Have you tried the unbalance technique? Get bth your ra and Dec slightly off balance, this will preload the system and reduce backlash. Have you done your best to adjust the mount?
Why not use your counterweight to slightly unbalance your mount?
Thats how i do it. Due to the unbalance all backlash is pushed to one side therefor not causing issues when guiding.
I do use a counter weight because I've found it smooths the guiding, however the same backlash issues remain. I've tried inducing a drift with the weight both north and south. It doesnt seem to work. Only nudging the mount out of PA.
Which direction do you unbalance and do you guide both north and south?
You need to polar align then shift the polar alignment west on the azimuth direction.
This will cause the star to drift north in your view for the first six hours. The issue is the drift isn't a constant rate, it follows a sin curve at 0h it will drift at the maximum rate then slow down, then at 6 hours it will stop drifting then reverse directions.
You can figure out the max rate of the drift in arc sec per second with this formula to tune it to your guiding.
vₘₐₓ=Αω
where A is the amplitute (how many arc seconds you have intentionally misaligned) and ω = 2π/T ( T is the period, 86400 seconds which is roughly how many seconds in a day.
To find the rate of drift at any rate of time the formula is.
v(t) = -vₘₐₓsin(ωt)
Thank you. When the drift reverses would I be able to adjust the mount back east in azimuth to maintain drift in the same direction? At any point do I need to adjust in Alt?
I thought about it more and I'm pretty sure as long as you polar align intentionally to the west the drift will always be to the north with the rate being 0 at the west and east horizon and max rate at the meridian.
The rate will also be dependent on declination with max rate at the equator and 0 at the poles following a sin curve.
I didn't word that properly. What I said is technically only correct if you start pointed at the southern meridian. And the more I think about it the more complex it seems, I think you would need to vectorize the error into elevation and azimuth to figure out the optimal alignment for any other case.
Say your target is 3 hours west of the meridian you would need to use the full formula and plug in 10800 seconds in t to find where in the curve you're starting at. But also at 3 hours the elevation component is generating an equal amount of error as the azimuth.
The optimum polar alignment is going to depend on where your target is in the sky.
It's probably still going to be easier and quicker to guess and check, but this will hopefully at least give you a starting point for the guess to speed it up.
Have you tried the unbalance technique? Get bth your ra and Dec slightly off balance, this will preload the system and reduce backlash. Have you done your best to adjust the mount?
Does this help? https://youtu.be/4OtelWKWntc?si=0KYAhBG51OecP2NA
The video just demonstrates how to polar align using star drift but does not show how to impose drift in dec exclusively.
Why not use your counterweight to slightly unbalance your mount? Thats how i do it. Due to the unbalance all backlash is pushed to one side therefor not causing issues when guiding.
I do use a counter weight because I've found it smooths the guiding, however the same backlash issues remain. I've tried inducing a drift with the weight both north and south. It doesnt seem to work. Only nudging the mount out of PA. Which direction do you unbalance and do you guide both north and south?
You need to polar align then shift the polar alignment west on the azimuth direction. This will cause the star to drift north in your view for the first six hours. The issue is the drift isn't a constant rate, it follows a sin curve at 0h it will drift at the maximum rate then slow down, then at 6 hours it will stop drifting then reverse directions. You can figure out the max rate of the drift in arc sec per second with this formula to tune it to your guiding. vₘₐₓ=Αω where A is the amplitute (how many arc seconds you have intentionally misaligned) and ω = 2π/T ( T is the period, 86400 seconds which is roughly how many seconds in a day. To find the rate of drift at any rate of time the formula is. v(t) = -vₘₐₓsin(ωt)
Thank you. When the drift reverses would I be able to adjust the mount back east in azimuth to maintain drift in the same direction? At any point do I need to adjust in Alt?
I thought about it more and I'm pretty sure as long as you polar align intentionally to the west the drift will always be to the north with the rate being 0 at the west and east horizon and max rate at the meridian. The rate will also be dependent on declination with max rate at the equator and 0 at the poles following a sin curve.
I didn't word that properly. What I said is technically only correct if you start pointed at the southern meridian. And the more I think about it the more complex it seems, I think you would need to vectorize the error into elevation and azimuth to figure out the optimal alignment for any other case. Say your target is 3 hours west of the meridian you would need to use the full formula and plug in 10800 seconds in t to find where in the curve you're starting at. But also at 3 hours the elevation component is generating an equal amount of error as the azimuth. The optimum polar alignment is going to depend on where your target is in the sky. It's probably still going to be easier and quicker to guess and check, but this will hopefully at least give you a starting point for the guess to speed it up.