Telescope Reviews: LX80 RA tracking

Three things to report on this morning… [WIND – GUIDING – PEC]

The effect of WIND on a Telescope and Mount:

Neilson: you said “I never had this much movement on my other mounts with 20mph wind gusts.” Are you serious ?? That, to me, is an amazing statement. I believe you, but I am still amazed! With my LX200 (8”), when I used to set it up in the open, anything over a couple of MPH would cause movement in the image. Of course now, my LX200 gets mounted on a pier, in a back-yard obs, and is protected from the wind.

I know that other observers in the field also were concerned with wind, and usually we had the same experiences, and often compared notes, trying to figure out if the winds were causing the distortions.

Guiding with the LX80 (Alt/Az and then Polar):

I can now confirm that guiding with Envisage (Meade interface for the DSI camera) will NOT work. It tries, but will not. At first, I was very concerned. I thought the mount was moving, where before it had been steady. So, I tested. Starting Envisage, I would watch a star field for several minutes. Things would be steady – looking good. Then I would connect to the mount. Still steady. Select the star for guiding – still looking good. When I would select “Guide Here”, then the stars in the FOV would start moving (in my case, downward), at a fairly steady rate. Unselect the “Guide Here”, and the field continued to move. Stop Envisage, and restart it, and the field would be steady again. I repeated this procedure over and over, and the results were the same.

I did more research, and have read that there is/was trouble guiding with the Meade 497. There are several posts in the ASCOM forums, and the Phd forums. Apparently, Phd created a special driver (I “think” in ASCOM 4) for the 497, and that supposedly resolved the issue. I have downloaded the current version of Phd, and in the HELP section is this comment:

“Please note, that Meade Autostar 497 mounts (LXD-55, LXD-75) require a patched ASCOM driver for best performance (available on the Stark Labs website. Without this, they will not run in a real PulseGuide mode.”

The current platform for ASCOM (the driver for Phd) is Platform 6, which I have installed. On the Phd download site, is the 497 “Patch”, but this remark:

Meade LXDx5 ASCOM 4.1 driver
For OLD ASCOM 4.1 users only (who have not upgraded to v5): Driver for Meade LXDx5 mounts that forces PulseGuide mode.

So…. Is the patch still necessary in ASCOM Platform 5, or the current Platform 6 ?
The answer is unknown today, but will I will be working on that tonight.

Phd is a “freeware” product, produced by Stark Labs. Information, and downloads, are available here: http://www.stark-labs.com/index.html

PEC and the LX80:

As of last evening, I have Pempro configured with ASCOM Platform 6, and the driver for the Meade 497. Pempro can now connect to the Mount, and the Meade DSI camera. Everything I read suggests that I should be able to “gather data” from the mount (and camera). This evening, after working with mount in Alt/AZ, and working on the “guiding” issue, I will re-configure, and try to gather some data with Pempro in Polar mode. It is going to be a long night!