I would love to hear from those that have highly accurate encoder mounts (a’ la 10Micro) your thoughts, approaches, and settings for guiding within Voyager. Currently, I run Voyager unguided but wish to guide, particularly for high FL system to assure added security, precision, and “honesty” to my tracking. I am specifically interested in the mounts I own, 10Micron and L mount, but other mounts of equal caliber require a similar strategy as well.
Thanks for any guidance (very punny)
I don’t use either of those mounts but do use a Paramount which can go unguided at 1200mm FL for about 5min with my current polar alignment and pro-track. I typically use 3-5 sec guide exposures when taking narrow band data. This seems to be optimum although 10sec also works well too and isn’t affected much by the seeing.
Jon
Thanks Jon. That’s helpful.
Currently, the long FL (3900) scope is inactive, but I am thinking a few months ahead . I have sure gotten used to (and spoiled by) not guiding. My goal is to grasp the tricks of how to best “refine” through guiding without disrupting the works.
I use a 10Micron. My whole setup is on a wooden deck (I know, not recommended… but it works for me and is very convenient) which limits my unguided exposures to about 300s at 1600mm (0.5"/px). With guiding exposures of 10s, I can extend that indefinitely. I use PHD2 for guiding. I use the Voyager watchdogs, specifically star lost detection, and the guiding RMS and peak deviation ones.
Thanks tvh, l much appreciated.