Explore Scientific ED102

[Mac]

Finally decided I should get a polar scope for the AVX. It arrived yesterday and the seeing conditions last night were perfect to test it out, albeit very cold ~18f. I didn't have a lot of time before the clouds were going to move in and I spent about 5 minutes aligning and was able to get 2 minute exposures unguided.

The 2nd success was using the Stellarmate for guiding with the Orion 50mm and ASI120MM all controlled from inside the warmth of my office.

Below is a screen capture from my Mac of the Stellarmate guide interface. Still some learning to do but 2 steps forward. I enjoyed clicking on the Pleiades on my screen, watch it slew and then to my surprise it showed up in the guide scope perfectly centered.

You can see I still have some tracking issues but I know it wasn't 100% polar aligned to start. Not sure the scope if centered yet.

[Mac]

There were a few times where there was minimal drifting.

I need to learn more about the AVX and improving the interaction with the Stellarmate guide module.

[Mac]

So I decided that the guiding module wasn't guiding after all. It painted a pretty picture on the screen but somewhere along the line it lost ( ie... user ) the settings for the guider. Looking back at the earlier post above and seeing the error that I completely overlooked when I created a new profile.

The guide pulses were being sent back VIA the CCD, not the AVX Mount. More newbie mistakes.

I was happy with some 2 minute exposures but now know it should get much better. Right?

Now if only the clouds would go away.

[Mac]

Now that I correctly setup the software guiding settings in Stellarmate, the guiding was much improved with the mount actually receiving the correction pulses.

I am not sure how good this is compared to other's results but it is far better than before. It never left the green area.

[Juno16]

Nice Steve!

Those are good values, especially for an AVX.

I see values like that sometimes, but the values move around from about 0.8” to 1.8” averaging around 1.3 - 1.5” total rms error usually heavier on the RA. Of course, it goes to heck with a dither!

Looking good!

Thanks,
Jim

[Mac]

Nice Steve!

Those are good values, especially for an AVX.

I see values like that sometimes, but the values move around from about 0.8” to 1.8” averaging around 1.3 - 1.5” total rms error usually heavier on the RA. Of course, it goes to heck with a dither!

Looking good!

Thanks,
Jim

That's good to know they are good values. It was tracking very well and I spent a total of 2 minutes on the polar align using the Celestron polar scope in the mount. It certainly is a step forward, which would have happened long ago except for these @#$@#$ skies in Ohio.

At least the forecast from 2 days ago was spot on with the clearing skies which lasted about 4 hours. Transparency was showing as Above average but Seeing was below to poor in the hours preceding.