I just picked up this mount used for $1700 and very excited to get started using it! I know this is an old video but really appreciate this content! Clear skies from a fellow Nova Scotian!
Hey, I actually purchased your book for my kids...thanks for creating it. I just wanted to chime in and say that you don't have to do any alignment or even have the hand controller plugged into the mount in order to use the ASIAIR pro. You can simply plug at usb into the mount and into the ASIAIR and choose eqmod mount from the mount list and port 11520. As long as your mount/scope is at the home position when you connect the mount to the asiair pro, it wont have any issues at all.
Fellow Stargazers! This channel is dedicated to improving your telescope skills and helping you see awesome stuff in the sky. I need to reach 1000 subscribers to be eligible for the RU-vid Partner Program, which will really help this channel grow, so please consider subscribing. I'll be posting a new video at least once per week, so there'll be lots of current content to watch and enjoy! Thanks! ~ John (LearnToStargaze)
First time coming across your channel. I can appreciate the sentiment of keeping it simple for everyone to understand, best of luck with that journey! I put an order in for the EQ6-R Pro and Esprit 100ED a couple of nights ago as an upgrade, but will have to wait two months to arrive though! In the meantime, plenty of your vids to watch :)
I've been a lifelong stargazer, but then of course, life happens.... Had to take many years off, and I feel like I have forgotten everything. Your channel is awesome for bringing me back up to speed! Can't believe you don't have more subscribers - you have a really good, professional, yet light and accessible air about you. I will be sharing the heck out of your channel. My two oldest are in 2nd year astronomy classes at University of Nevada Reno , and they are getting me (slowly) into astrophotography. So far its an iPhone X in a Celestron NexYZ mount on a 5 inch Dob, but hey, ya gotta start somewhere. I would really LOVE to see you do some more videos taking the very amateur, just starting out w a cell phone and cheap telescope series, up through the stuff you presented today. Your setup here on todays video is EXACTLY my goal, but it is gonna take a couple years! Thanks again for a great channel. My family is pulling for ya to reach that 1,000 sub goal, and WAY beyond!
Hi Chris, This is by far the kindest note I've ever received on my youtube videos. I'd love to send you a complimentary copy of my book 50 Things to See on the Moon, just send me a quick note at www.learntostargaze.com/contact. Best of luck to your two astro students! If they ever need some extra robotic telescope time, they are free to use the 26inch robotic telescope here in Halifax: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-_REFENDkYeo.html
I have the EQ6-R Pro on backorder and really enjoyed your video because you covered some things that I've been thinking about, like how manageable the weight of the mount is. Based on your feedback I'm no longer as concerned. You should be pretty happy with that first image of Orion! Things don't always go that smoothly. Nice work, I subscribed.
You set the scope and all your gear on the mount without your counter weights first. That’s a big mistake if your clutches slip that’s the end of your gear. Always put the weights on first before your scope. The retraction of the weight bar into the mount is for storage/transport plus its easier to carry. When you are setting up always fully pull the bar out as far as possible then put your weights on. The last thing you want is for the bar to slip if its retracted when you're imaging
Great format and on camera performance. I'm a new subscriber and just got into this rabbit hole of astrophotography. I think I want to go your way of imaging Im not very techno savy at all. I'll keep watching. Thanks
As on my own EQ6-R Pro, why don't you use a standard USB 2.0 wire directly from your ASIAir to the dedicated USB port on the mount? This way, you don't need the hand controller at all, and can proceed from your cell phone only (hopefully...).
Thanks for the video John. I'm a newbie at this, and your video helps... but i have so many questions. For example, why add a focal reducer to an expensive refractor? Why not just get a smaller FL refractor? Why does the new expensive EQR-6 mount need a cheap guide scope to track ? What was it that made the first exposure of Orion so good and impressive? Was it the new EQR-6 mount? How would that image been different had the gear been mounted on the other tripod you had in the backyard? Cheers!
Refractors don’t typically produce good images without a flattener/reducer. Aperture determines resolution, that’s the reason not to go smaller. Unless you’ve got a permanently mounted scope and are doing shorter exposures, guide scopes are required for accuracy. The other mount wasn’t as reliable, it wouldn’t hold position reliably even with guiding.
This is probably a very simple question... I purchased this mount hoping to grow into it someday with DSO imaging. Currently, I want to just mount my camera on it and track the night sky for some nice long exposures at low ISOs. I am stumped with what to align my startracker to....am I correct in assuming I just choose an object in the milky way and track that?
This might be a better question for Astrobackyard, but if I were using this mount as a star tracker for a camera, I would just treat the camera as a telescope. This means setting the camera in the mount's home position (~ pointed at the North Star). And then do a standard 2 star align with the mount, centering the alignment stars in the camera viewfinder. Once the telescope is aligned, use the Go-To feature to frame the shot.
I just purchased the Eq6-R Pro and am having some PE and drifting issues. I like the demo you gave, but I'm wondering if you've had any issues with PE with this mount? Did you do the PEC training for the mount as recommended in the SynScan manual? Also, other RU-vid vids on the ASI recommend using EQMOD as your telescope rather than SkyWatcher SynScan. Have you tried that?
@@LearnToStargaze No sarcasm I’m serious I see in your video you align the scope to track the sun for with filter but I didn’t understand how did you do it I thought you did 3star alignment some how
@@AstroRef68 Ahh, I see, I probably just aligned the scope with the compass on my phone. The sun is not exactly a small target, and we're not doing long exposures, so precise tracking is not required.
@@LearnToStargaze I'm just coming across this video now, and this was the first thing I noticed as well. Maybe you've discovered this by now but you didn't actually do a 3-star alignment, you just said "looks good" when the mount asked you to align to those stars. The typical procedure (polar alignment aside) is that the mount will go to where it *thinks* those stars are, but it's rarely (if ever) exact the first time. It wants you to center the given stars in the scope before pressing "OK" to go on to the next star. Given those three points, it will have a correction model to work from when using "Go To" functionality. If you used that "alignment" at night and asked the mount to go to a given target, you'll be frustrated to find it'll always be off. It might not matter if you're manually finding a target and then using the ASIAir with a guide scope for tracking, but the mount's Go To functionality won't be accurate.
Maybe this is a stupid question, but do the dec and ra clutches need to be tightened to run the mount with the motors? Setting mine up right now and just read that and seems counterintuitive.
I think your balancing is off. You should put both weights on and move them closer to the telescope end. What you have there looks like a recipe for disaster.
The mount on that telescope is quite challenging to use, and the scope is a bit underpowered. A better option would be a small dobsonian (6 or 8 inches), or ~100mm refractor like the Celestron Inspire 100az or Celestron Omni 102. You might want to wait a month or so until the stores are back in stock, almost all these telescopes are still sold out after the Christmas rush.
@@LearnToStargaze Perfect! thanks for the reply. I am waiting for my EQ6-R mount to arrive (this week I hope, my Edge HD 8 tube might get here before the decade is out) and I am using an ASI Air Pro. I picked up on a couple of goodies from your video that I'm going to try when the mount arrives. Something that I'll pass your way...I bought a GL-AR70S-EXT router that runs off a usb port on my power supply. I mounted via Scotch "velcro" on the top of my ASIAir pro. They are almost exactly the same size. It greatly increased the range of the 5G wireless connection. I want to think it was about $50 US. I am currently using all of my stuff on a Nextstar 6 SE until my replacement equipment arrives. When that happens, im going to give my grandkids the 6SE. I'll be looking at a couple of your books to pass along with it. Anyway, thanks so much for the video!
@@LearnToStargaze John, you mentioned in your video that your polar alignment was pretty bad..... just how bad was it?:-) My $20 flat panel showed up today, I'm pretty impressed as to how even the lighting is for $20. My mount shipped today and I ordered a new camera over the weekend. I'm sure that's why its supposed to rain this weekend:-(!
I have heard of issues with the new eq6-r not connecting with the asiair pro due to a chipset change in the mount. I assume you didn't have an issue with yours, correct?
Nice little video, but you never put a telescope first on a mount, you always put your counter weight first, cause for any reason, if the clutch of your mount go off, your telescope won't hit the base of your mount. So never, never put the scope first.
Why not? It was the first time I ever turned it on, and basically wanted to see it spin around. It also gives it the approximate location of the Sun so that we could test the focus.
I have watched several of your videos (and also read and bought two of your books) and in the videos I have seen you are using, reviewing, promoting, recommending low end, low cost, poor-quality telescopes for beginners when you know a beginner is not going to be able to see anything with those cheap, poor-quality telescopes and they are going to end up in a closet. Then here you are in this video with an EQ6R Pro $2000, Explore Scientific ED 102 $2400, ZWO 294 MC Pro $1000, Altair focal reducer $100, L enhance filter $250, and ASI AIR $400. Wow that totals over $6000. I find it misleading that you show yourself using this high-end equipment to take fancy photos of nebulae, even processed the quick and easy way, while telling your viewers to get cheap telescopes that probably can't even resolve these objects. I think this approach is one that might leave a beginner to have the wrong expectations and also become disappointed with astronomy and possibly lose interest in the hobby.
If you watch the low end telescope videos, in most I state that I do not recommend those telescopes. I have a 5 pt. test that we put ever telescope through, and I show how the low end telescopes fail those tests. The low end telescope videos are not reviews. They are demonstrations for the people who purchased these telescope and are having trouble. The idea is to give them some success, so that they stick with the hobby. Also, I try to make it clear that stargazing with a telescope, and astrophotography are completely different hobbies, and people should treat them as such. My stargazing videos cover a broad range of telescopes, while videos on the hobby of astrophotography use the specialized gear that this (non-stargazing related) hobby requires.
@@LearnToStargaze OK. Thank you for explaining that. I actually admire you for promoting amateur astronomy and having the patience to explain it to the general public in a clear and concise way, but I was shocked when I saw you with all this expensive equipment that is meant solely for astrophotography.
