Interesting. I think east and west heavy applies more to worm gear or belt driven mounts vs. the new strain wave gear mounts. In fact, there is no way to balance on a strain wave gear mount. But I never really understood why it was an issue. I would just let the software measure and handle backlash. Good to understand it.
Gear backlash isn’t something many of us consider when running our setups, yet proper balancing does make a difference. I’m glad this helped! I’m not too familiar with strain wave and I’ve heard they aren’t able to handle big payloads. I’m currently running close to 36lbs on my EQ6R pro which is pretty close to its capacity. It does very well as long as I have it balanced. One interesting fact I’ve experienced is some mounts prefer a certain degree of unbalance while others, like my EQ6R pro prefer close to perfect :) Have you used a strain wave? If so, how do you like it and what have you found to be a quirk with it?
@@Hidden.Light.Photography I started with a traditional belt drive beginner mount - the Explore Scientific iExos 100. Payload listed at 15lbs for photographic, but they advised to keep it at 50% for the greatest accuracy in guiding!!!. As I added more to the imaging train, this became unworkable, so I did purchase a strain wave mount - the ZWO AM3. Mount head weighs 4 lbs and can carry 17 lbs without a counterweight and 28 lbs with. It's amazing. No balancing required, can load it up full and my guiding accuracy has improved by 80%. Actually, more and more strain wave mounts are coming onto the market now, and some claim to be able to handle 45 or 50 lbs with no problem.
@@Hidden.Light.Photography Went from an embarrassing 1.2 arcseconds rms on the old overloaded belt drive mount to 0.5 arcseconds rms on average on the new strain wave mount. Could get it lower if I spent more time on polar alignment. Surprisingly, with a widefield scope, the bad guiding result wasn't that big an issue for image quality, but it is nice to have it down to the acceptable level.
I understand your east or west heavy, but in my case, I can image to the east for several hours and do a meridian flip and image for several more hours. In this case on one side, I will image with the balance off in one direction.
Unfortunately, as of right now, there is no convenient solution in a scenario like that. What some astrophotographers do, myself included when I’m at a dark site (with my AVX) with plenty of view, is balance east heavy, then after meridian flip, re balance the setup back to east heavy. Now, every mount has its own personality, meaning some behave well regardless. In other words, my EQ6-R Pro shown in the video does very well with a close-to-even balance. The guide graphs I show in the video, you’ll notice the bouncy one is from earlier in the session prior to meridian flip when I was west heavy (look in top left corner of the image and you’ll see the highlighted one is one above the bottom). The smooth one is after meridian flip when I was east heavy (it is the bottom one in the top left corner). Both are good graphs and I’m well within an arc second of variance, however the west heavy one is, in fact bouncier and it is sometimes amplified by different variables and guiding recovery sometimes suffers. This is where mount type and personality come in. Mounts like my AVX will not perform as well and I can be as far as 2 arc seconds of variance causing a total RMS of over 1 arc second and that’s where it really hurts image quality. That’s where proper balance really come into play so you can minimize that. I would honestly say if your guiding total RMS is behaving and staying reasonable to your resolution capability, I wouldn’t worry too much about it and keep getting those beautiful images!! If you’re suffering in this area, try adjusting your balance by making more even or more unbalanced and see where that takes you so you can fine tune it.
Thanks for the info. I am using an old Orion EQ mount which works very well when evenly balanced. It is located in a slide off shed observatory with fairly bad light pollution but I am still getting good images in post processing. Going on 80 years old so I won't be moving the scope around. Thanks again.@@Hidden.Light.Photography
Good final images are all that matter and as long as your tracking and guiding are playing nice, you’ll get just that! Let me know if you ever need anything or want to bounce ideas.
Thank you very much I will subscribe and keep up with you. Like I said I am just months from 80 so cold winter nights are a problem and this Tuesday I am having SI joint fusion surgery so it will be spring before I can get busy again. Again thanks. @@Hidden.Light.Photography
Happy early birthday and I wish you a speedy recovery! When you are ready and if you want, I can show you how to remote into your computer running your telescope from the nice, warm indoors so you can still enjoy the stars!
I have an AVX and find the two axises have a lot of stiction so I find it hard to fine tune the balance. I wish it moved as easy as your EQ6-R. I'm a little confused about about the general rule of east heavy. When you are demonstrating RA balance at around 10:40 you show that is how you balance your AVX. Isn't that a little west heavy, more resistance pushing down on the counterweight. You mention earlier in the video because of the position of your house you tend to balance both mounts a little west heavy because the Meridian Flip is close. For AVX owners who don't have those constraints you would want a little more resistance pushing up on the counterweigh than down to have slight east heavy? So if you buy a harmonic mount, such as a ZWO AM5, can you avoid this balance nonsense? I have to set up from scratch every time. With the PE200 Pier there is an adapter to use the AVX tripod. Thanks.
Can you email me at tony@hiddenlight-photography.com? I’d like to set up a one on one meeting with you to go over the concerns you’re experiencing in depth and get you imaging.
I just realized when that comment sent it made a hyperlink to my website which is still under construction. You should still be able to click on that and open a chat which will bring you directly to me or you can type my email address in your email provider.
In the meantime, my reference to how I balance my AVX is the offset of balance east to west. Don’t overthink general rule of east heavy balance. The end goal is a good final image so yes, you want to always balance east heavy, but if your mount “behaves” and handles west heavy balance after meridian flip, leave it be to do its thing. If you run into issues with getting good sub frames after flip, then you would want to stop and rebalance east heavy. The only reason I balance west heavy is because my mount “behaves” with it and I am west heavy for a very short period of time before meridian flip.
Good video!
Thank you!
Interesting. I think east and west heavy applies more to worm gear or belt driven mounts vs. the new strain wave gear mounts. In fact, there is no way to balance on a strain wave gear mount. But I never really understood why it was an issue. I would just let the software measure and handle backlash. Good to understand it.
Gear backlash isn’t something many of us consider when running our setups, yet proper balancing does make a difference. I’m glad this helped! I’m not too familiar with strain wave and I’ve heard they aren’t able to handle big payloads. I’m currently running close to 36lbs on my EQ6R pro which is pretty close to its capacity. It does very well as long as I have it balanced. One interesting fact I’ve experienced is some mounts prefer a certain degree of unbalance while others, like my EQ6R pro prefer close to perfect :)
Have you used a strain wave? If so, how do you like it and what have you found to be a quirk with it?
@@Hidden.Light.Photography I started with a traditional belt drive beginner mount - the Explore Scientific iExos 100. Payload listed at 15lbs for photographic, but they advised to keep it at 50% for the greatest accuracy in guiding!!!. As I added more to the imaging train, this became unworkable, so I did purchase a strain wave mount - the ZWO AM3. Mount head weighs 4 lbs and can carry 17 lbs without a counterweight and 28 lbs with. It's amazing. No balancing required, can load it up full and my guiding accuracy has improved by 80%. Actually, more and more strain wave mounts are coming onto the market now, and some claim to be able to handle 45 or 50 lbs with no problem.
That’s awesome! I need to check into one of those. How are you guiding numbers?
@@Hidden.Light.Photography Went from an embarrassing 1.2 arcseconds rms on the old overloaded belt drive mount to 0.5 arcseconds rms on average on the new strain wave mount. Could get it lower if I spent more time on polar alignment. Surprisingly, with a widefield scope, the bad guiding result wasn't that big an issue for image quality, but it is nice to have it down to the acceptable level.
.5 is a very good number! Is that using the ASIair guiding?
I understand your east or west heavy, but in my case, I can image to the east for several hours and do a meridian flip and image for several more hours. In this case on one side, I will image with the balance off in one direction.
Unfortunately, as of right now, there is no convenient solution in a scenario like that. What some astrophotographers do, myself included when I’m at a dark site (with my AVX) with plenty of view, is balance east heavy, then after meridian flip, re balance the setup back to east heavy. Now, every mount has its own personality, meaning some behave well regardless. In other words, my EQ6-R Pro shown in the video does very well with a close-to-even balance. The guide graphs I show in the video, you’ll notice the bouncy one is from earlier in the session prior to meridian flip when I was west heavy (look in top left corner of the image and you’ll see the highlighted one is one above the bottom). The smooth one is after meridian flip when I was east heavy (it is the bottom one in the top left corner). Both are good graphs and I’m well within an arc second of variance, however the west heavy one is, in fact bouncier and it is sometimes amplified by different variables and guiding recovery sometimes suffers. This is where mount type and personality come in. Mounts like my AVX will not perform as well and I can be as far as 2 arc seconds of variance causing a total RMS of over 1 arc second and that’s where it really hurts image quality. That’s where proper balance really come into play so you can minimize that. I would honestly say if your guiding total RMS is behaving and staying reasonable to your resolution capability, I wouldn’t worry too much about it and keep getting those beautiful images!! If you’re suffering in this area, try adjusting your balance by making more even or more unbalanced and see where that takes you so you can fine tune it.
Thanks for the info. I am using an old Orion EQ mount which works very well when evenly balanced. It is located in a slide off shed observatory with fairly bad light pollution but I am still getting good images in post processing. Going on 80 years old so I won't be moving the scope around. Thanks again.@@Hidden.Light.Photography
Good final images are all that matter and as long as your tracking and guiding are playing nice, you’ll get just that! Let me know if you ever need anything or want to bounce ideas.
Thank you very much I will subscribe and keep up with you. Like I said I am just months from 80 so cold winter nights are a problem and this Tuesday I am having SI joint fusion surgery so it will be spring before I can get busy again. Again thanks.
@@Hidden.Light.Photography
Happy early birthday and I wish you a speedy recovery! When you are ready and if you want, I can show you how to remote into your computer running your telescope from the nice, warm indoors so you can still enjoy the stars!
I have an AVX and find the two axises have a lot of stiction so I find it hard to fine tune the balance. I wish it moved as easy as your EQ6-R. I'm a little confused about about the general rule of east heavy. When you are demonstrating RA balance at around 10:40 you show that is how you balance your AVX. Isn't that a little west heavy, more resistance pushing down on the counterweight. You mention earlier in the video because of the position of your house you tend to balance both mounts a little west heavy because the Meridian Flip is close. For AVX owners who don't have those constraints you would want a little more resistance pushing up on the counterweigh than down to have slight east heavy?
So if you buy a harmonic mount, such as a ZWO AM5, can you avoid this balance nonsense? I have to set up from scratch every time. With the PE200 Pier there is an adapter to use the AVX tripod. Thanks.
Can you email me at tony@hiddenlight-photography.com? I’d like to set up a one on one meeting with you to go over the concerns you’re experiencing in depth and get you imaging.
I just realized when that comment sent it made a hyperlink to my website which is still under construction. You should still be able to click on that and open a chat which will bring you directly to me or you can type my email address in your email provider.
In the meantime, my reference to how I balance my AVX is the offset of balance east to west. Don’t overthink general rule of east heavy balance. The end goal is a good final image so yes, you want to always balance east heavy, but if your mount “behaves” and handles west heavy balance after meridian flip, leave it be to do its thing. If you run into issues with getting good sub frames after flip, then you would want to stop and rebalance east heavy. The only reason I balance west heavy is because my mount “behaves” with it and I am west heavy for a very short period of time before meridian flip.
@@Hidden.Light.Photography I sent you an email a few days ago. Thanks
I saw that and replied back. Did you receive the reply by chance?