A lot of firmware fixes have been bug fixes. For the 135E there was a fix for DEC excursions that were happening randomly when guiding. But the firmware has been better with every update. There has been work done on a new driver for INDI, which allows you to make a simple sky model with 7 point alignment. That could improve tracking as most imagers only solve a single point. And prior to this new driver, it only allowed one sync point to be stored.

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I think most of these problems have been eliminated through firmware and driver updates. You’ll learn to religiously home the mount after boot, or connection to software so that the mount knows it’s starting point. After that it will goto pretty good. A single plate solve using the align/sync will get you centered on an object. Really most default settings, even for guiding will be pretty straight forward. You will want to use .5 second guide exposures so the mount can correct quickly for the large periodic error that it has. Anything slower than .5 seconds and it can’t correct fast enough to keep up with the error rate, and you’ll drift off target and back again over a full cycle of the strain wave gear.

PHD2 can also be used with KStars/EKOS, and a full run of the strain wave gear using guiding assistant (4 minutes 20 seconds) will give you good settings to use for the mount. Ignore any backlash recommendation. Then the only other thing worth looking into is just how good you can get polar alignment.

Last, make sure you have the latest firmware.

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I asked Michel (MW4 developer) about this some months ago, and he was not interested in supporting other mounts. It's already a lot of development work for him supporting 10M mounts specifically.

The driver is the limitation. The protocol to sync multiple points wasn't provided for INDI.

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There are now multiple programs that will quick look fits files in the Finder. Some are even free, and do FITS and XISF. They're in the Mac App Store. Still does not resolve the issue of opening them into the Fits Preview of KStars. But I wonder if the Fits Preview could be released as a standalone app on the Mac?

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 See screenshot showing error:

 



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Andrew Burwell replied to the topic 'My new telescope: Redcat 51' in the forum. 3 years ago

Some of the smaller stars are square. I could drizzle possibly to increase the pixel resolution since I've dithered a lot. But now I'm using a 2600MC pro, and I'm about to take that off and use a 294MM pro I have sitting around. I have a whole bunch of cameras that I move around between scopes. But the 294MM pro is probably the best for pixel scale now that they unlocked the smaller pixels.

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Andrew Burwell replied to the topic 'My new telescope: Redcat 51' in the forum. 3 years ago

The Redcat is a pretty awesome scope. I've been using it with an APSc sized sensor. Color correction towards the edges is not as good as the center. So your camera will be a great match for both field of view and pixel scale and probably not show much color error in the corners. Basically blue isn't as in focus towards the edges, but you can only really see it if you zoom in 1:1. Pavel has made me items early on for the Redcat (I had one of the first), he's been great to work with, and finally got his new kit after moving from a Moonlite focus motor to the EAF.

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Andrew Burwell replied to the topic 'My new telescope: Redcat 51' in the forum. 3 years ago

The Deepsky Dad focus kit for the EAF is great for this scope. Keeps things nice and compact. Now I just need to get some shorter cables.

 



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Andrew Burwell replied to the topic 'Zwo vs QHY' in the forum. 3 years ago

I have only ever used ZWO. I've owned about 6-10 of their cameras from inexpensive guide cameras up to the ASI6200. They're regularly updating drivers. They generally put out fixes very quickly. From what I've heard QHY has solid hardware, but issues writing software/drivers. I do have a pole master and the Mac software stinks. I tend to run it on a cheap PC laptop I have instead. ZWO is well supported on all systems, but I've seen a fair share of people getting hardware that's DOA, though in all cases, I've seen them get replacements. I personally have never had a bad camera from them. I'd be interested in hearing from QHY owners, as I like their cameras.

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