Hi!
At last I got an opportunity to test my new HEQ-6 PRO during a night
of clear sky and I can say that I am very satisfied!
Background:
As most people here i Sweden, I have had really bad weather for about
one and a half month. During the few hours of clear sky between the
clouds when I have had a possibility to adjust the polar screen, I
have - if not reach all the way - so at least close to a position of
it where I feel satisfied and Saturday night I had a chance to see
how well the mount worked.
I begun with setting the mount up with the polar finder roughly
pointing to north. Then I levelled the mount with the internal level
indicator (incorporated in the mount).
After this I rotated the polar shaft so that the small map on the
polar screen fairly well matched the position of the actual star
patterns on the sky. At this point I only had to adjust the mount
sideways to get Polaris into the small circle on the polar screen.
Now it was time to mount the telescope, which for the evening was to
be my 8" Schmidt-Newton with 60/700 mm guide telescope (with
illuminated reticle and 2x barlow lens for manual guiding).
After carried out a three star alignment (on Vega, Deneb and Castor)
the first visual object (M45) was chosen from the data base and it
turned up in the middle of the telescope field. The same for the next
tested objects M42 and M31. Now it was time for checking the tracking
of the mount.
Centered the telescope on M45 again and centered one of the stars in
the reticle of the guide scope. It looked fine so I prepared for
photography and started with one minute exposures but went soon up to
two minute exposures. OK, I had to adjust the drift once and awhile
in one of the directions but in the other it was not moving at all.
Nice!
Exposures of different objects in the sky succeeded each other and
during the whole time, the tracking was good. At the end of the night
session, I was doing 7 minute exposures and as the day had been
filled with hard physical work, the night was late, I was tired and
the tracking was so good, I had so little to do that I nearly fell
asleep during the longer exposures.
Conclusion:
After my first night with the new mount I am very satisfied! OK,
there are still some adjustment to do to the polar screen but it will
certainly don't make the performance any worse!
Pictures? Well, my aim was mainly to see how well the mount was doing
so I wasn't really focused on reaching - focus. There are some
pictures I think is pretty good but I'm not sure I have the time to
do any digital processing before Christmas.
Best Regards
Jonas
At last I got an opportunity to test my new HEQ-6 PRO during a night
of clear sky and I can say that I am very satisfied!
Background:
As most people here i Sweden, I have had really bad weather for about
one and a half month. During the few hours of clear sky between the
clouds when I have had a possibility to adjust the polar screen, I
have - if not reach all the way - so at least close to a position of
it where I feel satisfied and Saturday night I had a chance to see
how well the mount worked.
I begun with setting the mount up with the polar finder roughly
pointing to north. Then I levelled the mount with the internal level
indicator (incorporated in the mount).
After this I rotated the polar shaft so that the small map on the
polar screen fairly well matched the position of the actual star
patterns on the sky. At this point I only had to adjust the mount
sideways to get Polaris into the small circle on the polar screen.
Now it was time to mount the telescope, which for the evening was to
be my 8" Schmidt-Newton with 60/700 mm guide telescope (with
illuminated reticle and 2x barlow lens for manual guiding).
After carried out a three star alignment (on Vega, Deneb and Castor)
the first visual object (M45) was chosen from the data base and it
turned up in the middle of the telescope field. The same for the next
tested objects M42 and M31. Now it was time for checking the tracking
of the mount.
Centered the telescope on M45 again and centered one of the stars in
the reticle of the guide scope. It looked fine so I prepared for
photography and started with one minute exposures but went soon up to
two minute exposures. OK, I had to adjust the drift once and awhile
in one of the directions but in the other it was not moving at all.
Nice!
Exposures of different objects in the sky succeeded each other and
during the whole time, the tracking was good. At the end of the night
session, I was doing 7 minute exposures and as the day had been
filled with hard physical work, the night was late, I was tired and
the tracking was so good, I had so little to do that I nearly fell
asleep during the longer exposures.
Conclusion:
After my first night with the new mount I am very satisfied! OK,
there are still some adjustment to do to the polar screen but it will
certainly don't make the performance any worse!
Pictures? Well, my aim was mainly to see how well the mount was doing
so I wasn't really focused on reaching - focus. There are some
pictures I think is pretty good but I'm not sure I have the time to
do any digital processing before Christmas.
Best Regards
Jonas
