I upgraded my iOptron SkyGuider with an iOptron iPolar and am very pleased with it. The capability to check polar alignment at any point in the session is priceless with a mobile rig which may lose polar alignment for a ton of reasons. Operation of the iPolar is quick and easy and according to phd2 drift trendline it's accurate within the subarcminute range. For a tracker without motorized declination axis good polar alignment is helpful to avoid too much drift in dec.
I tried various integration times and then settled on 360 seconds, a value I had never achieved before. I assume I could have pushed further but I find this value a good compromise between number of total frames to handle and cost in case of a lost frame.
Cygnus loop tought me how important critical focus can be. The delicate filaments suffer heavily from lack of focus as I learned the hard way. I'm still focusing manually and didn't catch focus shift due to temperature shift very well. So next step will be to add a focuser to the rig.
Kudos to
ghsastro – astrophotography for the very nice and powerful GHS PixInsight script.
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