First light with Sac10

I'm not sure how the SAC10 software works in terms of capture. But its probably best to capture the image in all its glory and then discard colour at the processing stage. That way, you can go back and reprocess the image for colour if the fancy takes you -as you are doing!

What I find is that over the months/years you image various objects at various times. You can always add new data to an image you took months/years ago so its always handy to keep the original data.

In fact, one thing you should consider is a startegy for storing data and backing it up. I save my originals into a directory structure based on year and date. I *copy* them into a new folder and that's what I do my processing on. I never touch the originals. I know it doubles up on data strorage but I can sleep at night knowing I won't be losing any data (unless both my PC and external drive fry at the same time...).

When you start imaging seriously (autumn is on the way) you'll be surprised at how much data you'll collect. Especially with planetary data. I've gathered over 3 gigs of data in a month in the past. But I'd average around the 1 gig per month depending on conditions.

Cheers

Dave

Found an excellent program at wcs.ruthner.at/index-en.htm that should make drift alignment much easier. If that doesn't work out I'll try guidedog with the NexImage and gpusb. The great thing about the setup is being able to visually observer on the SCT while the refractor is imaging (as long as I don't touch the scope!).

Trevor, contgrats on getting the SAC 10. By all accounts it is a fantastic imager.

Thats a nice find on the polar alignment software.

No matter how well you polar align you will need to guide your shots for anything more than a minute maybe two at a push, the ASGT is a capable mount but its no AP1200! Of course once you have guiding licked the universe is your oyster. I look forward to seeing your results.

Ah, I see. Thanks Dave.

I'll try the drift align tonight along and use Guidedog. Didn't work the last time because I didn't update the backlash settings :oops:

Trev

Trevor,

Just a couple of tips when using guidedog with the asgt.

You must get the webcam well aligned with the Ra/DEC Axis. This is easy to do. Just like drift aligning, rotate the guiding camera until the star moves perfectly straight up and down when you press the north/south buttons on the mount. Dont worry if they appear to go in opposite directions as you can use the 'Reverse N/S' checkboxes to correct this.

Make sure to configure the declination backlash correction in GUIDEDOG. I use a value of 800ms for this you could use that as a base and see how that goes.

Dont forget to enter the focal length of your guidescope or you will get inaccurate readout of the RAand DEC errors in arcseconds. Remember the arcseconds/pixel thing just ain to keep the errors inside that dont get bent out of shape trying to keep the errors inside a half arcsecond if your setup only images 2 arcseconds/pixel.

I found the ASGt and guidedog to work very well together. Particularly with the shoestring astronomy relayt box. I think tyou are dead right to get the USB-GP interface. This is by far the best solution.

Get that all working and with all that kit you have, you will be taking top class images in no time.

Well thanks to all of your advice I think I've got the drift alignment cracked. It sounded way to complicated when I read up on it but was quite simple in practice. Here's a fantastic tutorial with a pretty cool simulator that you can practice on from your PC. There's also an interesting article of the why and how of drift alignment on that site.

Tutorial www.petesastrophotography.com/index.html...al/introduction.html

Simulator
www.petesastrophotography.com/tutorial/guidingsim.html

Didn't get any shots, unfortunately as it clouded over just as I was ready :roll: , but I did get to see that drift on my alignment star was pretty negligible.

Cheers,

Trev

Trevor,

Thanks for sharing those links. I dont think I've ever seen drift alignment explained so well and so clearly. Definitely one for the favourites list. The simulator is excellent. I had great fun yesterday practicing!!!