[PRejto (Peter)]

I'm perhaps on an impossible quest in an attempt to automate my two scopes on one mount. I would love to use FocusLock with both of my scopes each of which has an ONAG + guide camera. I can automate scope 1/camera 1 through CCDAP5 and with a sync program can trigger images to be taken through camera #2. With this setup I can dither the 2 cameras and I can acquire a guide star easily in scope 1. The guide star is a big problem in scope 2. At the beginning of a session I can manually find a guide star (used only for focus, not guiding) but if I am not present when the scope slews to a new target I cannot think of any automated way to find a new guide star for scope 2. Consequently FocusLock will no longer maintain focus for camera #2.

Thus the question; is there any guiding program that will automatically search out a guide star if the originally selected guide star is lost? I was thinking that a similar sort of situation might occur if a guide star is lost due to clouds. Suppose that the guide star is hidden for 30 min or so. Obviously in that case there would be no guiding corrections but the mount would continue in RA. But one couldn't assume that the guide star would remain in the tracking box when the clouds parted. Will any guide program take a full frame image in that situation and try to hunt down the "missing" star? If so, then there might be a way to find a star when the mount slews to a new target making the guide star disappear in scope 2.

Thanks,

Peter