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Old 05-05-2016, 11:45 PM
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Atmos (Colin)
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Drift Alignment with PHD2 Query

I have done quick (rough) polar alignments using PHD to get me somewhat close before using TSX and its accurate polar alignment routine, usually do then when I head to my dark site and forget to take a compass so it's just guessing polar south and hoping it's close enough

One thing with PHD that I have not yet managed to figure out is how to magnify! Previously I have been using my guide scope (60mm F/3.76) and an ASI120mm for drift aligning as I didn't want to do it with my QHY9 (mechanical shutter kept getting in the way of short exposures). Now that I have a QHY22 I'll try using that for drift alignment.

Back to the question though. What I have previously found is that when it gets close, the punk circle becomes really small and very difficult to see what it is that I am doing movement wise. What I have wanted (like in EQAlign and TSX) is to be able to zoom in and see small movements. Is there any way of doing this or do I just have to guess and hope that I don't over or under correct?

Thanks to any of those PHD gurus
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Old 06-05-2016, 12:20 AM
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Scheimfluge (Geoff Graham)
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Phd

Colin.

If you don't see the magenta circle anymore then you are done this is what was explained to me. I also watched the video on PHD 2 on the Astro Imaging Channel

Geoff
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Old 06-05-2016, 12:24 AM
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Atmos (Colin)
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Originally Posted by Scheimfluge View Post
Colin.

If you don't see the magenta circle anymore then you are done this is what was explained to me. I also watched the video on PHD 2 on the Astro Imaging Channel

Geoff
Thanks Geoff. I can still see the circle, just begins getting difficult to work with getting the movement correct when working with like 30 pixels in a larger screen
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Old 09-05-2016, 07:04 PM
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Not sure what you mean. PHD2 works like Pempro but less sophisticated. It projects a trend line when the star is at a certain location and you adjust until the trend line settles down to be accurate and it is level. That can be tricky in that you have to wait a while after an adjustment until the plot settles down and the trendline is obvious. It seems quite sensitive to small changes so that is good.

Pempro does something very similar but it has a few additional steps.

Greg.
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Old 09-05-2016, 07:24 PM
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peter_4059 (Peter)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by gregbradley View Post
PHD2 works like Pempro but less sophisticated.
I'd say less complicated rather than less sophisticated since they both plot a trend line of the Dec drift after following a calibration process. I've used both and find phd quite a lot easier to use.

Once the circle is so small that you can't see the adjustment the alignment is close enough from what I've read on the phd2 group forum hence no magnify functionality.
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Old 09-05-2016, 08:39 PM
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Atmos (Colin)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by gregbradley View Post
Not sure what you mean. PHD2 works like Pempro but less sophisticated. It projects a trend line when the star is at a certain location and you adjust until the trend line settles down to be accurate and it is level. That can be tricky in that you have to wait a while after an adjustment until the plot settles down and the trendline is obvious. It seems quite sensitive to small changes so that is good.

Pempro does something very similar but it has a few additional steps.

Greg.
Quote:
Originally Posted by peter_4059 View Post
I'd say less complicated rather than less sophisticated since they both plot a trend line of the Dec drift after following a calibration process. I've used both and find phd quite a lot easier to use.

Once the circle is so small that you can't see the adjustment the alignment is close enough from what I've read on the phd2 group forum hence no magnify functionality.
I had considered getting PemPro for a while but as my new mount is not going to have any need for periodic correction (no gears), haven't bothered seeing whether it'll improve my EQ6. Basically, no experience with how that one works

Peter has nailed it though, I wasn't sure how accurate I needed to be in that drift alignments circle thing (purple circle). The problem is that with my guide scope at a pixel scale of 3.4", even a small circle equates to a relatively large error quite quickly (hence wanting to zoom in). Now that I have the QHY22 it may perform a lot better than the QHY9 did for this purpose, at least that has a scale of 1.4" which is kinda a 2.5x zoom on what I had previously been trying.
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Old 09-05-2016, 08:53 PM
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Colin something I've found handy with PHD2 when tweaking Alt/Az or guiding focus is to share my laptop screen on to my mobile using Teamviewer. Even though the lappy is generally in the house (away from mossies/hot/cold etc ) its obviously handy to be able to easily see the screen near the mount.

Not sure if you can zoom past 1:1 though, now I think about it. Seemed like a good idea at the time....
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