Hi Fred,

Yes I could use a separate guidescope I know of one questar owner doing that. I was trying to creat the lightest weight/ most portable setup. I sort of can see more stars than just eyes up at the sky. My intent is to get 30 sec or so exposures. And targets being small galaxies and planetary nebulae given the high focal length of the scope.

Thanks,

Omer

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The telescope I’m using is a questar 3.5. I’m using an asi120mm in the eyepiece port of the telescope in finder mode it has a 101mm focal length. The imaging camera is a Sony mirror less a6600 unmodified. It’s attached using a camera coupling set at a focal length of 1422mm. The telescope is a mak Casals design and as you can tell fairly slow.

The mount is a fork mount which is permanently attached to the ota. The telescope comes with legs that can be attached to the fork mount to be equatorially configured (akin to a wedge).

AFAIK the mount is not supported by ascom of indi hence using guiding through the camera and an st4 cable to the mount.

Thanks,

Omer

Omer

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Hi Fred,

Thanks for the suggestion I'll be sure to try longer exposures and report back. I think it only detects two stars because of poor seeing and the very light polluted skies of London. Not to mention my telescope has only a 3.5 inch aperture.

Could having only 2 stars cause the high RMS error? also any suggestions on the pulse duration?

Thanks,

Omer

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I cant seem to post on this link anymore.

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Hi Dirk,

Yes the telescope has an aperture of 89mm and in finder mode (using the guider in the eyepiece port) has a FL of 101mm.

Thanks,

Omer

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Hi All,

I have been trying to get autoguiding to work with my setup.

I have an unsupported mount so I have been trying to use the guider "on camera".

Guide Camera: ASI 120MM mini
Telescope: Questar on a fork mount (equatoirally set up), capable of guiding through ST-4 from the camera although, only in RA and not in DEC.
Software: EKOS on Stellarmate- using the internal guider.

The issue:

I can usually seamlessly polar align using EKOS. however when i guide i deal with a few different issues:
1) sometimes the star keeps getting lost even before calibration is completed: I have tried lengthening exposure time (seems to help)- the remedy the software suggests is expanding the box further (already set at 64 and i have tried 128) or shortening pulses (tried that too)
2) once calibration is completed when it starts autoguiding the RMS error is quite large- sometimes reaches threshold and starts all over again. other times it loses track of the star and then starts autoguiding again. doesnt seem to hold autoguiding constantly.

I have attached a screenshot that may give more detail below. settings I currently have: 1000ms pulses while guiding, 1 second exposures and GPG RA guiding checked in options, contrary to the image below, i have mostly used 2x2 binning. Any help would be much appreciated.
Best,
Omer

Hi,

Has anyone had any issues with a Sony mirrorless- fine taking short subs (4-8 seconds) but as soon as you cross 10+ seconds on EKOS, the capture aborts? Fails to download exposure? Using StellarMate on RPi 4. Appreciate any help/ advice.

Best,

Omer

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Wolfgang, appreciate the help here! Yes, I do and after posting the question, last night I tried that combination and I think it worked. Will have to give it a few tries to make sure I know what I'm doing with some confidence.

Separately, is there a way kstars will know where I'm pointed without a manual sync?

Much appreciated, once again!

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Hello,

I am trying to experiment with kstars/ ekos on astroberry and my questar 3.5 on its native mount. I'm fairly certain the mount is not supported but I was wondering if anyone has any experience using the alignment and platesolving features in ekos with a non-goto or unconnected mount? basically trying to use it as a push-to solution...

Best,

Omer

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Hi all,

New to this forum and new to Astroberry. I flashed it onto a micro sd for use with my rpi 4b. Worked swimmingly for a day or two via a browser. All of a sudden getting an error.