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Old 26-04-2022, 02:33 PM
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seeker372011 (Narayan)
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Skywatcher Staradventurer 2 I performance

I purchased a StarAdventurer- the wifi version some months ago and haven’t had an opportunity to try it- on the rare clear nights we have had in Sydney have preferred to use one of my other mounts.

On a road trip, finally encountered a clear night and tried out the SA.

Must say I am a bit underwhelmed

Found it very difficult to balance in Dec; even in RA seems a bit iffy

Couldn’t get polar alignment down below 4 arc minutes on one night and 2 arc minutes on the other: the wedge is finicky and it’s easy to overshoot ( this is with SharpCap)

And tracking - when trying to image with my travel scope, the Borg 45ED -288 mm with focal reducer- was hopeless…could only get 30 seconds exposures with any consistency -unguided

( with my Astrotrac (the original Astrotrac not the 360) I used to get 3 minutes routinely with the same scope)

Haven’t tried autoguiding but just curious what people’s experience has been with this mount. I have seen some quite remarkable results with a RedCat 51 on a SA, so people are doing great work with this mount, but so far based on just a couple of nights and without autoguiding - as I said earlier it feels a bit “ meh”

Narayan
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Old 26-04-2022, 04:40 PM
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AstroViking (Steve)
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Hey there,

I have one of these, too.

Never had too much trouble getting the thing balanced, oddly enough.

Polar alignment is the hardest thing to get right. I usually end up checking alignment a few times over the course of the night, between targets. Not having goto capabilities means you really need to know your way around the sky and trying to re-centre your target after checking PA is not going to happen.

Yes, the SkyWatcher wedge is rubbish. The backlash in the altitude adjustment is insane.

I've never tried longer than 30 second subs, so can't comment on tracking. I have heard of people getting multiple-minute exposures, but at fairly short focal lengths. Anything past about 200mm is going to be difficult.

There's a guy on YouTube - Kamil Pekala - who has a number of SA videos, including how to setup auto-guiding.

In hind-sight, if I could go back to when I bought it, knowing what I know now, I would have bought a "real" mount like an EQ5 or HEQ5.

However, it's what I have, and it's what I'm going to use and make work.

Cheers,
V
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Old 26-04-2022, 04:48 PM
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seeker372011 (Narayan)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by AstroViking View Post
Hey there,

I have one of these, too.

Never had too much trouble getting the thing balanced, oddly enough.

Polar alignment is the hardest thing to get right. I usually end up checking alignment a few times over the course of the night, between targets. Not having goto capabilities means you really need to know your way around the sky and trying to re-centre your target after checking PA is not going to happen.

Yes, the SkyWatcher wedge is rubbish. The backlash in the altitude adjustment is insane.

I've never tried longer than 30 second subs, so can't comment on tracking. I have heard of people getting multiple-minute exposures, but at fairly short focal lengths. Anything past about 200mm is going to be difficult.

There's a guy on YouTube - Kamil Pekala - who has a number of SA videos, including how to setup auto-guiding.

In hind-sight, if I could go back to when I bought it, knowing what I know now, I would have bought a "real" mount like an EQ5 or HEQ5.

However, it's what I have, and it's what I'm going to use and make work.

Cheers,
V

I actually have an EQ6 and an EQ5! This was meant to be the mount I took on long road trips in the van. Sounds like my Astrotrac would be better though it has its own limitations.

As for finding things- I tried with a laser on the hot shoe mount and it sort of works with some trial and error

Better though is to point in the general direction of the target, connect the camera to a laptop, take a photo, plate solve to get RA and Dec of where the camera is pointing - I use NINA for this - and make incremental adjustments in RA and DEC to get to the target. If I am lucky can get there in a few iterations

Easier to do this with the SA than with the Astrotrac as there is no way to make micro adjustments in RA and DEC With a ball head
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Old 26-04-2022, 09:44 PM
langman78 (Ben)
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Hi Narayan
Been wanting to get a StarAdventurer for sometime now, but with the new GTi being announced it seems like a logical choice for myself personally to wait for this and maybe buy when the time is right.
I use a 1st generation iOptron Skytracker and only ever been able to achieve no more than 30 to 45 sec subs. Living in Melbourne under bortle 4/5 sky's, Octan's visibility though my finder scope just isn't practical hence probably for the delay in purchasing a StarAdventurer as my results probably wont improve dramatically if at all.
Have you looked into complementing your StarAdventurer with using a QHY Polemaster? There are brackets available here: http://https://www.bintel.com.au/pro...ar-adventurer/
Definitely worth considering if you don't mind carting out a laptop. I just hope this will work with the GTi.
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Old 27-04-2022, 06:37 AM
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seeker372011 (Narayan)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by langman78 View Post
Hi Narayan
Been wanting to get a StarAdventurer for sometime now, but with the new GTi being announced it seems like a logical choice for myself personally to wait for this and maybe buy when the time is right.
I use a 1st generation iOptron Skytracker and only ever been able to achieve no more than 30 to 45 sec subs. Living in Melbourne under bortle 4/5 sky's, Octan's visibility though my finder scope just isn't practical hence probably for the delay in purchasing a StarAdventurer as my results probably wont improve dramatically if at all.
Have you looked into complementing your StarAdventurer with using a QHY Polemaster? There are brackets available here: http://https://www.bintel.com.au/pro...ar-adventurer/
Definitely worth considering if you don't mind carting out a laptop. I just hope this will work with the GTi.
I used a Polemaster for polar aligning though I prefer SharpCap over the Polemaster software. Even with that I am not getting to better than an error of 2 - 4 arc minutes. That’s partly because the altitude adjustment is diabolical in an SA.


I haven’t even taken the polarscope out of the plastic it came in. Useless for the Southern Hemisphere
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