Plus I did relent and throw a lot more money at the setup, to solve a handful of issues. Although the scope came with an auto-align camera, which works great, the mount isn't that precise, so moving to a target doesn't always centre it, and most targets are not bright enough to show up on my camera live view. So I need to take a long exposure, check the target, more the scope, take another shot etc, which is fiddly. Then after time the target actually drifts off, sometimes out of frame if it's a long session. And this lack of precision limits my exposure time to 20 seconds, when I'd rather be using 2 or more minutes.
To fix all these, I bought a guiding camera, which locks onto the stars and is meant to stay locked on. It also has a full star map which allows it to centre a target precisely, visually. However although the new camera will auto-align great, and goto target precisely, I can't yet get it to guide the mount.
The camera cost me $2000, so it's a real nightmare if it won't work on my mount. I could assume it is faulty and return it, but it's just as likely it's a problem with the mount, I don't really know it's history, being second-hand. I don't know if I could persevere without precise guiding anyway. The mount still tracks if I'm not guiding, with the same limitations as it had before the new camera. I could try and make it work, just by pressing the 'goto' button every half and hour to recentre the target, but this doesn't solve the short exposure issue.
So here I am waiting for a clear night to try a few ideas. Here's the upcoming week on the 'ClearOutside' website. The pinky red is bad, orange is might be lucky, green is good. Not a single green when it's dark. Saturday might be good...
