Posts Made By: Donald Siwek

Yes this is great stuff! No shame in being 50+! It only means a bigger cake!

I am an anatomist and neurophysiologist and one very important observation regarding thinking and memory in adults is that EXPERIENCE AND CHALLENGE ARE SELF-PRESERVING. If you gorm out in front of the TV you are accelerating your descent into nothingness. SO a new and challenging (menatally, physically and spiritually!) avocation is literally "just what the doctor ordered"!

Thank you all for the excellent support and suggestions. Now about those clouds...

HOLY COW!! That's beautiful!

AAAAHHHHHHH!!!! AArrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgggggghhhh

It's offline! (as of Sat 4:30) EST

Beauty!

Camera? Filters?

BTW:
C8, and ST7 w/ Optec .33 field reducer
10 sec exposure for alignment purposes.

You are too kind. I am certain I can do better with favorable skies!

I have this scope and have autoguided with success (occasionally!) with a Starlight Express M5C and more recently with an SBIG ST7.

The key thing here is that the guiding inputs require relays to actuate the drive motors. The Starlight uses the S.T.A.R. 2000. It's an external relay box with LED's that show which direction is being activated (nice feature). The SBIG camera has relays IN the camera and so I just plug straight in from the camera to the HCU input on the C8.

I'm wrestling with this now because, the RA response is half as slow as the DEC, and I can only get 1 speed out of it. So the control of the motors is ONLY for guideing and subtle position adjustments, it will NOT make it a GOTO scope.

A BIG piece of successful autoguiding is balancing the scope. My set up does get there, but only with the additional weight of a dew shield! Nevertheless, I have done it, but my success is eratic, which I chalk up to my lack of experience (<2 yrs>. I think I'd like to examine my drives and see if there is anyway I can maintain /improve/tweak them.

If anyone else reading this can help with suggestions, I'd love to see them.