Quote:
Originally Posted by Shiraz
Hope you don't mind me butting in Lee.
Barry, I tried autopec - didn't work and had to reload EQMOD and phd2 to get everything working again. For a starter, autopec gathered data for 3x EQ6 periods rather than 3x EQ8 periods (I think that I had defined the EQ8 at that stage). it then generated a curve that looked different to that from pecprep and tracking failed altogether - even with pec off. Looks to me like there may be a bit of a bug in the translation of mount parameters or something. Pity really, since it is a very good process in principle. I guess that this is the sort of problem that might be difficult for the code developers to devote much time to when they very generously do so on a voluntary basis.
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Not at all mate, appreciate it in fact.
In response to the original question, I haven't tried it with my EQ8, I did briefly try it with my old NEQ6 and it appeared to immediately worsen results as well. Also given that the first couple of cycles in particular consistently seem to be misleading when evaluating with PECPrep, I'm disinclined to use a fully automated system, especially one that only allows you to capture 5 worm cycles... wait, apparently that's 9 now? I should probably update :-)
Quote:
Originally Posted by Eden
Barry and I were discussing this a few weeks ago when I asked for his input on why the Synscan PEC routine was behaving strangely. He suggested, among other things, using the AutoPEC in EQMod.
After recording 5 worm cycles (which takes a fair while), it kicked in and worked beautifully. I watched my RMS drop down to somewhere between 0.16 and 0.20 (at 900mm, in near-IR), compared to the 0.30 - 0.40 beforehand. This was with a PA of within 1-2'.
If the seeing up your way is really that bad, trying guiding in the near-IR. It can only improve the situation.
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Ah man, I wish I could get close to that. Last night I was getting mostly 0.75 - 0.85, with spikes out to 2". Mind you, it did look particularly poor last night. All the same, that is much better than with the NEQ6, I could never get that below 1.2".
Starting to think maybe I should give up on imaging at this resolution and down size. My primary interest is galaxies, but since I've had this scope I've managed only once to get images with stars having an FWHM ~3, usually it's upwards of 4 and very soft due to seeing/guiding. I suspect something around 1200mm might be more usable for me, and might still give me a decent amount of targets.
Near-IR guiding is a great idea, not something I've tried yet. Having said that though, if it really is just seeing, then even if I get better guiding, I'm still not getting the resolution to justify imaging at this resolution so maybe there's no point.