Hi AstroItalian!
I hear Ya. It can get to be frustrating. And downright piss you off.
I struggled like a worm in a birds beak for my first year or more. Probably because I just dove in with my best guesses based on refining wish lists aimed at my goal of Astroimaging.
In those struggles, I made progress, and eventually got things working. One thing for sure is that the most minute change can affect so much in this stuff.
Think about it, I found that just the ground vibrations of me walking near my mount telegraphed into the images. I finally had to take to not moving at all, and even breathing slow and methodically so I don't cause star bloating due to vibrations.
Many have chastised me for my insistence on tripod leveling. Long have I worked around various massive machines and equipment. And seen the great pains taken to make sure they were level, and then actually grouted to the foundations with a loose grout slurry. All to insure they were as stable as possible. And that the axis of them were as straight horizontally or vertically as was possible. To remove as much human error as possible.
So it is when setting up my mount. If I take the extra time to try and get things on as true a plane to the Earth's Axis, the better the chances of my telescope running true when it turns on it's axis'. A little extra care will hopefully get better results.
So I use an electronic digital level, and a plate of cold rolled 5/16" thick steel to get my tripod to 0.0¡ã on 3 axis (the tripod legs). That way I'm assured I'm beginning from as good a platform as I humanly can, each session.
Night... after... night...? Even when my tripod is left set up, I still check it. With my GM811G, on my homemade level adjusters, it is usually still at 0.0¡ã of level.
So a good base for the rest to land upon. Because, to me, accuracy counts.
Because my primary interest is Astroimaging, I use my cameras to center my Modeling (or alignment) Stars. My final aim point is always with imposed crosshairs in my main imaging camera. The idea is, again, accuracy and human error reduction.
Interestingly enough, last night when building my Model from the start up, it chose Arcturus as the first Star. When it slew to the next Star, it was off by a mile. Way off! I brought it back to the Brightest Star in my immediate FOV, and selected Align on it. But it got worse after that. Not one to waste my time, I told the mount to Go-To Park, Counterweight Down. And it missed that substantially.
So I shut down the Gemini 2, and physically brought everything back to Polaris, checked my camera alignment on Polaris as a starting point, then began again. The only thing I could imagine was the clutches slipping to mess things up with the first attempt. So those were snugged up before beginning again. The second attempt was normal and without gremlins crawling in and out.
After my plate solver did a good solve, it suggested I run it again. After that it just could not solve again.
So I tried SharpCap for Polar Aligning, for the first time. Everybody seems to like it, even when it is the only part of SharpCap they use. So I figured "Follow the Herd". LOL! Well, it got me pretty far, but that's a Pay-To-Play part, you gotta go Pro.
So I went Pro and put my $15 USD in their coffers.
But after that, all I did was to fritter away with settings and starting overs, and closing it several times, and rebooting my Baby Dell. I came back inside and went webbing around for tutorials.....
I woke up around 1 AM with a kink in my neck, and went out to start a new sequence, even though still wondering if I had done any good with my fooling around. The Sequence was for M66 from a very good friend. But my plate solving seemed to get stuck.
I could see the Leo Trio in the Image, but ASTAP couldn't solve it. Finally, around 2 AM I called it quits, shut down and tore down and dragged it all in. Tonight will be a new night to play again.
So, sometimes there just isn't any rhyme of reason to this stuff. No matter what it kicks your butt, then sends you to bed. Then, magically, the next night everything works like it should.
But eventually, there are more great nights, than there are the bad ones. Because that's where the Perseverance part comes in, Ya don't give up.
--
SonnyE
(I suggest viewed in full screen)
