Two steps forward and one step back...

[Retrograde (Pete)]

Living only around 5 kms from the Sydney CBD my opportunities for getting to dark skies are limited. Last new moon I travelled up to the Lake Macquarie region (thanks to the hospitality of IIS member zardoz123).

Having been 6 months or more since I did a drift alignment it was slow going and when I tried to decrease the altitude of the polar axis in the dark I loosened off the clamp too much causing it to drop down to horizontal not once but twice! All this meant that it was nearly midnight by the time I was ready to take some images & in my haste I forgot to set my DLSR to RAW & made some mistakes with focusing etc.
Anyway despite all that I managed to get some (limited) data as per below. Both objects are my first attempts at them through a telescope (although I've had a go with a zoom lens previously).

Both are stacks of 5 subs at 1600 ISO on a K-5 (with in-camera dark-frame reduction) through the NG ED102 (unguided) on my old Vixen SP mount. I need to get better at setting up so I can take longer exposures at lower ISO to reduce the noise etc.

Thanks for looking - comments welcome of course

[alistairsam]

Looks very nice Pete, nice round stars which is the toughest bit to get right.

how did you manage to get it horizontal? ideally, you loosen the opposite side a little then tighten the other side for each iteration, unless you loosened and the altitude was sticking and not reducing as you loosened.

when you have it dismounted, try removing both screws, and turn mount in altitude by hand a few times to see if it moves freely, looking at pics of the vixen sp mount, I can see an altitude adjustment only on one side, so not sure how it works.

anyways, have a play at drift alignment with phd ver 2.
its got a drift align wizard and lets you drift and adjust and watch trendlines.
very handy and can get you aligned in 15 minutes.

http://openphdguiding.org/
http://openphdguiding.org/man/Tools.htm#Drift_Align

same with pempro. not sure what you're using but I've spent many hours on alignment as well and wasted precious clear sky time.

Cheers
Alistair

[Retrograde (Pete)]

Thanks Alistair.

how did you manage to get it horizontal?

With blinding stupidity I think.

It has a altitude adjustment screw on one side only & a slightly curved plate on the 3rd side to stop it slipping too far which was stuck firm. When I loosened the plate it to allow it to go a bit further the central screw slipped & down she went thanks to the counterweights.

not sure what you're using

Instructions and an illuminated-reticle eyepiece.

The mount doesn't have a dec motor (or a guide port or anything) so I haven't bothered to invest in an auto-guider. I do plan to upgrade to a more modern mount down the track but currently I'm just learning what I can do with what I already have so I have a better idea of what would suit me best when the time comes to upgrade.

Cheers,
Pete