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I have my Skywatcher AZ-EQ6GT mount now a little over a year. No night I manage to follow an object well. Sometimes after a few minutes or sometimes after an hour, the mount jumps back and forth. My setup is an AZ EQ6 GT with GSO RC-10, controlled via USB cable Hitech. Everything is controlled via EQMod (latest version). The mount itself is perfectly polar aligned. I've tried various USB cables (HiTech, Pierre Astro and even a Chinese cable) The tracking camera is a ZWOptical 120MC. The tracking telescope is a ED-80 (480 mm). Guiding software is Meta Guide or PHD Guiding. To find objects, I use Stellarium which guides the mount by EQMod and Meta Guide. This works but after a few minutes my mount jumps again back and forth. After more than a year misery I bought me last week the Lacerta MGEN II and controlled the mount via the supplied ST4 cable. Searching for objects and slewing to them is still made through Stellarium and EQ Mod. After a few minutes guiding the montage starts again to get cures. In desperation I removed all USB cables with only a connected Synscan. The guiding works fine then, even after one and a half hours guiding. Some examples: NGC 7023 through EQMod and Lacerta, guided for one and a half hours with EQMod. http://geryl.be/astro/irisnevel.mp4 Capella guided with SynScan only for one and a half hours. http://geryl.be/astro/capella.mp4 PS: The picture quality is not good because there was some wind and veil clouds. Anyone whith an idea what I am doing wrong?  |
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Hi Siegfried; From looking at the mp4 it looks like you have DEC backlash. First can you verify that the jump is in DEC? If it is, then you can try to adjust the gear train to remove/reduce the backlash. If like most of our mounts the backlash can not be completely removed you can reduce the chance of the jump by either balancing the DEC to be a bit heavy to the south or intentionally misaligning he polar alignment to create a DEC drift that will help keep the DEC gears meshed in the same direction. |
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Thanks for this tip!  |
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I take it the images you have supplied are through your main scope rather than through your guide scope? If that is so then you may be suffering from differential flexure caused when the main OTA moves during guiding corrections. You have to remember you are only guiding the guide scope whilst the main OTA is really just along for the ride. I would look at your mountings for both guide and imaging OTA to see if there is something loose or flexible. To be honest though, differential flexure can be a real pig to cure. To be rid of this issue (and get better guiding) then an Off Axis Guider is the way to go. My thoughts ..... hope you get it sorted. -- Mick |
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 Hi, In the mean time, this problem is solved but thanks a lot for your answer. The way I work: I use an ED-80 scope with ASI120 as guidingscope. Metaguide is used to guide the mount by EQMod. After months of frustration, I found the problem. It was actually Stellarium (and Stellariumscope) who's giving wrong (synchro?) commands to Ascom. I use Stellarium to slew to an object but once arrived, I have to close Stellarium (which I didn't). With Stellarium active, I am getting the strangest things. Sometime my scope is guiding correctly but most of the time he's not following my object as you can see on the first photo. I am not using Stellarium anymore but I am using Carte du Ciel now. I guess it must be the synchro or so which was producing those errors. See my picture of M42 (6 hours guiding) Thanks a lot for your tips! Regards from a very cloudy Belgium 8) |
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| living in cloudy belgium as well. having the same mount as you. if you ever have a question just send and ill see what i can do. i'm dutch speaking by the way |
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Jan Borms: Hartelijk dank! 8) |
