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How to improve RA Guiding

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My guiding always looks like this. My RA seems fairly stiff, so it can be difficult to balance. What, if anything can I change to improve RA guiding? It's always around .7-.8 RMS while DE is always .2-.3.

4 years 7 months ago #41931
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Replied by Andrew on topic How to improve RA Guiding

It's not that bad as is, but it could probably be improved. Check for and carefully adjust the backlash in the RA worm gear if you can.
Last edit: 4 years 7 months ago by Andrew.
4 years 7 months ago #41933

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The question also is: does it HAVE TO BE improved? If the stars in your images are round and crisp then the answer is no.


Wouter
4 years 7 months ago #41938

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Why would backlash in the Ra axis matter? The axis is always being driven in the same direction and all that guiding is doing is changing the drive rate , not the direction.
4 years 7 months ago #41941

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Replied by Spartacus on topic How to improve RA Guiding

Hi Andrew,

My guiding used to look just like yours, probably worse. What mount are you using and are you using the internal guider?
The internal guider is fairly simple and no where near as configurable as PhD2. It works well for well behaved mounts but less useful for unruly ones. :) My stars were affected by this type of guiding so I had to find an alternative. For me the change to PhD2 dramatically changed the distribution of my guiding plot so that it was more even and stars improved. If you are using an NEQ6Pro with EQMod I would recommend the Rowan belt mod as it improved my guiding out of sight. PhD2 does take a bit of setting up if the default settings do not work well but it worked well for me.

Mike
4 years 7 months ago #41948

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What mount is this? One thing that can affect guiding is if reading out the camera data takes too long, and the correction you apply is already 'too old'. In dount make sure you do subfield readout.
Apart from that, as Mike says, have a look at PHD2, especially the PPEC mode. I had very good results with that with my old GP-DX.
4 years 7 months ago #41951

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The mount is a CGX. I'm guiding with an OAG on an Edge 11. The mount hand controller is set to .85 guide rate, and I'm using that in EKOS.

I've used PHD2 before, and can try it again. I just find it's been less reliable with earlier versions of EKOS. Maybe now it's a bit more stable.
4 years 7 months ago #41952

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hi!
well, in my opinion EKOS guiding would be fine IF there would be an aggressiveness factor for RA and Dec ...
yours
wolfi
4 years 7 months ago #41955

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From what I can tell over on the Celestron forums is just to only guide in DE. I’m willing to try. Is there a setting to turn off RA guiding? I’m not in front of EKOS at the moment, or I would look in the settings.
4 years 7 months ago #41973

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Interesting. Does the mount have its own PEC? That indeed has chances to interfere with guideing.
Yes, EKOS has radio buttons that allow to guide only one axis and/or only one direction.
In PHD2 you'd have to set the min move to a really high number (I think it is limited to 20px).

4 years 7 months ago #41974
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Awesome, I can try this. I also just learned through other forums that the CGX has an issue with RA out of the box due to the gear mesh being too loose causing too much wobble like I’m seeing. Turns out there’s a built in adjuster, and I just have to take the gear cover off and adjust the RA to mesh better. I’m pretty positive now that this is the issue, as it’s widely reported, and I only need to do a search on RA and CGX to find it.
4 years 7 months ago #41975

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Replied by Andrew on topic How to improve RA Guiding

Ordinarily yes. But in poorly tuned cases it can have a noticeable amount of wiggle room, and that's no good. Especially if the balanced load is opposite the driving forces.
4 years 7 months ago #41983

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