I went out tonight to test out some new items I bought. Namely an electric focuser, a 3X Barlow, and a 9.7mm Plössl eyepiece. Everything worked out fairly well.
I plugged in the LPI to try some shots of Jupter through the new Barlow and had a tough time finding the planet in the monitor. After about 30 minutes I discovered the scope was roughly pointed right at it but the fact that my scope doesn’t collect enough light in conjunction with the image being out of focus, rendered it invisible on my computer monitor. After riding the focus all the way out and in I “found” it as it came into focus … just in time for the sky to cloud over for the evening. I mean I was about to push record and it disappeared! I looked up and saw a cloud had covered it and behind was a whole sky of unbroken cloud. 🙁 Another time I guess.
I found another image stacking program tonight with an auto-align feature. As it indicates on it’s webpage, Lynkeos seems geared more towards planetary image processing as opposed to lunar. This proved out as I reprocessed some of the other evening’s images of the Moon and Jupiter.
Was the electric focuser a good investment?.I might look into purchasing one.
Although the focuser has 2 speeds, I wish there were a “finer” adjustment speed. It can be controlled from the Autostar as well so there is no need for the separate controller unless you set up without running the clock-drive as I sometimes do.
Overall I’d say YES it was a great addition. The simply touching the original focus knob always induced so much vibration that it was almost unusable at higher magnifications.
I did also try a flexible focus rod extension thinking it would dampen the vibrations, and it did — until you had to let go of it. As the flexi-focus “bounced” into equilibrium there was more vibration that without using it at all. Hard as I try it wasn’t possible to “gently” release my grip without the whole scope vibrating. Thats when I finally sprung for the auto focuser.