, but have toyed with the idia of using a sensitive web camera to put the guidestar on a monitor running Guide Dog software that works on the "centroid" of the elongated guidestars, allowing me to just heep the indicator it puts on the star stationary.
Scott
If you are going to try that Scott I'd suggest using K3. With the Drift Explorer you are able to set up the graph scale so that you can manually guide off the Drift Explorer graph at pixel accuracies. You may want to consider this as well John. While you may not be able to accurately autoguide with a star you may be able to do it visually with Drift Explorer.
I honestly dont know how you deep sky guys can do it! I think my eyesight went blurry after 3 mins let alone the 10 mins I spent trying to guide an elongated blog humped over the top of my Newtonian for 10 very long minutes which felt like an eternity.
Comments, advice and laughter all welcome!
John
we dont john, we cheat and use auto guiders. Still a good first try, you learn as you go
Thanks for all the comments guys, me thinks that a high speek monochrome planetary camera that can double up as an auto-guider is on the cards now, manual guiding is too much hard work!
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Not too shabby at all John. 
It took me one night of trying to OAG with my SCT when I decided there had to be an easier way 
we cheat and use auto guiders. Still a good first try, you learn as you go
