What is a Celestron autoguider?
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What is a Celestron autoguider?
The NexGuide Autoguider from Celestron is a stand-alone system that eliminates the necessity of tethering it to a laptop computer for finding or tracking your celestial targets with a motorized alt-az or equatorial mount. A Aptina MT9V034C12STM CMOS sensor allows the tracking of even faint stars, and the larger 5.6×4.
What is the purpose of autoguider?
An autoguider is an automatic electronic guidance tool used in astronomy to keep a telescope pointed precisely at an object being observed. This prevents the object from drifting across the field of view during long-exposures which would create a blurred or elongated image.
How does an autoguider work in astrophotography?
The autoguider captures regular snapshots of the sky and a computer compares them to detect star drift caused by the apparent movement of stars across the night sky, issuing corrections to the mount via a cable attached to the autoguide port to keep the mount on track.
Why do you need a guidescope?
The guidescope is a small refractor or even a modified finderscope that is mounted along with the imaging telescope and camera and its job is to capture an image of a single star using its own small camera and then to analyse the movement of that star in the field of view using guiding software.
Can you use an autoguider in Alt AZ?
Will this work? Technically, yes, it will work. Many modern autoguiders can keep up with the guide rates involved. In practice, no, guiding with an alt-azimuth mount will not work.
What does an autoguider do on a telescope?
Do I need a guidescope?
If the focal length of your imaging scope is 1500mm, then you need a guide scope with a focal length of at least 150mm to give sufficient resolution for effective autoguiding. This is not a hard and fast rule, but it is helpful to understand what focal length you need.
What does a telescope autoguider do?
How can I improve my autoguiding?
Here are ten quick tips to help you get the most of your guiding setup and avoid some of the most common tracking errors.
- Polar align.
- Don’t overload your mount.
- Check your connections.
- Watch out for vibrations.
- Brightest isn’t always best.
- Don’t be afraid to defocus.
- Don’t overcompensate.
- Try guiding in just one axis.
Can you do astrophotography with an Alt-Az mount?
If you own an Alt-Az mount, you most likely think “It cannot be used for deep sky astrophotography”. But that is not correct. It is possible to take wonderful deep sky images with an Alt-Az mount if you know how to do it and pick the right objects.
