Quote:
Originally Posted by xelasnave
I love the PHD graphs and the little target box but it would be nice to know what they indicate  .
Can you help?
First the trend lines what do they indicate if they are going up or down?
They show any drift - this is useful in declination with guiding off. When the drift settles down so the trend line is fairly static you can see the PA error displayed on the graph with the trend line. With guiding on the trend lines should be level.
In the little target what does this indicate.
Thats a scatter plot of where the guide star has been recorded. You want it tight and round. Useful for showing any eccentricity in guiding which can lead to oblong stars
If the dots go up or down or to the left or right.
Up/down is declination, left/right is RA. Any single dot is meaningless. The idea is to get a long period view of your guiding
I presume if the RA is trending up or down the solution in the first instance would be to adjust counter weights?
Not necessarily. Make sure guide output is enabled first. Or you might not have enough aggression.
I run 1.5 seconds with RA aggression at around 100 and the dec sometimes nil and other times between 30 and 50.
Not recommended. Reset to the default values and run the Guiding Assistant
Last night things were all over the place but after a few attempts at balance and taking off my new 70 mm guide viewing scope it seemed to be happier.
Sometimes its just good or bad luck.
At about 12 oclock it seemed to work well at 2 minute exposure and the last 2 captures I risked 5 minutes which went very well as the stars were round.
The graph lines wander out of the graph box but it keeps guiding so I am not too worried but I would like them to stay where I can watch them 
Change the scale using the graph menu
The ra was staying within a second range (I think that is the correct interpretation) but slowly drifted up and off the graph screen.
That doesn't sound good. PHD2 should keep the guide star centred.
Its working but I would like to know what the trend lines and the target dots are telling me.
It looks like your mount is not responding to guide pulses. Could be backlash. The dots say much the same but in less detail
The screen print below was at the start of the night and I forgot to get one later but I just need to know what the various graphs and dots mean...
Learn to use the Help menu to go to your logs folder and attach the guide log. Screen shots are not useful for analysis
According to Polemaster my pole alignment was near perfect so I cant understand why dec should trend usually up and if the trend lines in RA are telling me the motors are fighting the counter weight or the scope side.
So many possible causes. This is where you use PHD2 as a diagnostic tool.
Alex |
My responses in red above