Shooting on an EQ mount
If you take photographs with an EQ mount, you have come a long way further than with just a tripod.
Your EQ mount may already have a built-in tracking motor. Usually only old EQ mounts do not have a motor.
The advantage of such a tracking motor is that it compensates for the rotation of the earth, so you can expose for longer and therefore bring out more details in your photo.
The first step with your Eq mount is to place it so that it points north when it is in its "Home" position.
Then make sure it is level.
Once you have done this, the first major steps have been taken.
Now comes the next, difficult, but important step.
Aligning with the North Star.
You should have a viewer in your Eq mount with which you can align the mount on the North Star. Once you have found this, you must first download an app that shows how exactly the North star should be positioned in your polar adjustment. Once you have found this, you can try to adjust the pole adjustment as precisely as possible through your alignment viewer.
This step depends on how well your Eq mount will continue to track the stars. So try to adjust as best as possible.
Once you have completed this step, you can start aligning your GoTo function.
If you search in your manual control you will see that you can align on 3 stars.
At this point it is useful to know which bright stars are there in your night sky.
If you don't know this, just like I did in the beginning, then just use an app on your phone.
When aligning, try to choose stars that are far apart from each other.
If you have chosen 1, indicate in the manual control that it should go there. It probably won't land exactly on the star. You have to adjust this yourself via the hand controller. If you have placed the star exactly in the middle with the hand controller, confirm this on your hand controller and then choose a second star where it should go. Here you follow the same steps as before.
Once you have aligned all 3 stars, you choose to return to the "Home" position.
If it is in the home position, check whether the alignment was successful by looking for a star in the manual control where it should go.
Once this has been achieved, you can start photographing.
Oh don't forget to turn on Tracking on your hand control. Otherwise he doesn't follow anything at all.
If you really want to do it properly, you also put a tracking telescope on your telescope.
This tracking telescope also needs a camera. With the help of this telescope and camera, small corrections are made to the tracking system of the mount. So that it continues to follow the stars even better. So you can make even longer exposures.