Dear Hartmut and Jochen,
many thanks again, you gave me new ideas and learnings. Few comments on your suggestions:
- Which is better, using SynScan hand controller or direct PC - mount connection? -> to be honest, i am confused whether it is better to use hand controller or not. There are quite some videos out there how to polar align and star align with HC before imaging sessions (e.g.: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=adKut0KPgHw
- So far I used the HC only for star alignment and did not use the combo of APT + Plate solving, simply because APT was crashing when activating "live view". Now i got the latest release full version, and it seems to be OK. Regarding Plate solving, I found this video, seems to be straight forward AND it is using the hand controller: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8R0X-B6M7Y&t=29s What is your opinion about this plate solving approach?
- @ Jochen regarding question "Do you first connect the controller, do the alignment and then unplug it in order to connect to the laptop?". Well I used two techniques:
- With HC: I first did Polar alignment, then 2 star alignment, and then connected the mount via the HC to the laptop, and used Stellarium to slew. APT was used for photography only.
- Without HC: I first did polar alignment, then I connected to PC directly (cable btw mount and PC), and used Stellarium and ASCOM EQ MOD to slew. I did star jumping, corrected the offset via using the "sync" option of Stellarium. APT again was used only for photography.
Although I do not use iOptron (thx for the idea, nice kit), I believe my polar alignment is good enough, as polaris remains in the target circle of the in-build polar scope when moving the RA. I totally agree that plate solving will help a lot more.
Can you please advise me if you suggest to do all the polar alignment, star alignment, plate solving WITH or WITHOUT Hand Controller (Skywatcher HEQ5 Pro mount) ?
thanks and best,
Peter