Hi Paul
I have a Moonlite motorised focuser (manual controller) and SBIG ST7E CCD. I use the CCDSoft focus graph and have found it to be very accurate and reliable.
- I get rough focus just by racking the focuser in/out whilst eyeballing the notebook display until a mag 2 or 3 star blooms.
- Then I slew to a mag 4 to 6 star, expose for 2 secs continuously in x2 binned mode and touch up the focus using the ‘scope focus knob.
- Then using the same star, I revert back to x1 binning (i.e. no binning) and draw a sub-frame around the star for fast downloads (I’ve got the old Parallel model).
- Then watch the on-screen focus graph whilst fine tuning focus with the Moonlite controller.
- Making very quick presses of the in/out buttons usually finds perfect focus.
This routine generally takes me around 15 to 20 minutes.
Cheers
Dennis