8 Tips to fine tune your EQ mount

[@aardvarklet]

It's worth poiting out here that levelling the tripod will not have any discernable effect on your mount's tracking performance. What it does do, is makes polar alignment easier. The only thing that matters in setting up your tripod is that it is stable and will not shift during mount slewing or normal operation.

[@plumberman19]

Came to comment this exactly. leveling matters for alt/az, not equatorial mounts. and the ease of alt/az justment in the polar alignment, of an equatorial mount, is for the same exact reason. think about it this way, is your mount axis level with earths gravity or aligned to the axis of the earth(it can only be both at the equator, hence the nomenclature: equatorial mount)

[@luboinchina3013]

Came here to say the same.

[@AlpheccaMeridiana]

It will definitely affect DEC guiding because if your tripod is level, it won't need to move much. your mount will guide mostly on the RA,

[@luboinchina3013]

One more important thing about cable management, when you run your cables from the ota down the mount, run them as close to the axis of rotation as possible without snapping. It will need less force and momentum to fight against. The cables will pull with less force, than if they would go down from the camera ending point of telescope.

[@MrWilsonsChannel]

Great tip! I'm definitely going to do this. Thanks 🙂

[@Zealor365]

Wow, clear concise explainations simple enough for a beginner to understand. Bravo!

[@scottdallon1544]

Great Content! Thanks for putting in the work and sharing.

[@dysichi]

Although I use phd2 instead of asi air and a skywatcher wave series instead of ZWO am5, I still find this video helpful in many ways. Thanks a lot and you do earn my subscription.

[@MrWilsonsChannel]

That's fantastic to hear. I'm glad you got some good stuff and thank you for your support. It was my intent and hope to make this somewhat universal for any type of eq mount. Glad to hear it worked out. How do you like your skywarcher? I almost got one of those instead of the am5, but I was already a little tapped on price so I went with the slightly cheaper option. I like how they include the cable management features in the saddle. That seems like it would help a lot with cable management.

[@markmeridian3360]

A few comments. 1) Leveling the tripod precisely won't have any effect on guiding (I noticed that others have left the same comment). When you adjust the mount to point at the celestial pole you're accounting for an unlevel tripod. You just want the tripod level enough that it doesn't get unbalanced. 2) It's better to have your scope slightly out of perfect balance. When it's perfectly balanced the scope will more easily tip forward and backward loading and unloading the gears and you'll see worse gear lash. It works better to keep the gears loaded in the same direction. 3) The shape of your guide stars does matter. You want nice symmetric stars and a sharp focus, that way the guiding SW will see the star moving away from the guide spot and discern the direction the best. You can get the best focus by switching the cameras making your guide scope the main camera then use the focus tools in your SW to optimize the focus. There's something seriously wrong with your guide scope producing such horribly ugly stars - even if only when the scope is warm. It's probably badly collimated. 4) Guiding using multiple stars will usually work better than single star guiding in most circumstances. It helps to avoid chasing the seeing - the mount won't correct unless it sees several stars moving in the same direction. 5) Taking too frequent guiding images is as bad as taking images too slow. You don't want to chase the seeing, you just want to adjust the mount to precisely match the rotation of the stars. The best way to see if you are taking images too slow or too fast (or if you have the agressiveness set wrong) is to look at the stars in your main scope's images. The FWHM of the stars is the best indicator of guiding (you can watch this measure image by image with one click on the ASIAIR). 6) Agressiveness can also be tuned by examining the roundness of the stars in your final image. It took me several nights to get perfectly round stars by doing this - even starting with the method you showed to get the agressiveness close.

[@Kelli.Hicks.5]

Hey Mr. Wilson! 🙋‍♀️ With these tips I'm ready and raring to go. LET'S DO THIS!

[@MrWilsonsChannel]

We got to get you some gear! I'm envious of those dark skies you've got 😍🔭

[@KaiHui-xm2mp]

Very useful. Thank you!

[@andreguimaraes96]

Thank you. First video I saw showing about aggressiveness and in very easy way. I appreciate it. Maybe you can make more videos about Asiair , especially guiding section. 🖖🏼

[@MrWilsonsChannel]

Will do! Thanks for the idea 🙂

[@kevinivey8422]

Very good tips, especially the aggressiveness settings. I was wondering if you would be able to address Max RA and Max DEC and calibration steps under the guiding tab. Nobody seems to make this clear at all. As a matter of fact, it seems as though everybody avoids these particular settings. Thank you.

[@MrWilsonsChannel]

My understanding, and I could be wrong about this, is this: if you set the max RA aggressiveness to 25% as I show in this video, ask yourself "25% of what?" That's what the max RA setting is you're talking about. If you set that to a hundred, and the max aggressiveness to 25%, then the most the mount will pulse is 25 (25% of 100). I'm not sure what the unit of measure is there. Pulse units? Pulse power? If my understanding is correct, it means it doesn't really matter so much what settings you use because the percentages you scale it to in the aggressiveness settings will need to change accordingly. I have to adjust my aggressiveness settings each time I use the scope to account for changes in things like equipment placement, balance, etc. if you find you need to adjust the aggressiveness all the way to 100% and you're still not getting the results you need, increasing the max RA will allow you to get to a higher pulse power. For example, if you had the max RA set at 100 and your aggressiveness set 100%, increasing the max RA to 200 and setting the aggressiveness to 50% would be equivalent. I have my settings set at the default which I believe is 200 for both?

[@christiangales1119]

Thanks you for the good tops Il will try them in m'y next session Christian

[@MrWilsonsChannel]

Let me know how it goes 🙂

[@barnaclewatcher4060]

Appreciate your making this video. I've been using my new AM3 since about the beginning of September and have been getting around .6 to .9 total RMS with both RA and Dec set at 70%. Next clear night I'm going to employ your technique of aggressiveness setting and see if I can get the RMS down a bit. Still very happy with the AM3 though. Stars consistently very round with 180 second subs!

[@MrWilsonsChannel]

I switched to the strainwave format from an eq6r-pro and have been thoroughly Happy with it. It's so much lighter and every bit as accurate as a traditional EQ mount. Let me know the results of your experiments. Since I have the am5, I'd be interested in hearing how things work out for the am3 version. Clear skies!

[@KJRitch]

I use a C8 with a Celestron OAG. I noticed the weird shapes in my guiding stars where one half are roundish and the lower half moonish. I think it was due to guide camera tilt in the OAG guide camera barrel. Two screws are meant to lock the camera in the helical focuser. I got some success by using a 1.25” parvocal ring around the guide camera. Slide on a parvocal ring onto the guide camera. I set the helical focuser to midpoint. Raise and lower my camera to where I get close focus. Lock the screws to maintain the camera in that position. The parvocal ring grub screws can be tightened. Release the two locking screws. Adjust the orientation of the camer if needed. Apply slight downward pressure on the parvocal ring and screw in the lock screws of the focuser. The guide camera sensor tilt should be minimaized. Fine tune the focus with the OAG helical focuser. When using you C8 on the AM5 can you get guide stars at 0.2” or do you have to increase the exposure. I don’t use an ASIAir, I use NINA with PHd2 and my SNR gets low 0.5 to 1.5 sec seems. The best for my AVX GEM mount. I’m thinking of getting g the AM5 but I’m concerned if I have to go down to 0.5sec I’m going to be able to guide especially in higher Bortle areas. What happens to the guiding with you C8 I with OAG if you set guide exposures to 1” or 1.5”? I have an ASIAir 256 but had some issues with it on my AVX hence moving to NINA. ZWO still doesn’t have an ASIAir user manual that explains setting like you just did in this video and ZWO has made a lot of changes in the last year since I purchased my ASIAir Thanks for a very informative video.

[@MrWilsonsChannel]

Thanks for this. It seemed like it was temperature related as it improved significantly once the telescope temperature matched the ambient temperature. But I certainly wouldn't rule out sensor tilt as well. I'm going to give this a try. Thanks for the suggestion 🤩

[@KJRitch]

Is the AM5 you have still guiding well? What equipment were you using for Tip 8? Thanks

[@MrWilsonsChannel]

I often use my c8 with the reducer which lowers the focal ratio to f6.7. I can guide at 0.2 seconds with the ASI 220mm and the game set up really high. You may have trouble with this under more light polluted skies. I live under bortel 5 which isn't great but certainly could be worse.

[@dalesimonds]

Thanks for the pointers. I’ve been having a hard time with tracking, new to it and trying to figure it out. I’ll try the counterweights, as my tracking on a 60 second exposure was 239.66” in ra. Thanks again for the information!👍

[@MrWilsonsChannel]

That is insane! What mount are you using?

[@dalesimonds]

@@MrWilsonsChannel I balanced the scope on the mount and added the counterweights. Made no difference. I had to bring down the correction on the ra and dec to 15%. Total tracking error is .65”.

[@MrWilsonsChannel]

.65 is waaay better than 239.66. another thing worth looking at is trying to keep the weight on the scope itself somewhat centered. For example, my tracking scope and camera was mounted way over on the right side of the telescope and I didn't have a lot of stuff mounted on the left side. This imbalance made my tracking work fine on one side of the meridian, but then things got really bad on the other side of the meridian. I moved that weight to make it more central and things improved overall.

[@dalesimonds]

@@MrWilsonsChannel good to know. Thank you!

[@kirkmiyashiro7368]

Hi Michael, thanks for the video. I have been using the AM5 for about a year. After reading different forums about using .5 or faster exposures I could never get the mount to track well. I was wondering what your calibration and corrections settings were in the guide scope section? Calibration Step, Max Dec Duration, Max RA Duration? My current setup is a 50mm guide scope with an ASI120mm-S camera. Any information would be appreciated.

[@MrWilsonsChannel]

With the 120, you may not be able to get it to go down that fast since the 120mm has a quantum efficiency of 80%. This means it's losing 20% of the light that hits it. Have you tried increasing the game of the guide scope to compensate? My understanding of the max ra and dec settings, and I could be wrong about this, is this: if you set the max RA aggressiveness to 25% as I show in this video, ask yourself "25% of what?" That's what the max RA setting is you're talking about. If you set that to a hundred, and the max aggressiveness to 25%, then the most the mount will pulse is 25 (25% of 100). I'm not sure what the unit of measure is there. Pulse units? Pulse power? If my understanding is correct, it means it doesn't really matter so much what settings you use because the percentages you scale it to in the aggressiveness settings will need to change accordingly. I have to adjust my aggressiveness settings each time I use the scope to account for changes in things like equipment placement, balance, etc. if you find you need to adjust the aggressiveness all the way to 100% and you're still not getting the results you need, increasing the max RA will allow you to get to a higher pulse power. For example, if you had the max RA set at 100 and your aggressiveness set 100%, increasing the max RA to 200 and setting the aggressiveness to 50% would be equivalent. I have my settings set at the default which I believe is 200 for both? As for the calibration setting, that's also the default which seems to work ok. To be honest, im not sure how to measure an optimal value for the calibration option. I'll need to look into that.

[@tostativerdk]

Thanks for another great and educational video :) I was wondering if there are other benefits to tripod leveling, other than easier PA?

[@chrislee8886]

My own understanding has always been that there are no other benefits apart from - as you say- the easier PA. Will be interesting to hear of any.

[@MrWilsonsChannel]

Well you guys got me thinking now. When I do these videos, I do research ahead of time and then test out the things I'm suggesting to see if they actually work. I do get better results when I level the tripod in advanced. But now you've got me questioning why exactly. I think I'll do another video to test this out. Intuitively it seems like this would have an impact on your tracking. Consider this: you have One tripod leg significantly shorter than the other such that when standing behind your rig facing north, the leg on the right tilts the entire rig at an angle compared to the horizon. When you rotate the base in the tripod left/right, it should move parallel to the horizon. But because one of the legs is shorter it will also increase or decrease the elevation off of the horizon. It seems like this wouldn't matter as long as you were able to still polar align. Now consider when you issue a go-to command and the mount moves to the specified coordinates. The RA is also going to be affected by this elevation change too. It seems like this also would not affect anything if you're plate solving. Once the mount arrives at the coordinates it thinks it should be at, it simply takes a picture realizes it's off and then corrects itself. As long as you are guiding, any errors from the improper leveling seems like they would be corrected too. But does this result in more corrections than would otherwise be necessary? I'm totally going to test this. You gave me a new video idea. Thanks! 🙂

[@tostativerdk]

@@MrWilsonsChannelgood considerations! I am looking forward to the video and will give this some more thought myself :)

[@pompeymonkey3271]

@@MrWilsonsChannel Space is, effectively, at infinity for any trigonometric corrections due to offset. As long as your RA axis is parallel to the Earths, all will be fine. :)

[@luboinchina3013]

Those out of shape stars is the coma. Standard c8 doesn't correct for coma, that is why celestron recommend to focus on the stars that are between the centre and the edge of the view. I personally got rid of c8 and got Edge 8HD instead. If you want to keep yours, Starizona makes coma correctors that actually work. All others are just field flatteners, they don't correct for coma.

[@MrWilsonsChannel]

That's great to know about the coma corrector! I've almost pulled the trigger on the edge HD several times, but it's hard to justify the cost to correct a relatively minor defect in a scope that is otherwise the same as the one I have now. I have to admit, it does bug me, but not enough to buy a new scope. If there's a cheaper correction option, then I'm all about looking into that! Thanks for the tip. The distortion you're seeing in this image does clear up once the telescope temperature normalizes. But I always have coma in the corners which is super frustrating.

[@larry5488]

Be VERY careful with green laser pointers. Use of a GLP over 1mW in public in Canada is generally prohibited anywhere within Toronto, Vancouver, or Montreal and anywhere within 10 kilometers of an airport or heliport.

[@robb7342]

Great video and good timing as I don't think anyone has put out an updated version that covers this in detail. I never thought of going down to 0.2 exposure, but I'm also running the 120mm, which I'm looking to change. I see your Cal step is 1000 with 200ms for Max Ra/Dec. Just curious as to how you came up with those numbers?

[@MrWilsonsChannel]

My understanding of the max ra and dec settings, and I could be wrong about this, is this: if you set the max RA aggressiveness to 25% as I show in this video, ask yourself "25% of what?" That's what the max RA setting is you're talking about. If you set that to a hundred, and the max aggressiveness to 25%, then the most the mount will pulse is 25 (25% of 100). I'm not sure what the unit of measure is there. Pulse units? Pulse power? If my understanding is correct, it means it doesn't really matter so much what settings you use because the percentages you scale it to in the aggressiveness settings will need to change accordingly. I have to adjust my aggressiveness settings each time I use the scope to account for changes in things like equipment placement, balance, etc. if you find you need to adjust the aggressiveness all the way to 100% and you're still not getting the results you need, increasing the max RA will allow you to get to a higher pulse power. For example, if you had the max RA set at 100 and your aggressiveness set 100%, increasing the max RA to 200 and setting the aggressiveness to 50% would be equivalent. I have my settings set at the default which I believe is 200 for both? As for the calibration setting, that's also the default which seems to work ok. To be honest, im not sure how to measure an optimal value for the calibration option. I'll need to look into that.

[@robb7342]

@@MrWilsonsChannel Thanks. PHD2 will provide you with the calibration setting based on the focal length of your guide lens and camera's resolution. Many have criticized ZWO for not doing this automatically as the values are there and its a mathematical solution. I've also read that the max Ra/Dec aggressiveness is associated with the slope of your mounts periodic error, but other sources say to simply use a value 1/2 of your guide camera exposure. 1/2 sec would be 250ms. Hence, I was curious as to how you came up with these values, which I don't believe are the default unless something changed with the latest FW update. Might be smart for me to do a reset and see what comes out - any-hoot thanks for doing this video as its more relavent and current than anything else I've come across.

[@chrislee8886]

Thanks. Have a similar set up with a similar OAG camera. I struggle with 0.5s let alone 0.2! Anyway, do you have any tips about the calibration process itself (the best place in the sky to run each calibration- manual suggests meridian and equator) and the number of pulse steps the system instigates during this process along each axis?

[@MrWilsonsChannel]

Yes, my understanding is that you should do the calibration near the celestial equator. In the ASI air there doesn't appear to be any adjustments you can make to control how many pulse steps it does during the calibration phase. It apparently just does whatever it needs to do. Mine seems to take about a minute or so to complete. So not a significant time investment, but I have definitely had significant tracking issues resolved by simply rerunning the calibration

[@chrislee8886]

You can change the number of steps by altering the calibration step value in the Asiair menu. I have read that the ideal number of such steps in the calibration cycle should be about 7 “jumps” to get to the “25 value”, but i’d like to know more about why this is and how to tune it for any specific set up. I am told PHD will analyse this value but i don’t have a separate loop via a laptop to check this.

[@mikehardy8247]

How do you know your third party level is accurate? I've bouht two which aren't.

[@Bortle10]

It amazes me how they can't get, something as simple as a bubble level, to work on a 2k mount...