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Hi David
I too have a QHY5 and was pretty disappointed with it at the start until I received the following advice from the good people of IceInSpace.
These were:
1. Focus carefully
2. Use a moderate focal length to give good field of view - I am now using a 100mm Mak focal reduced to 600mm
3. Use a dark frame. This appears to improve the contrast of the stars.
Following this advice I can now usually see several guide stars on the screen when I have the guiding scope collimated with my imaging scope.
If not I move the guide scope slightly until I can see a guide star. Even when the guide stars seem rather dim, PHD seems to guide on them OK all night.
Last night I was imaging when a wind was still gusting up until about
midnight. This occasionally threw the RA guiding off to + or - 2 pixels but it
soon regained its normal sub pixel guiding. The parameters may vary a lot depending on what gear you are using. I find just using near the default figures ok but improvements can be made by adjusting the aggressiveness.
I usually try to use 1 second imaging but will go to 2 or 3 seconds if the guiding appears a bit unstable.
Cheers Peter
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