Quote:
Originally Posted by Peter Ward
Power-up camera
Start CCDops, close auto-launching differential guider dialog
Camera>setup> Set temp, guide & imaging CCD res.
Wait for CCD to cool & power setting to stabilize.
Camera>focus ....planet mode works best. Focus telescope as image updates.
Track>calibrate Set exposure time (~ 1 sec) motion vector time (~ 5 sec) & run.
Check for success, if no, check guide star present, or not too close to edge, or for similarly bright star(s) in same field, guide cable plugged in, dust cap removed, dome open, not cloudy.
Slew to desired imaging field, Track>Self Guide> set desired exposure time and correction interval.
Select start. Watch guide star/or Star Trek until exposure is complete.
After exposure is complete, save image.
If this doesn't make sense, RTFM!!!  |
Thanks Peter, it was easy once you know how!!
Anyway, just posted this over at the SB website...
OK, after much testing I believe that I have confirmed that this is a software problem.
On my Mac i can run Windows under VMware, or natively through bootcamp, of course I can run MacOS Mavericks. So for the sake of brevity, these will be abbreviated to W7V, W7N and OSX respectively.
Firstly to test the camera hardware I took both 10 and 30 second guided exposures with CCDops in W7N, neither had streaks. Immediately after this I use TSX (10.2.0 B7477) running under W7N to acquire the same images, again, no streaks. Rebooted computer to OSX, retook images with TSX under OSX, streaks in both guided images. Ran TSX under W7V, both images again had streaks.
Thinking that I may have different builds of TSX under W7N and W7V, I checked this and updated the TSX version (it is shared BTW) to build 7715. Again I had streaks in TSX W7V. When the computer was rebooted to W7N, the streaks were now present in the images. I reran CCDops, no streaks. I reran TSX, no streaks.
It seems that running CCDops corrects the issue, I can then use TSX running under W7N to acquire streak free images.
Re booted the computer to OSX, without starting TSX under OSX, I tried TSX under W7V, the streaks had returned. I started CCDops under W7V, no streaks in either guided image. Retried TSX under W7V (without shutting the program down, just disconnecting and reconnecting the camera), the streaks have returned.
I did not try running CCDops under W7V and TSX under OSX as I though that there may be guiding issues running across operating systems, but now I think of it the camera would guide using the relays, so I may be able to do this, though I do not see this as a solution.
I installed the latest build of TSX for OSX, this is totally unusable as the guiding is broken, I take a guide image, try to select a star (or have the software autoselect) and I get a dialogue box saying "Please take photo so the guide star can be automatically found", there are also three nested guider display windows.
I tried to take an image, then before the exposure was finished covered the scope up to test if this is a shutter problem, it did not change the appearance of the streaks, so I doubt that this is the problem.
I think that I'll just have to reinstall TSX up to two builds ago to get around this problem.
Cheers
Stuart