AsiAir Guiding Edge 8" Celestron OAG Guiding Settings

[Millsy]

Good Afternoon all

Would love it if someone has the same setup as me and could give me a starting setup for Guide Settings they punch into the AsiAir & get good results - Edge Hd8, .7 Reducer, Asi294mc Pro, Asi174 Guide Camera, Celestron OAG & Neq6 SW mount.

Cheers Millsy

[Millsy]

Going to answer my own question here. I was imaging the Statue of Liberty Nebula NGC3576 2 days ago and had some guiding success with the below.
It wasn't perfect but was the best I've had.. One thing to note. I've struggles to get a clear image out of the Edge, thought it might be Collimation, the OAG Prism being too low & obstructing, not perfect PA, checked all these things that could make the image look out of focus but in the end if your tracking isn't around the 1.5" or less error range then your images really suffer. Get this done before you start changing major setups.

Guide Camera Gain 320
Guide Focal Length 1458mm (should match main focal length after plate solve).
Calibration Steps 500
Max RA 600
Max Dec 600
RA Aggression =60%
Dec Aggression =60%
Exposure 2 Sec

I was imaging 60 sec subs as the above would stay stable the majority of the time but a slight blip from RA or Dec would rubbish the sub.. There wasn't a breath of wind but it just jumped randomly which annoyed me enough to drop the exposure down.

Hope it helps someone.

[Millsy]

Images of settings

[Dave882]

Hey Andrew- I can’t give specific advice on your setup, but for me when setting up my ASIAIR just played around with the settings a bit if guiding was not great. Obviously the aggression setting and max settings are the main adjustments, but also consider the guide rate. I use 0.5.

Looking at your graph, the excursion is in DEC. and for me, if I have poor guiding in DEC it’s either because of poor polar alignment, external factors like wind or cable snags, or if the calibration is poor (either need to be redone or not enough steps).

Let us know how you go

[Millsy]

Thanks David
I played around with pretty much every setting. I tried .2, .7 went up and down on Aggression, tried increasing and decreasing Max settings.. All in little steps to see what would happen. Most of the night I was above 2 - 3 in error and was using 3 sec exp.. As the target started to rise after 1.40am the guide stars got a little brighter so I dropped down to 2 sec exp..
NGC3576 was very low most of the night and being on the outskirts of Melbourne I dont doubt this had an impact.. Thank you so much for the reply, any advice is helpful as I really want to get this setup to work.

Cheers

[Dave882]

How's your scope balance in DEC and RA?

[Millsy]

The mechanism is relatively stiff so it is a little difficuilt to make sure it's spot on.. Im not sure how to loosen it up enough for it to rotate smoothly. Perhaps that might be an issue. When you loosen the clutch it still feels like there is some resistance there.. I balance it as best I can using multiple positions.