Celestron Advanced VX 6" Schmidt-Cassegrain Telescope Advanced VX Manual - Page 32

4. P lug the autoguider cable into the autoguider port on the mount's electronics panel. 5. To begin recording the drive's periodic error, press the MENU button and select PEC from the Utilities menu. Use the Up/Down scroll buttons to display the Record option and press ENTER. When you are ready to record, press the ENTER button again to begin. You will have 5 seconds before the system starts to record. The first time each observing session that PEC record or play is selected, the worm gear must rotate in order to mark its starting position. If the worm gear rotation moves your guide star outside the field of view of the eyepiece, it will have to be re-centered before the recording begins. Note: Once the worm gear is indexed, it will not need to be positioned again until the telescope is turned off. To give yourself more time to prepare for guiding, it may be necessary to restart PEC recording after the worm gear has found its index. 6. A fter 10 minutes, PEC will automatically stop recording. 7. P oint the telescope at the object you want to image and center the guide star on the illuminated cross hairs. You are ready to play back the periodic error correction. 8. O nce the drive's periodic error has been recorded, use the Playback function to begin playing back the correction for future imaging guiding. If you want to re-record the periodic error, select Record and repeat the recording processes again. The previously recorded information will be replaced with the current information. Repeat steps 7 and 8 to playback the PEC corrections for your next object. Does the PEC function make unguided astroimaging possible? Yes and no. For solar (filtered), lunar and piggyback (up to 200 mm), the answer is yes. However, even with PEC, autoguiding is still mandatory for long exposure, deep sky astroimaging. 32 I