Last night was probably the best night of seeing around here for ages - BUT I found a problem with my titan setup, there's a vibration coming from somewhere (I suspect the RA drive motor) that's blurring all my image data. I didn't see it earlier cause it's at a frequency of about 100Hz or higher, so it was only showing up in my video data as blurring of the data when capturing at 40fps (ie all my previous mars data this season).
I saw it last night when I set the framerate much higher to do some lunar imaging - and saw that the image was oscillating with an amplitude of around 5 arc seconds. This means that all my data so far from the titan has been degraded by this effect!!
I didn't see this until 4.30am this morning, too late to do anything about the 50Gb of mars data captured earlier in the evening... here's a sample image anyway (attached).
I'm still tracking it down, I've removed the titan motors and replaced them with my old G11 motors and when it gets dark I'll see if that helps.
Nice image. I had a similar problem with my EQ mount RA drive some months back. It was due to lack of lubricant in the gear box. The motor had been getting louder and louder, once I lubed the internal gears the noise and vibration went.
My setup is over 20 years old, so was needing a good lube.
Perhaps your new mount was lubed too sparsely at manufacture!
Thanks for the comments. It was very frustrating to lose a night of 9/10 seeing like that... haven't been many of them around lately.
The problem is "solved" for the moment, I found that the motors from my G11 were compatible with the titan, and switching them made the vibration go away.
More work to be done yet to diagnose the problem properly, but I'm just happy to be imaging properly!
Now, what's the chance of another night of great seeing in the next few days? Hmmm.
Does the Titan have servo motors or steppers - and what kind of motors did you take off your G11? I'd be interested in the resoluton to this problem. Thanks!
Hi Glenn, I bought Maxxon high torque motors with the titan after doing some research that seemed like the best choice in case I put a larger payload on there in the future. Also seemed like the maxxon motors had a better reputation for reliability.
I think that the maxxon motors are the same type as the originals, they are driven by the same gemini controller and are a drop-in replacement for the original servo motors so I'm pretty sure they are both servo type.
