Auto Guiding Success

[leon]

Hi Guys, well tonight with the great assistance of John G, and a long telephone call I have finally learn't to Auto Guide, and it wasn't a scary :scared: as i thought.
So hopefully in the very near future you will see some of the results.
Just thought i would mention it as i'm pretty excited. :D :D

Leon :thumbsup:

[ballaratdragons]

:stargaze: :jump: :cool: :party: :cool: :party: :cool: :party: :cool: :party: :2thumbs: :jump2: :jump:

:rockband: :rockband: :rockband: :rockband:

EXCELLENT!!!


WHERE'S THE PICS, LEON??? :lol:

[pvelez]

Hey Leon - thats great. :thumbsup:

I've been using your old ED80 and a Stellarvue finder to do the same thing.

Now if only I could get put to some clear skies so I can show off what I've learned

Pete

[leon]

Settle down Ken :lol: the pics will be coming shortly, I only forgot to do one thing, and that was to change the ISO setting on the camera. :doh:

I'm used to short exposures of about 30 Sec's each, so 800 ISO was Ok for that, but when i took some tonight for 3 min's each that setting was to fast and although the stars were nice and round the exposure was over exposed and very light. :whistle:

Should have set it to about 200 or so, Ah well, i'll fix that tomorrow night.

Pete, hope you have success as well, it isn't quite as hard as i thought, and hopefully with some more practice things will be better. ;)

But then I did have a good teacher.

Cheers Leon :thumbsup:

[pvelez]

Thanks Leon. Have managed to get the mount and lappy to talk - only issue I ad was that the guide rate was too low and PHD made the scope chase the seeing all about.

Next time - when there are no clouds and the moon is away - I'll give it another go.

Pete

[leon]

Pete it was suggested to me tonight that the guide rate should be 1-1.5 sec's which i found worked for me quite nicely, however i still have lots to learn, but tonight was great.

leon

[ballaratdragons]

Yep, and if the seeing gets bad, just jump it up to 2 or 3 seconds. Then you aren't chasing dancing stars.

[Tamtarn]

Well Done Leon :thumbsup::thumbsup:

On your way now to producing even greater images.

[leon]

Thanks David, that's the plan, only experience and time will yeild the results.

leon

[radu5er]

Good work Leon...glad to hear there is another expert in the area to call on when I decide to try it. :D

Of course you do realize that now it will cloud up for a few days just to try your patience...



:cloudy:

[leon]

Your dead right Rick, I am ready to go out tonight, but already the clouds are rolling in, Ah well, that is Astronomy.

Leon

[g__day]

Well done! I had a positive experience with PHD last night too - doing a 20 minute guided shot of NGC 6093 - and finding the stars are beautifully round!

So to me 20 minutes at 2.3 metre focal length is impressive. Some nights the mount see-saws or yo-yos when PHD drives into over-correct mode ever 3 seconds - some night its spot on - some nights variations kick in by hour 3-4 of imaging - go figure.

I have two hints for you:

1. Tune "minimum pixel's before guide pulse sent". I upped it from its default 0.25 of a pixel to between 0.70 to 1.1 of a pixel and this improved the consistency of my results dramatically.

2. If your mount slews a long, long way - consider re-calibrating PHD - press the brain and tick force calibration. I notice after a few hours PHD can suddenly invert and when it tries to centre a star it actually moves the mount in 180 degrees the wrong direction = whoopsie! Then its time to re-calibrate.

With city glow I can see 20 minutes is really pushing things - but 4 * 8 minute shots combined may give me a much nicer result, its just a pleasure seeing how fine your tracking and PE can be if you finally get everything working well!

[Geoff45]

Leon, I know just how you feel after I managed to autoguide last night for the first time. Great!
Geoff

[leon]

Thanks Guys, yep it is magic just to see it working.

Leon