[codemonkey (Lee)]

Originally Posted by Logieberra

Do you have a cheapy guide scope handy? OAG'ing is a lovely thing, but I'd start simple. Master a separate guide scope first, play with the guiding settings and in time go back to OAG.

Good call. Wish I did... I was agonising over guide scope vs OAG for a while but decided on OAG since it was where I'll end up anyway as I'll be shooting at 1600mm very soon (hopefully). I imagine with a guide scope the issue in RA would be much less pronounced in the images thus probably enabling effective guiding. Still kind of a bandaid though.

Originally Posted by traveller

Hi Lee,
I recommend you do drift alignment using PHD first (I used my guider with my ED80). It's so much easier to do and the feedback can be very quick.
http://njstargazer.org/PolarAlignment.asp
Take your time and be patient, you will get there.
Bo

Thanks mate, I did drift align with PHD2 and apparently had it within 1 arcminute on both axes.

Originally Posted by pluto

Or even better use PHD2's built in drift alignment helper tool.

Yep, that's what I used.

Originally Posted by Octane

Lee,

What happens when you reduce your aggressiveness down to 10%?

If you're within an arcminute of the pole (for the region of the sky in which you drift aligned), you might find that 50% at 600mm might be too much. This has certainly been the case for my FSQ/STL/G-11 combination. I've had to reduce my aggressiveness down to 1-1.5 to obtain a flat graph in MaxIm DL.

H

Thanks H. My understanding of the aggressiveness setting is that it's a percentage of how much guiding should be applied relative to how much the software thinks it should apply.

The software should have established how much it should move to correct for any given error during the calibration process, so the focal length shouldn't make a difference if calibration was successful.

Based on that I would expect that having to reduce the aggressiveness so... aggressively indicates that the software has gotten it really wrong.

Speaking of calibration though, I have noticed during calibration that it completes E-W in about 15 steps, says that it's clearing backlash twice, and then completes N-S in about 7 or 8 steps which seems interesting.

Originally Posted by Peter Ward

An AP1600 will fix that graph

lol I wish.