Last night I tested an old CCD Labs Q-Guide camera as an autoguider solution. I got the camera from AȚ (thank you :) ) but it came with an unexpacted „semaphore error” message, which rendered it useless. It turned out the firmware was damaged and needed to be reflashed. I found some ideas here, but not the solution itself, which started to come from here, though it was still miles ahead. Worth mentioning the answers given by QiuHY are rather cryptic (tending towards useless), more like from an oracle than a tech guy – and I’m not a believer. A good indicator of just how cryptic: only a month has passed and I already cannot find the best answer, only that it included CySuiteUSB program and a guide in which order to flash what.

So I took some test photos with the Canon 1100Da, N 150/750 on the HEQ5 setup, 4 minutes subs. Ten for the M13 globular cluster, and six for the M57 Ring Nebula. Each at ISO 100 – not that far from the city center (Bortle scale 6-7 if not 8 – better to the north).

M13 test

M57 test

M57, second processing

M57, 3rd processing