In a message dated 9/9/04 4:00:52 PM, lists@my-spot.com writes:
Alan,
I went out for the first time in a couple of months and spent 2 hours trying
to get my ST-4 to guide. I was having a hard time finding a guide star even
at 5sec b=3 and faint mode. I was able to get the scope to calibrate
(barely) but guiding was nothing but a bunch of AE's - Jumping from +E's
to -E's between exposures. I rarely saw more then A2's in the past. I
rebalanced the mount (weighted to the east) and reseated all the plugs and
STILL had issues. A couple of nights later I bought a serial to USB adapter
and used ImCap to actually get a look at what the ST-4 was seeing (Can't get
ccdtrack to work with XP and don't have $300 for CCDSoft just to focus my
ST-4 - but that's another issue). To my amazement, what I thought was good
focus (via the LED display) turned out to be a doughnut 1/5 the size of the
chip! It seems that as I made focus adjustments to the ST-4 the numbers were
"fooling" me into thinking I was in good focus If I had adjusted the focus
further, I would have caught it. The bottom line was I was having problems
much like you are describing and pulling my hair out. Sooo....
How are you focusing your ST-4?
Frank
Frank:
You need to tell us how you are using the ST-4; ie. what instrument, off axis guiding or guidescope?
Kent Kirkley
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