Best focus method for Planetary?

[Stonius (Markus)]

Hey there,


I'm trying to streamline the process.


To really nail focus do you

1. Slew to a star (in which case your go-to's must be spot on because the field is so small) then use a Bahtinov Mask and hope you can get back to the planet in question?
2. Stay in place and use Bahtinov Mask on the moons (if visible)
3. Use a v-curve autofocus routine? If so, in which software? Voyager would need to be specialy configured with a dragscript so it wont try and connect a guidescope, and SGP autofocus supposedly has issues (or have they addressed this?)
4. Use contrast analysis like in Firecap?

Cheers


Markus

[multiweb (Marc)]

Looking forward to the answer. Same problem.

[Camelopardalis (Dunk)]

1 or 2

Depends on the target and what is nearby. Jupiter makes things easier as the Galilean moons are sufficiently bright. Otherwise you shouldn’t have to move too far for a sufficiently bright star...if you’ve already got the planet in the FOV, set the sync point and it should at least go back afterwards.

If you align the finder scope and main scope well enough, you should have a reasonable hit rate. I use a standard 50mm RACI on my C11 (+Barlow). Alternatively, you could employ a flip mirror.