I got a nice detailed explanation from the author of Astro Snap to help me to get autoguiding working. This Yahoo group has many discussions and tips on using Astro Snap - I recommend it.

I balanced my telescope very well tonight. Unfortunately there is such a thing as a too well balanced telescope. The balanced telescope caused the telescope to ocillate and the image to vibrate slightly. I only learned about the cause of this strange new vibration this morning so I will implement the fix tomorrow - forcing the telescopes' motors to lift up a slightly front-end heavy tube (OTA).

Here are some excellent tips about the Elimination of Vibrations that I am going to test tonight as well.

I changed my telescope's backlash setting and it works great - slewing in declination is now as instantaneous as slewing in R.A.

Here are some tips for people new to Astro Snap

I left my telescope in sleep mode during the night - with the telescope pointing at the horizon. I started to take pictures at 5:00 in the morning. When I tucked the telescope in for its sleep during the day, I noticed its corrector lens was covered with a LAYER of dust. I did not expect this since I specifically left the telescope horizontal. Guess I was wrong - next time I will cover up the corrector lens as well.

This dust might be the cause of the sub-standard images I have on this webpage today. I discovered it only after I captured all the bitmap frames.

This information is for the picture of Mars on the right.