EQ mode issues S50

Mxc0i0Le

Hi,

I’m wondering if anyone has any idea why my EQ Mode gets a lot of star trails (even on 10 seconds). It’ll start off fine but then goes through a long stretch of dropped frames before correcting its self. On 20 seconds or higher it’s near a 90% fail rate.

I’m using a sky watcher wedge, tripod is level, horizon calibration is on and I’m able to get the alignment to 0.0/0.0 but I do notice on the app sometimes it jumps red briefly before going back green. Could it be this causing the issue? Tripod is weight down and it hasn’t been windy.

I’m tempted to factory reset it and try setup again to see if any improvement

Daemon42

Mxc0i0Le Are the star trails mostly vertical, and are you shooting targets high overhead? I posted a couple weeks ago about an issue I discovered where the scope sorta flops around due to gear lash on the altitude axis. This was causing a lot of vertical star trails when shooting high angle targets. I added a weight to top or bottom of the scope and they went away. Should be able to get pretty good keep rate at 10-20 seconds in EQ mode.

One other thing. After you get the polar offsets. Don't press that refresh (I forget what they call it) button again from the same screen. It'll lead you off in some random direction and you'll get trails after that. If you want to get new offsets, exit the EQ screen and come back to it.

sthscan

did you do the polar align calibration step in the advanced settings/EQ mode? in my experience, startrails says the EQ setup is not accurate enough. 20 secs are slamdunk good exposures if the EQ setup is aligned decently so if you are getting startrails at 10 secs, something is terribly wrong.

Mxc0i0Le

sthscan Yeah, i've done the polar align calibration, i'm able to get it around 0.0 & 0.0.

I've opened a support ticket as the seestar its self seems to be faulty, its often getting suck while turning or small jitters while moving.

I used the seestar_alp to set a 3 secs exposure on the AZ mode and was still dropping around 35% frames

Mxc0i0Le

The trails are often like this, sometimes even worse

Support@Seestar

Mxc0i0Le
We are paying attention. How is the situation now?

Mxc0i0Le

Support@Seestar
Still the same after trying all the fixes provided by the agent over the support ticket unfortunately.

The seestar is often getting stuck which is messing up the compass. It’s now often pointing in the wrong direction if it gets stuck while turning. It’s currently unusable in AZ and EQ mode :/

diegorodriguez

I have mixed experiences with 60 sec subs. Overall, for me, after carefully zeroing polar alignment, they tend to yield an extremely low to zero success rate. Yes, sometimes after several hours exposing, I have gathered 50 minutes, but some other times I have just had to renounce to 60 sec and fall back to 20 sec. Furthermore, the trail pattern seems to show error in both axes, and that puzzles me.

Also, I have checked the firmness of the tripod head to maintain attitude indefinitely.

Is there any test so I can see what the problem is?

P1x26Yb4

Have you measured the backlash of the mount and arm gears? My S-30 measures .44 degrees movement on the mount and .97 degrees movement in the arm. SeeStar has no measurable spec and only says "Yep, that looks normal". For me, 10 seconds in EQ mode yields just under 50% reject:accepted frames.

As a note: In March, prior to the last update, I got 4 good:1 reject, repeat for extended times @ 20 second frames. After the last update, it is futile to attempt anything greater than 10 second frames.

diegorodriguez

I think there's a way to measure tracking accuracy by comparing registered vs un-registered sequences in Siril, but not sure if that is what you say.
https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/951284-tracking-accuracy-seestar-s50-vs-other-smart-telescopes/
Anyway, I was only using 60 sec subs instead of 10 sec to save hard disc space & processing time. So I will forget about savings and only use 10 sec subs. A pity after all that ado about EQ mode & 60 secs....!

nadRq0HQ

I had similar problem when starting with EQ. Please let me write down what happend to me. Hopefully it helps here. When I started with EQ mode suddenly many, many frames were discarded. The rest of pictures showed star trails and stars egg-shaped. The problem was, that my S50 was put on the lawn in my garden, right on the earth. This is not working. When the S50 turns to follow the stars, a power of torque will come to the tripod. The tripod has to compensate this, by torque compensation. the earth ground is too soft for this, and the S50 will wobble around. The pictures will show trails.

How I fixed it?
a plate of concrete (weight 15 kg, ₃₀ lb) is placed on the lawn, and the S50 is put on it. The tripod additionally is loaded with a 3kg weight. Now I get all pictures in good quality.
Even a typical garden-table can not be used to put the S50 on it. It can not stabilize the S50.

HeidsG

A fix for me has sometimes been to slew to a couple of different objects and shoot briefly. Then go back to your chosen target. Sometimes the system needs to get itself situated and calm.