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This winter we have had some shockingly cold nights with very rapidly falling temps in Sydney. I can watch the average FWHM values increase with every sub and sometimes have to refocus every 15-20 minutes. A real pain.. Slewing away to a guide star, focusing, restarting guiding is a huge time waster and is frustrating. Certainly some sort of motorized focuser is required. FocusMax is great. Both old and new versions. But, what I'm excited about is Sharplock and FocusLock (Optec's version) that allows for totally automated focusing based on the astigmatic guide star image in IR as seen through an ONAG. The good news is that Optec is going to release a kit to allow this technology to work on OAG, so ONAG is not required. I have been beta testing this software and it works very well indeed (with my ONAG). I have tested it over a fall of 4 degrees and great focus was easily maintained. Basically you just image and the focus is always good as long as the system was properly set up to start with.
Peter
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