eq mode - deviation check - ZWO User Forum

eq mode - deviation check

satch984

Hello
In my balcony east is blocked by a wall.
It is possible to choose which side of the sky seestar goes to plate solve?
If not in this version, maybe in the next.
Thanks

starnet59

I assume you are talking about EQ mode, then no, right now the S50 only looks straight up, so if you are on a balcony I do not think it will work. In Alt/Az mode the horizontal calibration works in whatever direction you point it to.

satch984

starnet59

My zenith is open. So it will work?

starnet59

Yes, I do not have a balcony and EQ mode works very well for me. I have no plans of returning to Alt/Az mode ever ;-)

jon

Before the release it was pointing 90 degrees from telescope body, the tutorials were clear on how it would be. Then they changed the software. I am looking for new curse words to empty my bucket, didn’t know enough of them… 😆

In your case it should work perfectly !

satch984

I tried, i have enough space to complete deviation check. All seems working good, but the deviation must be very little to shoot smoothly

pgoelz

FWIW, I think there actually is a way to direct those plate solves. I have observed that the initial alignment plate solves seem to look in the same general direction as the power button is facing on power up. We are told to start with the power button facing up, so the Seestar rotates and begins alignment facing up.

--but----

The first time I tried EQ mode, the power button was facing about 45 degrees east of the zenith because that was where it stopped when I screwed it to the wedge. The plate solves also started facing that approximate direction, that part of the sky was clear and the alignment completed without issue.

So my guess is that you can direct the initial plate solves to any clear part of the sky by powering on with the power button facing in the desired direction.

Paul

starnet59

pgoelz In case you all balcony dwellers have not seen Kai's YT video, there seems to be a way to steer the direction the SeeStar uses for polar alignment (i.e. straight up, zenith) by not placing it in the intial position with the LEDs facing up.

You of course still have to point the vertical axis of the S50 body towards North Pole, there is no way around that, but you should try an initial position rotation of the S50 around that axis, with the LEDs pointing toward an open sky area. During the polar alignment process the telescope will rotate 270 degrees and then open the arm, which will force it to do the polar alignment in a direction other than zenith. Definitely worth a try.

9qTXgfu8

It is not that strange since in the ASIair it is possible to achieve a polar alignment do pointing anywhere ...

altazastro

But in the end if the deviation check fails, is it still possible to go on shooting in EQ Mode? I guess you can always fine tune the polar alignment by trial and error method with some sort of pseudo-Bigourdan technique.

satch984

altazastro yes, but it will drop all the subs

altazastro

satch984 Indeed I did not try to live stack (switched off the Live option) and stacked offline with AstroPixelProcessor and it produced a quite good image. I always prefer to stack offline with third party products because 1) they are more "tolerant" than Seestar's live stacking and 2) they give more option like for instance giving more weight in the stacking to pics with rounder stars and so on.
However if the stars are reasonably round I do not see why the Live feature should drop them all: I got round stars at 30s near the celestial pole and at 10s (but 15s would have done if there had been the option) near the meridian last night with manual polar alignment.
Next time I may try the Live function once I am satisfied with alignment.

altazastro

I can now positively confirm that if you do polar alignment manually, i.e. by trial and error/ bigourdan like technique, without using the deviation check (aka Get Polar Align Deviation) and you are able to obtain round star for a given exposure time, you can activate the live stacking and do the enhancement without dropping frames. I tested it from my balcony with exposures of 20 and 30 seconds.

jon

I have been able to get polar alignement by offsetting the start position in a way that, as the Seestar turns 270 degrees counter clockwise, it will point to some area that is not my upper neighboor balcony. It will need three points around the RA axis, I guess 60 degrees total like for the horizontal calibration, so account for that also. Once you adjusted your azimuth and altitude, you are ready to go.

The tricky part is the first go to, as it is completely offset. So you need to find an object that the seestar will mistakenly point in a visible sky area.

It will go there and do a first solve, and then will try to get to the real position.

It will adjust (a lot) and potentially point a wall or whatever obstacle.

At this point you SYNCHRONIZE MANUALLY EVEN IF POINTING AN OBSTACLE, and do a new go to this time to your desired object. Now it will approach correctly the object, solve, and eventually center the object.

This is the awkward initial position, that in my situation will allow to get the polar alignement deviation not pointing at zenith (upper balcony in my case).