The Lacerta MGEN-3 stand-alone autoguider

Guiding can be a daunting step in astrophotography and progressing to a laptop-controlled setup can introduce frustrations with new software and hardware. It’s worthwhile though, as guiding can lead to longer exposure times, which becomes increasingly important as you embark on deep-sky photography. So the Lacerta MGEN-3’s simpler alternative to ‘full-on’ guiding, one where a laptop and additional software isn’t needed, is exciting.

Opening the MGEN-3’s box we were surprised by the lack of components. There’s the autoguider control box (a lightweight 40g), a 1.2MP guide camera, two USB leads and an ST4 guiding cable. Adaptors for different setups are also provided with the camera, providing up to 26mm backfocus for different configurations. No paper instructions are provided but there’s an easy-to-follow manual on the website.

Setup simplicity

The MGEN-3 builds on its predecessor, the MGEN-2, by offering improvements including multi-star guiding to reduce atmospheric distortions, and a ‘one-push’ autoguiding function. It also offers DSLR/ CCD exposure control in place of an intervalometer, along with built-in ‘drift (polar) alignment’ and ‘dithering’ functions. ‘Drift alignment’ helps those unable to view Polaris from their imaging location, while ‘dithering’ creates minute movements of the camera between exposures, to reduce noise – unwanted artefacts – in an image.

After fixing the camera to our guidescope, we only had to link it to the control box, and the control box to our mount and power via the supplied cables. The ‘Esc’ button on the control box led to the main menu and, after adding the focal length of our guider, we navigated to ‘Imaging’, which shows a live image to help focus. The ‘one-push’ start button function immediately started picking up guide stars, meaning we were ready to begin.

We found the camera sensitive even in summer twilight – it picked up 70 guide stars for the North America Nebula with our 50mm guiderscope. We put