Auto focusing options

[The_bluester (Paul)]

Regards changing focus over the night, my old C925 (Not an Edge model) used to shift focus spectacularly as it cooled and needed regular focus runs. I used to run two sequences, one for the start of the night where the temperature of the scope was dropping rapidly, where I did focus runs very often (After a hot day, just from the heat in the garage it would go from sharp to doughnuts in less than half an hour, so I would do focus runs every 15 minutes) and the second sequence had the focus runs further apart. I lost a fair bit of imaging time as a result but I got more sharp subs than before so it was a win overall.

I can see a difference over the night even with my carbon fibre newt (I am fussy) so I have Voyager configured to do a focus run every 2 degrees temp change or every hour for both my current scopes. 5 minutes every hour to ensure all subs are as sharp as they can be is a trade off I am happy with.

[JohnH]

Originally Posted by AdamJL

ha, exactly. Some will have some extra bells and whistles (like NINA with the plugin to do faster AF and also analyse your tilt/back focus issues after the AF run), but every capture software will do the basics.

Yup - AstroArt 8 does Full Frame autofocus as well...has many options and is scriptable...