Juno16 wrote: ↑Sat Sep 28, 2019 1:41 pm
Hi Bob,
Sounded like things started off really well. You will get through that error. If not try the APT forum. They have rescued me several times!
BYE kinda saved you last night.
My guiding started out fair to poor with many oscillations in both RA and DEC (very unusual). Then, it looked like my camera would strike the tripod leg before the AMF. It was close to flip time, so I went into sessioncraft and flipped with the manual method. Worked great. I wasn’t even to the meridian yet. Plate solved and centered fine and restarted guiding and imaging.
Unfortunately, the Guiding was much worse. I could see rough looking stars in my subs. Ended up shutting down.
Upon inspection, I found marks on the RA gearbox cover where the RA clutch lever was striking the cover and releasing some of the clutch pressure.
I also noticed that the DEC clutch lever also was striking the DEC gearbox cover and loosening it some too! I guess the clutches wear over time?
Anyway, sorry to go on so much about my issues. Dithering went well!
I hope that the rest of your night went well and hope to see your image soon!
Take care,
Jim
Looking forward to seeing your Iris!
Thanks, Jim. Yeah, it was nice to have a fall-back position ready. Sorry to hear you had such a rough go at it. Interesting discovery about the levers striking the covers and loosening a bit. Definitely bad news (or weird design). I'm not sure what the fix would be for that. In any case, it's good that dithering went so well.
I balance slightly east-heavy as a rule. I find the balance point (as well as can be done with the ASGT), then slide the bottom counterweight down the bar about 1/4". After the
meridian flip, I slide it up the bar about 1/2" to maintain the east-heavy configuration. I'm not sure if it is needed or not, but I was very happy with the guiding on both sides of the
meridian last night, particularly because the scope spent so much time pointed near at the zenith.
There are some interesting choices in the new version (1.5.369) of
StarTools. I went through one attempt at the Iris using the "linear
OSC" option, although I don't recall the exact name. It completely took away the orange mess I normally get with AutoDev but I wasn't completely happy with the end result. I need to take more time to figure out what the option that splits the data into
RGB and a synthetic Lum portion does. I am doing a second pass right now selecting the "Linear" option, and have my ugly orange back in play. Will be posting some stuff up later, after Ive had a chance to work through it all. Ivo is sure upping his game with 1.5!
Bob
Hardware: Celestron C6-N w/ Advanced GTmount, Baader MK iii CC, Orion ST-80, Canon 60D (unmodded), Nikon D5300 (modded), Orion SSAG
Software: BYE, APT, PHD2, DSS, PhotoShop CC 2020, StarTools, Cartes du Ciel, AstroTortilla