Budget Tracking & GoTo Options Including OnStep for Astrophotography

you're looking at getting into astral photography but I've realized there's a need now for a tracking Mount or better still a go-to tracking Mount maybe you're sticking with astronomy and just want the go-to functions whatever your case if you have a standard Mount the good news is you don't necessarily have to lay out a couple of grand on a big fancy EQ mount whether you've an EQ mount an altaz or even a dobsonian there are options out there for you and we're going to take a look into as much of this as possible I'm nugsy and this is cheap Astro [Applause] [Music] [Applause] this video isn't about all the trackers and mounts you can buy this is about upgrading amount you already own I bought mine for astronomy and then wanted to upgrade it to give it motorized tracking capability and go to so this video will go into the different kinds of mounts this strengths and weaknesses etc etc it will take a while and then our time stamps down below if you want to jump to something specific but it's worthwhile knowing these things before throwing any money at your Mount because it may be more prudent to just buy something else last year when I first bought a scope I was determined it was going to be for visual only I wanted to spend as little as possible on as much as possible and the big recommendation at the time on all the forums videos everything was just get a dub now dab is a dubsonian mount it's a simple Rocker Box goes left right up down or out as movement and that's what I was looking for but as it happened the bargain that popped up before any dub popped up on the internet was on an EQ Mount same type of reflector telescope but on an equatorial mount now this put me in good standing for my future decision to go on to astrophotography because there is a big difference between these mounts in their abilities so let's discuss that one first now first of all a good look at the dobsonian mount basically you got like a swiveling base goes left and right along the horizontal plane and then you can move the scope up and down for your declination it's the cheapest way to mount a large telescope but it has exactly the same movement as the next type of Mount which is the alt as Mount generally the preferred one if you're putting a lighter scope on it easy to use for visual astronomy just left right up down movement as before or altitude Azimuth that is out as but not so easy to um carry the payload of a large scope which is why the dobsonian exists you do need a bigger beefier tripod and mount for the bigger scopes so when it comes to mounting one of these on an EQ Mount you're gonna need a bigger class amount mine came on on eq5 which seemed at the time to be the biggest beefiest thing I could imagine it's like amazing however everywhere I looked online said you don't want to be Imaging with that because it's 10 kilo payload capacity is only for visual use when it comes to tracking for long exposure astrophotography it's not going to be stable enough with this much weight because my scope is 9 kilos and with a 10 kilo payload is pretty much stretching it they recommend you basically go with 50 60 percent of the rated payload capacity for astral photography so this Mount is fine for something that's more like about five or six kilos now this is where the trouble begins looking at how much amount costs that'll carry the payload of 10 kilos we're looking near two grand well at least 1500 and of course you know me that's something I just can't do so I took the decision to use this Mount and someday in the future get a light the scope for it that's the cheaper option than getting a big amount for the scope in the meantime I wanted to have a good crack at Imaging with this 200 mil Newtonian on that mount and as it works out it's doing okay but that's down to the choices I've made in how I've gone about converting this to a tracking go to mount butthole animal will get there in a bit first of all let's go back to these two mounts we've discussed already the out as types that includes the dobsonian the ones that go left right up and down now they are fine you can do astrophotography with these and they're certainly easier for visual astronomy but they're not ideal and here's why we're trying to follow when tracking the movement of the Stars through the sky or the apparent movement of the Stars to the sky and because the mount sort of goes right right right up right right up right right right up and so on you're gonna find that there are Little Steps in that rather than following a clean line through the sky and this is where the EQ Mount gets one up because this whole Mount is positioned in the first place so it's pointing to the celestial Pole so if lined up precisely to that pole then the movement of the other axis on this mount will actually follow that line on one axis so you don't get this stepping another thing you find with this EQ design is because the scope is offset on one side and counterbalanced on the other it doesn't feel like there's much weight for it to throw around if it's well balanced so a well polar aligned and well-balanced EQ Mount will outperform any alt as Mount another difference here when looking at following this Arc in the sky with an EQ Mount the framing will also follow that line whereas with an altaz it will remain horizontal therefore the image will shift over time it doesn't match rotation but you can actually use a bit of a workaround to overcome that alt Azimuth restriction and that is by using what's called a wedge you can get these for both dobsonians and the top of your tripod between the tripod and the mount itself and these wedges will put the amount on the equatorial plane if set up correctly and once set up correctly that eliminates these former problems with money always being a distant dream I'm sure it'd be no surprise to you that I was looking for the cheapest possible option to add track into my Mount I could only dream of the full-on sinskan pro upgrade kit and I'm pretty sure that was quite a bit more expensive last year but luckily lesser kits were available now the cheapest option for adding track into a mount is just a single right Ascension or array axis motor drive you can get these for the eq1 through EQ 5 mounts and you can also get one for Sky Watchers Asia vant and Star Quest mounts now with these they obviously only add tracking to one axis so if perfectly polar aligned and you're using one of these and it's set at the right speed and everything then it should manage to track that imaginary line through the sky that Arc well enough to get fairly long exposures but with these there is no up and down adjustment at all for that you'll need a dual axis motor kit and again these are available at least on the eq32 and eq5 mounts and there were a couple of options with that the first one the cheapest it's a fairly basic kit you got your little handset your Motors they're gear driven and that will be important and then you've got the enhanced dual axis kit now with this kit it offers faster slew rates which means like how quickly it goes from one object to another and it also has an added st4 port now for those that don't know and I'm not going to go into depth in this it enables you to add a guide camera to this system which can feed back via a laptop and computer to the handset and tell your Mount when it needs to speed up slow down move up move down whatever to keep your object in view and for a while there this kit seemed to be the one I was aiming for these kits by the way are available for other mounts you got them by Celestron bressa Etc and they're very easy to fit you know sometimes I'm glad I can't afford to just hit by it now on things because this gives me time to research and I do a lot of research before I spend on anything I've got nothing better to do I was trawling through forums and videos and all sorts looking for info on these drives and whether they would suit my needs whether I could actually drive this 200 mil Newtonian using those things and it turns out that it's a bit of a stretch I may be lucky to get 15 second exposures I'd be very lucky to get 30 seconds they don't seem to have the accuracy for astral photography they're really aimed more for visual use but people do have luck with them if you've got a lighter scope then I'm sure they would perform better I've heard of like 45 seconds Plus on these dual axis kits but I found something in my searching that put me off by your niece and that was another better cheaper option there was a post on I think cloudy nights Forum that said why don't you just make your own you could use the on-step program and build a full kit for like 65 or less and whoa I was blown away by this information I took ages to find all the information on this literally weeks and weeks of looking and not understanding what I was seeing but that's unstep for you I think the only people that would find this easy are those that have built their own 3D printers and used Arduino for projects in the past but to me it was all just double dutch luckily onstep has a big Wiki presence and there's so much information in there that you you will eventually get it so what is on step it's basically an open source project started by one man Howard Dutton he knew 3D printers he knew Arduino and when he decided he couldn't afford a go-to mount he thought he'd make his own and document it and since then it's become huge there's loads of people around the world have built his designs and improved upon and it's still being improved upon you can do this for all sorts of EQ mounts and dobsonians as well people use on step for full observatories it seems quite Limitless luckily for me with an eq5 it was a well-trodden path and there were full-on instructions online it is confusing I will not beat about the Bush on that one and I have yet to deliver on a video showing how I made mine and I will do so there I was looking to build this 65 kit and I had a list of all these parts on my Amazon Wish List they're totaled about a hundred pounds because we just can't get things as cheaply here as in America and then I started looking into just buying a kit because you can get better kits with actual printed circuit boards and I was having trouble sourcing those there's nothing over this side of the Atlantic that I could find and then I came across the email address of the dude the man that sells these things over in America Mr George Cushing and with a little bit of back and forth in emails this guy really helped me out um I discovered that that kit wasn't really good enough for my setup it's more of a visual thing and in the end it worked out I was gonna buy the max esp3 kit now this kit is like a printed circuit board you've got all the little bits and pieces resistors and Boards in there and then it's your choice of stepper motor doesn't step among the drivers and this is where I needed the better kit because I needed the torquier bigger Motors and the better drivers for those Motors to give myself a chance with this 200mm scope all in all I paid just under a hundred pounds to have that kit sent over it did not include the motors nor did it include a case but the basic kit was there it was about 40 pounds for three motors I bought three because I wanted to add a focuser at a later stage that third motor was redundant afterwards because it's just too heavy for the focuser I ended up buying a case which was supposed to be like less than ten dollars and it was about 23 pounds over here along with cables um other bits and pieces that I had to kind of re-buy because of um a couple of problems along the way all in all I ended up spending about 200 pounds on this whole thing which is still about half the price of skywatch's go to upgrade kit and it doesn't look as pretty but I believe it'll be a better solution because it has stronger Motors it has more accurate Motors these are not 0.9 degree 400 step Motors and in most of these kits you've seen so far they have half that accuracy there's only 200 steps per rotation and accuracy with a thousand mil focal length makes a big difference all these other cats are also gear driven which allows for backlash that is when the gears start stop change direction there's a little bit of play and that little bit of play over a thousand mil focal length makes a big difference to your accuracy again so this is belt driven and that is a popular modification for much of skywatch's gear is the what they call a Rowan belt mod even the big expense amounts like the eq6 benefit from this upgrade so I got the right Motors the right stepper drivers a good kit with room for a focuser and Rotator which I'll never use it has an st4 input various auxiliary outputs that I still don't understand to be honest with you it has Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity whereas I generally use USB for that straight into the laptop and after the headache of researching and actually building the thing it's worked out to be a brilliant piece of kit they've improved on it on this again with the max esp4 and I contacted this guy Mr George Cushing who sent me this kit to ask if I could use his name and details for this video and he said to be honest things are quiet and down on the on-step front for him he can't deal with the new Max esp4kit the owner designers put something legal in place and wants to sell it directly basically but for Max ESP and sort of smaller kits then yeah he'll still provide these no problem put them all together post them out to wherever in the world and the other thing that George said was that there's some pretty stiff competition now from the Chinese on this front he can't match their deals and I've looked into this since he said and they're all over eBay the Chinese are putting together these on-step kits and selling them with motors as packages for like a hundred and fifty dollars and that is pretty damn good I don't think they come with instructions I think you're still gonna need to get balls deep in the onstep wiki pages to understand what you're doing with it but the hardware is all put together for you I don't doubt that with these cheaper kits that these are 1.8 degree 200 step Motors so if you're driving something a bit heavier you'll want to upgrade those Motors but still for the headache involved with actually working out how to make it and all I think it's a good recommendation and they're in nicely printed cases and everything so seems to be a no-brainer these are available for various mounts eq32 eq5 cg4 and having been through this whole process I now think if I was to start over I would probably buy one of these kits and on top of that buy some better Motors and stepper drivers use the unstep wiki to help me change these and change the appropriate settings in the configuration files and I would have the same as I have now but in a better looking case so that's on step now remember I may have paid 200 pounds for my setup but 50 or 60 of that was rebuying things I shouldn't have had to so you can get what I have for under 150 pounds and you can buy the Chinese version for about the same it can certainly be done cheaper he got simple breadboard designs all the way up to the new Maxi sp4 and on step X I don't know what that is by the way and to use this you can use the on-step app on your phone with ascom drivers you can run it through a PC or laptop it really is a complete solution oh and if you're running it through ascom on a laptop then of course it will work with planetariums as well stellarium for instance you can tie these things together and tell stellarium to slow your telescope there's also astrophotography programs like Neenah I personally use apt astrophotography tool because it's ready to go with Canon cameras and being has come compliant it'll work with anything if you've not heard of ascom that is kind of an industry standard for Astro drivers and such now as I said earlier I will be making a video on the actual construction of my kit but for now let's just have a bit of a recap and a wrap up on what we've come across so far and let's do it by Mount so first of all the standard alt as Mount as found on normal cheap refractors and the like you can't really do much with those I'm sure you could with one step it's just not worth it if you have a go-to altar's mount now that's a different story because then you can use the wedge and put it on the equatorial plane as stated earlier and Away you go now the dobsonian mount yes there are full on-step builds for dobsonians including some massive dobsonians I mentioned you can put a dobsonian on a wedge and you can make this wedge real cheap but the thing I kind of just glanced over earlier was the equatorial platform for the dub now that's a different Kepler fish in the it already has Motors this thing basically allows you to put your dog on top of it make sure it's aligned and all and when you get your Motors going it gives you about an hour's worth of Equatorial tracking before you have to reset it repoint your scope and get yourself another hour but these things start at about 450 pounds as far as I could see and go up from there but you know it's an option for a dub most of what I've been saying today is about the equatorial amount upgrading from a standard Mount to a tracking or to a tracking go to mount and I really do think unstep is the best option whether you make it yourself or buy a pre-built but if you're using this mount for a lighter scope if you're using it for just a DSLR with lenses then by all means do go for the Dual axis Motors they take a lot of tweaking to get the speeds just right your pole of alignment needs to be A1 but they can work now what I want you to understand here is um why I've gone for what I went for and it is basically all about the size of my scope versus the size of my mount an 8-inch scope on an eq5 is not recommended similarly six inch on an eq3 it's stretching it a bit and when you buy your amount package it's likely to be that way it's at the visual payload limit of the mount so here are my considerations for this situation to give your mounts the best chance at being able to track accurately and for long exposures on your Mount without having to upgrade your Mount or downgrade your scope there are a few things that can help number one is to make sure your Mount is in Tip-Top condition now mine was 15 years old and I did what Martin Pyatt here on YouTube calls a super tune he did I think a four or five part video series on supertune in the eq5 and the eq6 similarly and it's a proper full strip down of the mount re-greasing upgrading bearings what have you it's quite a job but it's worthwhile doing if you want to get the bestie amount this can actually increase the capabilities of the amount links in the description for Mad Empire Channel and his series on that the next one was I ditched the tripod and put it on a pier now that's not something everybody can do I understand so add weights to your tripod put your tripod somewhere semi-permanent like on some sunken bricks whatever you can do basically to give it its best chance some people have filled the legs with sand to make them more stable and then lastly it was about the choice of Motors the choice of stepper both the drivers and the power supply all is combined has helped to make it possible for me basically my eq5 drives my 200 pretty damn well and you know the only reason I've not gone over 45 seconds so far is because it's summertime we don't even get dark enough Skies so if I go over that I get a bright blue image on each sub I gotta wait for winter to try that and by then I'm hoping to have some guiding going on as well but anyway I think this video has gone on long enough again thanks for your attention thanks for watching thanks for your subscriptions your likes and your comments keep them coming and I'll see you in another video pretty soon much sooner than this video came this has taken me like five days to make thanks again all I'm nugsy and this was cheap Astro

Channel: Cheapass-tro

Views: 28,146

Keywords: astronomy, astrophotography, onstep, goto, go-to, tracking, equatorial, mount, altaz, alt-az, alt/az, dob, dobson, dobsonian, telescope, astro, cheap, diy, budget

Id: -uL3sGg-WgI

Length: 25min 28sec (1528 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 12 2023