lukepower

Hi there, during testing I found in all of my images some strange rings appearing. Look here: The imaging train is as follows (from front to camera): Tube opening (tube is covered with a black cloth) Secondary mirror f/3 Primary mirror, f/3 Microtouch focuser, 4" ASA Cassegrain Reducer-corrector (x0,72), 4" Distance adaptor FLI Filterwheel FLI PL 16803 I don't really know, maybe it's something with the baffles, or the reducer lens. If any of you have an idea, I'm open for everything Thanks

Hi Nigel, yea, I guess I am also way too near the practical limits of the mount with my setup. I checked today (during the day) the balance, and found it as good as it can get in most positions. Let's see what happens tonight. It is funny in a way, as it seems the longer it runs the more prone it gets to these errors.

Alright, following to my problems with the balancing of the scope (which I still experience), it seems that the connection drops increase with the time the mount is powered up (that is, it got power but even with motors off). I am slowly going crazy right now Yesterday evening I had to slightly tune the motor PID parameters, which resulted in a more stable connection, but after a few hours it dropped repeatedly in some of the position I tested before - strange. Even the automatic Autoslew software unplug event, at that point, cannot clear the error. In the windows device manager, the COM port associated with the mount reports "Error 10: Could not startup device". The only solution is to close AUtoslew and power cycle the mount. I am open for ideas

Hi Ian, when I first received the mount (>2 years ago) my support experience was similar: Very slow, until I called them and everything went very fast. On my last support request the response was very quick (in the order of a few hours, actually), so maybe the mail was lost? I would try to contact them via regular mail service, or probabily they will see this thread and react

Mark, great picture! I really like this version Cheers from the Alps

Well Mark, lucky you that you have clear skies, we have (once again) snowfall between yesterday and today, we reached well over 2 meters and counting. It's a particular winter over here, but my new f/9 - f/3 system is still waiting for a real first light (damnit)

Hi Dave, that's an interesting question. The way I see it is that these mounts have been primarily built for astrophotography, where you anyway need a laptop/computer to work. Autoslew is written in .Net, so it should be quite easy to keep up with newer versions of Windows, as Philipp Keller seems to work quite alot on that piece of code. But I admit that sometimes an integrated solution would be cool, something like a Raspberry Pi integrated in the mount. I am just unsure on how well the mounts are suited for public star parties, as the sensitivity to balance issues (and people leaning against/pushing/pulling) might be a concern...

Mark, well done! Personally I would have tried to get rid of some stars Best regards

I sign Nigel's comment about the bent pier, it has dramatically improved my use of the mount. Imaging through the meridian (and I do mean all the way) on both sides, and no problems with hitting anything (except my head or a closed roll-off roof) is a great plus now

Hi Chocolate Elephant, well, my experience is: If you set up everything right (that is, you balance your setup), then basically nothing will happen, the mount will just stop. This changes if you didn't took the time to balance your scope: The mount has no gear, so any unbalance will result in a (possible) motion of the tube in any direction. Anyway, this is a problem you would also have when everything is powered off As for the attached instruments, I could only imagine that they could hit something while the mount is moving without power... If a power failure would ruin attached instruments, this would apply to all mounts, I would guess

Just an addendum to Waldemar's comment: Pinpoint LT (lite) is included in most versions of MaximDl, but that version is not scriptable - so not usable with Sequence

Hi all, I am also planning on doing some astrometry in the future - that is, once my observatory is up and running smoothly. I actually dream of a halfway automated setup, taking exposures and feeding Pinpoint to get some useful data out of it. I think that a dedicated forum section could help everybody

Hi Michael, yes, I did. Works as usual, also because the new functions (mainly All-Sky-solving) need at least a checkbox or similar in Sequence to get used By the way, on my german Windows 7 PC, all-sky solving fails because of the punctuation (Komma instead of Dot in numbers). This bug is being worked on by Bob Denny.

Hi George, thank you for this great info, I really appreciate it! I will try to get some lead shipped to me, magnets are already here (like to play with them ). Still have to find a way to get some stripes of magnetic stainless steel, let's see. Thank you!

Hi Ralph, personally I switched to USNO A2.0 because it's denser field. UCAC3 was usable only by editing the Sequence ini file (can't remember exactly what I had to set, though), there is a setting for the catalog type which is passed to Pinpoint. by the way, I uploaded the A2.0 catalog as a RAR file on my homepage (http://www.astro-dolomites.com/the-observatory/downloads/), maybe it's helpful for all those not wanting to download from the extremely slow Flagstaff Station FTP server.

Alright, after the remote session with ASA it seems clear that I have an unbalanced scope Basically it looks like the USB connection stays open, but the internal electronics somehow experience a voltage drop when the unbalance gets too much to be handled. I will have to check this on the next clear night (plenty of snow here right now), these asymmetric balance issues are not that obvious to see at first. I read here that somebody connected magnets with lead weights, has anybody an idea on how they did that? (considering that lead is practically not magnetic) Thanks

Cristina, as far as I know, Dr. Keller is working for ASA, so that sounds to me like the producer of the mount is also producing the software. By the way, Dr. Keller is quite experienced with high-end mounts (at our local public observatory, they are using an 80-cm Cassegrain on a mount with Autoslew). I would say, the software should become easier to use...

Hi Nigel, well, I invested alot of time to match the balance on most positions. Indeed, there were some off-axis issues (mainly because my tube is a combination of a cassegrain and a newton). In RA, it is straight perfect in every position. In DEC, it is a bit off (but not by much). What I cannot understand is that, even with the loss of USB communication, the DEC motors keeps running, so to me it looks to be more a communicative error than a balancing one (otherwise the motor should shut down, I would guess). Let's see, ASA support was very quick and offered me a remote session for tomorrow morning. Hopefully we can fix this

Alrght, I tried a simplistic solution and reduced the autostart test current for the DEC axis, and now it powers up right. When I increase the power to about 0.6A it drops the connection already there... I wonder if somebody at ASA could tell me if this is an anomaly they see often or not. The balance could be imprved slightly, if that's the reason, but I still cannot understand why the motors themselves can keep running without problems even if the connection to the PC drops. EDIT: Alright, the lower the speed, the longer it works. As soon as I put the speed to 3,2°/sec it lost connection on the DEC axis. I will proceed as per Nigel's checklist and see what I can do.

Hi Nigel, thanks for your input, I will try exactly as you said. In addition, I will add some ferrit cores around the USB cables, maybe they help Lukas

Hi Nigel, thank you for your idea. Well, I only have a AAG_CloudWatcher on an USB-to-COM converter (attached to the PC). On the Hub in front of the mount there is only the GPS stick, and on the mount the ASA stuff (well, the mount itself, the mirror covers), a Starlight focuser (which is straight to USB) and the CCD camera. I will try to disconnect one-by-one, but hell, this is strange. I always thought it was some spike of current causing an interference, but everything else works (including the motors, which are still running). Tonight I noticed one case where Autoslew was locked and gave up trying to connect to the mount, while the mount was happily tracking for some 15 minutes before I noticed it Thanks

Hello, I noticed today how sensitive my mount/scope combination is regarding balancing. It worked quite well for a few hours, but then there was simply no way to use it. I tried to rebalance it, and it was damn close to perfect, but still I kept loosing the connection. Please note that the tracking (or slewing) continued even without USB connection, so it wasn't a power failure, and I could guess that the balance is not the issue here. It could be a USB cable issue, even if I use right now a shielded one with an industrial USB hub in front of the scope (and all other accessories working well even during the interruption, like the CCD camera). Maybe it has something to do with the interface to the mount (which I hope is not the case, as I am not really willing to unmount everything to send in the mount ). As for the errors, sometimes i get ReadInt errors, sometimes I loose one axis, but most often Autoslew starts to do the Software USB Unplug/Plug procedure, mostly without success. Any ideas? Thanks

Hi Paulo, personally I have to agree about Pinpoint: If they sell Sequence as a software part to the mount, then Pinpoint is a must-have (unless Philipp is able to find a good alternative, maybe like astrometry.net solver, which is free). As for MaximDl, I think that should be part of the camera package and not the mount - at least that would make sense to me. Cheers

Alright, I solved the problem and wanted to document it here. First of all, there are two things which look important to me about the covers: You can adjust them with two screws on the side, so that they don't touch the baffle (one could call this "collimation"). Second, there is a screw in front of each motor which links the cover to the motor. Loosen it, and the motors will spin freely. Now here is what I did: Loosened everything Moved the covers manually, and checked that they don't touch the baffle. Once i was satisfied, I fastened the adjusting screws. Then I powered up the system and connected ACC. I told it to close the covers, which , after a while, I was told happened. Then I moved the covers in their closed position and fastened the front screw, so that they were now linked to the motors. Alright, now it works perfectly. One glitch, though, still remains: If I also power up my OK3-controllerbox, the software messes thing sup and lets the OK3 motor run instead of the covers. I am sure I have to set somehow the right ports in ACC; but don't know what to do here. Hopefully somebody from ASA can help me out

Hi Ralph, I once had a similar problem. I tried to solve the pointing exposures with different catalogs (GSC 1.1 is not enough for my narrow field of view) and it helped. It was then resolved once I figured out that I should aim for a perfect solve of every image - sometimes the residual error was big enough to get everything messed up. Maybe you could try with another catalog or other settings for Pinpoint... Good luck