Guiding woes

[Bottletopburly]

So last night I managed to accurately PA  within 1.5 arc secs green light in sharpcap POLAR ALIGN , last outing I tried guiding 5min sub perfect stars , last night terrible though I think this may be down to balance as I can balance the scope but there’s no play the weights are at bottom of bar so can’t get it to slightly overbalance so to speak so I need a small weight on the bar  , I think there may be a lot of backlash , but I’m hoping next month as it’s the Big 50 to have the mount belt modded and serviced as I bought it second hand so no idea how old or state of grease , so hopefully that will eliminate any backlash in the gears and a small weight will sort balance out , Apt seemed to work fine the platesolving I do like very much , I did slew to M17 whilst messing about and I will be returning to that target so all in all there’s a few issues to iron out but nothing to drastic , the cctv lens on the Qhy5L-11 works a treat , though after I got it close the qhy mini guide scope solved no problem where as before wouldn’t solve on second slew , now to mark mount and pier so I know where PA is . 

Set up 

Eq6 pro

200pd- Ota  fan 

skywather autofocuser

telread qhy mini guide scope/qhy5L-11

canon 1000d / baader CC 

[+RonC]

Balance can make all the difference, I discovered that a couple of months ago. Set up as usual, PA'd and it looked like cloud on the horizon so I did an alignment without a problem and went to M51 started imaging. I use PHD 1.2 normally almost a straight line graph but that night it was all over the place!! I checked everything out and it seemed OK but I then moved the weights down the bar about 1", what a difference! PHD graph nearly straight and then it clouded over!!!

You live and learn David and tomorrow is another day!!

 

Cheers

Ron 

[Bottletopburly]

42 minutes ago, Ron Clarke said:

Balance can make all the difference, I discovered that a couple of months ago. Set up as usual, PA'd and it looked like cloud on the horizon so I did an alignment without a problem and went to M51 started imaging. I use PHD 1.2 normally almost a straight line graph but that night it was all over the place!! I checked everything out and it seemed OK but I then moved the weights down the bar about 1", what a difference! PHD graph nearly straight and then it clouded over!!!

You live and learn David and tomorrow is another day!!

 

Cheers

Ron 

All a Learning curve Ron ? nothing better than being in the garden at 2am  throwing your dummy out the pram ?

[+Graham]

David If you look at your weights one side will have a recess in it.

Put this facing down.

Put the bar end stop in and then lower the weight over it.

The recess will allow it to go over the end stop.

Drop the second weight down onto the first one.

Might be enough to give you what you require.

[Bottletopburly]

9 hours ago, Graham said:

David If you look at your weights one side will have a recess in it.

Put this facing down.

Put the bar end stop in and then lower the weight over it.

The recess will allow it to go over the end stop.

Drop the second weight down onto the first one.

Might be enough to give you what you require.

Cheers Graham I will have a looker that  , tried last night no joy will have a play today if I get a chance .

[Bottletopburly]

Two window wizard magnet s knew they’d have a use one day now just need to weigh them and get a  disc made up and shim between the two weights  

 

[Bottletopburly]

Tried again last night , definitely something going on , weight seems to cured declination error message I was getting in  phd2 though still getting an ra error message  something about  guide star basically something causing it that PhD can’t fix   , ran the guiding assistant  recommended  2-4 sec exposure , redone pa  it said excellent in sharpcap, I’m not going to worry to much hopefully the mrs is buying me a belt mod and service for my birthday, oh and my usb  hub seems to have died on me so need to double check that , definitely not cables need to check power , so hunt for a  powered usb3 hub  looking likely 

[Bottletopburly]

 

Error message basically phd2 can’t correct the large guide star movements   ?

[+Graham]

If PhD can not cope with large star movements it sounds like you have some flex in the guiding set up. 

What are you using to guide. 

 

[Bottletopburly]

3 hours ago, Graham said:

If PhD can not cope with large star movements it sounds like you have some flex in the guiding set up. 

What are you using to guide. 

 

It`s a qhyccd mini guide scope in the supplied little cradle ,small and light ,130mm FL , i will have to have another try, maybe a cable pulling ,the usb hub seems fine now have checked all power and cables i use ,maybe just a gremlin on the night .

[+Graham]

We can truly hope so.