From: Milton Aupperle <milton@outcastsoft.com>

Date: September 21, 2009 4:13:29 PM MDT

To: Astro_IIDC@yahoogroups.com

Subject: Re: [Astro_IIDC] Eros Movie

Hi Terrence;

Nope, no stacking at all. That's just done with a properly Drift Polar Aligned mount and with Astro IIDC handling the guiding to keep the constant stars more or less in the same location. That is, assuming the POFM (piece of fecal matter ) HEQ5 mount RA gearing doesn't bind up or loosen up or screw up during tracking.

<RANT>

The Chinese can build cheap mounts, but not a good mount as far as I'm concerned for AstroPhotography purposes. Synta's  Q&A for the HEQ5 / HEQ6 (same for Celestron's / Orions' CG, Sirius or Atlas) mounts is really lacking and you never know when you buy one if it's any good.

For visual observing the HEQ5 is okay, but not for DSO astrophotography and I've spent a lot of time screwing around with them, especially at -40·C outside with no gloves on because of their use of tiny little allan key set screws in bloody awkward locations. It's even more fun in the dark too :)

I'm hoping that Kendrick will offer a set of better replacement main gear / worm gear (especially Steel instead of cheap aluminum or brass which deforms easily) for the HEQ5/HEQ6 mount, possibly in November. I'm really tired of tweaking the RA axis POFM matter each time I wan to use it. The design really needs an over haul because it just doesn't work when the weather changes +/- 40°C in a 8 hour time period.

</RANT>

TTYL..

Milton aupperle

On 21-Sep-09, at 3:50 PM, Terrence Redding wrote:

Milton, did you do a stack to align the frames?