A few photos of my Eq6 and Intes M500

[g__day (Matthew)]

Houghy - can I ask where you purchased your EQ6 + skyscan and at what price please?

Do folk who use the Losmandy G-11 + Gemini GoTo (Circa $5,000) find it runs rings around a EQ6 + Skyscan (Circa $2,200)? Given both have a similar carrying capacity is the G-11 so good that for anyone its to die for, or do you have to be such a cutting edge astrophotographer the difference will only be noticed by really talented practioners?

Lastly if you add autoguiders to both mounts does that significantly nullify the advantage of the more expensive Losmandy? I mean if both have rock solid stability, smooth gears, massive carrying capability and both were being automatically guided to keep some guide star on a particular pixel does that really level the playing field?

Now I'm wondering if you are interested in medium - longer duration astrophotography do you go for the best mount + cheapest auto-guider, or the cheapest solid mount and best auto-guider? How do you determine the best equilibrium point to match a OTA with the optimal (price/performance) mount and auto-guider combination?

Many thanks for your insights guys!

[Striker (Tony)]

I have both the Losmandy G11 and EQ6 with Skyscan so I feal I can answer your question.

There is no Doubt the G11 out performs the EQ6 but so it should considering it's more then double the cost.

I can auto guide at over 2000mm focal length much easier with the G11 then I could with the Eq6...so I made my EQ6 a travel mount that I image at around 600mm....at 600mm it autoguides perfectly for me.

Autoguiding will improve your mount errors but remember their has to be an error for the autoguide to correct...if this error is too high well then it's too late...your image will turn out poorly.....less errors the better.

My answer regarding how to match the autoguide camera will take me too long but you will need to tell us what your going to be imaging and at what FL.

My ED80 works well guiding my C11.

[g__day (Matthew)]

Striker, I must admit I think your set-up looks like my ideal next step. As an interim I could put my 5" MAK on a EQ6 + Skyscan, but the dream scope I desire is basically yours in carbon fibre and maybe am SBIG CCD.

Being totally inexperienced with astro photography I'd like to image whatever I desire and not sure about focal lengths other than that of the 11" SCT.

Basically I read your reply as saying yes an autoguider will correct pointing errors, but unless your imaging hardware and software are smart enough to discard frames / pixels when the pointing is off (and most software isn't) you'll ruin your image if the pointing errors get to large!

[JohnG (John)]

An autoguider will correct for most errors providing you are using the correct software with that autoguider.

I use an ST-4 attached to a William Optics ZS-80 (f/6 - 480mm) and have no problem guiding my Tak at f/8 - 820mm or with Focal REducer f/5.98 - 610mm, see attached image.

The ST-4 will track using either CCDSoft or as a stand alone unit with sub pixel accuracy. When setup and guiding you are using a 9 pixel by 9 pixel box to guide in and on average, on a still night my guiding errors are usually no more than + or - 0.3, in laymans terms this equates to the following:
1 ST-4 tracking unit equals .2 of a pixel or 3 microns. So an ST-4 unit movement of 4 equals .8 of a pixel, well within any film resolution.

You have to make sure you do a decent calibration, once that is done, my setup will track all night on the one star.

JohnG

[g__day (Matthew)]

Very professional set-up JohnG!