iOPTRON - Astronomy Technology Today

THE LITTLE MOUNT THAT COULD
Lodestar guider, etc., etc., etc. (to be said
like Yul Brynner in “The King and I”), I
was almost flummoxed at first. But …
not for one second did I have to worry
about my iEQ30. First, with the weight
on top well within the mount’s range
(under 17 pounds in total), the electronic
balancing was always spot-on and
repeatable. And with my trusty Sabrent
USB 2.0-to-Serial Cable attaching the
mount to my laptop, and TheSky 6 picking
out objects (and, often, MaxIm DL’s
little planetarium, too), I could whip
around the sky like no one’s business.
(Image 4)
And this is where the polar scope
and iOptron’s polar routine really shined.
My first time out to my dark site to take
pics (I had some technical runs in lightpolluted
skies to work out guiding and
stuff – still working out bugs on other
things), I could get nice 5-minute guided
subs with just the polar-scope alignment.
Now, this was my very first time imaging,
so a zillion things weren’t perfect;
nevertheless, although not spectacular,
for what I wanted to do, not bad, either
(I later pushed that to 10-minute guided
subs; haven’t tried longer). This from a
newbie.
Is that 20 minutes unguided? Nope,
not even close, but I took some, for my
tastes, nice pictures the very first time I
tried … and that is very important.
Getting into the ballpark is the whole
shooting match to me, because once
there, it’s simply a matter of refining. If I
had had blurs and smudges and heavy
trailing, etc., and the pics looked like
something that exploded out of the back
end of a wombat after eating a taco, I’d
be really bummed, and then, if it continued,
would want to give up. But now …
now I can put up with any quirk because
I’m in the ballpark – the rest is just finetuning.
(Image 5 and Image 6)
Image 5 - The Horsehead and Flame
Nebulas captured with the iEQ30; 10-
minute subs
Lies, damned lies, and PE…
So what do the numbers say? I was
able to get a PE (from PemPro) of 12 arcseconds
(peak-to-peak with five different
runs), no great spikes or weirdness, a fairly
smooth curve. Pretty good for a mount
in this price range. Have not tried to
PEC it yet, but will, when I have a
moment (still so much to learn and do).
Go-tos remain solid all night (and plate
solving really takes the sting out of it),
though I’ve had the occasional hiccup
here and there, but a re-synch/plate solve
and I was good to go again. Can’t ask for
much more in this price range and better
than a lot of others.
Ladies and gentlemen of
the jury, in summation.
So, if someone stole it would I get
another? (Wait, you criminals! Put that
mount down!!) Yup. For my purposes,
getting back into astronomy and on the
upward learning curve of AP, it’s the per-
Image 6 - The Rosette Nebula captured
with the iEQ30; 10-minute subs.
Astronomy TECHNOLOGY TODAY 33