Quote:
Originally Posted by Octane
Well done, mate.
It's wonderful when everything works, eh?
How long were your guide exposures?
The real trick is to nail your polar alignment. You can ask others here and they'll attest to how nasty I am with polar alignment. I make sure the star doesn't move at all for 5-10 minutes at a time.
Then, you should be able to get away with 2-2.5 second guide exposures so that you're not chasing the seeing, and, the mount should happily track away.
The end result is worth it.
H
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Thanks H,
Great to hear from you.
I had PHD set for 1.5 secs, but with the toucam not running in LE mode, I simply had the camera controls set to full autoexposure and took a dark frame for PHD to lock onto the star and give me SNR of about 6.5 every time.
Once I stopped fiddling while it was calibrating the guide interface, PHD simply locked on, went green and sat there staying within +- 0.15-0.2 of the star (I was watching it closely) while the canon utility clicked away with the 5 x 5 min subs at ISO 400.
I know the polar alignment was good as I adjusted with my method through the binos at the Beta Hydrus, 5 past six stars to the SCP as per my tutorial, got the mount pointed and then double checked with the polar scope and all 4 stars in the Octans asterism on the polar finder were spot on. When watching PHD, the guide star didnt move the whole time and stayed pretty much in the centre of the cross hairs and box. (oh yeah, and I remembered to mark the tripod leg positions on the ground before I packed up)
Pretty easy (and funky) when it all comes together, felt chuffed at 4:00am when it all started running like a bought one....
Thanks for the comments and the tips....now I just have to chop the 2" adaptor so the MPCC can be used to get rid of the coma.
Cheers
Chris