Quote:
Originally Posted by jase
Eric, I have used multi star guide with MaximDL using John Winfield's plugin. Now MaximDL 6 supports it natively. I know your an ACP user (as am I), do you know if ACP works fine when multi-guide star is enabled in MaximDL? I'm still running MaximDL5 but have the license to upgrade to 6, just haven't had the interest.
I have reservations about multi star guiding at long focal lengths however... It would work and work well but your OAG pick off and guider need to be a fair size. As you've no doubt experienced with your long focal length set up, sometimes you're lucky to get two stars on the chip, but often its only one. |
Hi Jase,
Funny, I have the Maxim 6 license too, but like you I have not updated the imaging computer with it (it wasn't broke!). I did recently read a thread in the ACP comm center about the v6 multi guide star + ACP setup, eventually they did get it all to work, so I was going to try it, eventually...but I did want to get Scheduler working first.
Even at 3.5m fl some parts of the sky I can see a dozen guide stars with the SX Lodestar, other parts just a few, but almost always more than one. That is with the rotator though chasing the best spot. I have also set my minimum guide exposure length to 1 sec since the tracking on the A200HR is reaaally good and any small corrections faster than that are often just seeing/wind/noise, and likely better ignored. I'd make that even longer but then dithering becomes a pain since after the dither the guider needs to lock on again causing a few more guide cycles. I think ~5sec is longest exposures I'd use for that reason.
With a rotator + >1 sec exposures I think multiple stars is feasible most of the time. Worst case is multi-star turns into single-star.
Best,
EB