nehemiah

[nehemiah (Paul)]

I guess I have lost my place and I cannot retrieve my first post so here goes another try.

I am having a difficult time focusing my G3 CD camera when using it as a guide on a 50mm mini guide scope. I am using the camera to guide the 6" XLT Celestron Nextstar scope. I am using the PHD 2 guide program. I use the sequencing feature to take a snapshot each second for focusing purposes. So far I have been unsuccessful at focusing and capturing an image. I use the pull down "file/save image" but can't recall the image in the laptop file folder.
I sure could use some good directions.

[jsmoraes (Jorge)]

Sory, but I didn't understand well your problem. Let's see: 1) you have problem with focus 2) you are using PHD 2 to guide 3) your are trying to adjust the focus of guide camera with PHD 2.
If I understood well, your error is to use PHD 2 to adjust the focus. PHD hasn't good image of a star. For PHD the most importance is the movement of a star. Therefore it saturate and clip the image to have the star on the screen.
Try to focus the star with another program, and only after this adjustment active PHD for guinding task.

note: the image of screen with a star inside by PHD 2 is something more than worse. It is terrible ! Trash ! And that is normal, because PHD is to guiding task, not to capture image.
The saved file is FIT. You need some program to open this kind of file.

See the PHD image that I saved at 02/11/2014 . I didn't use dark file. I used noise filter 3x3 to clean the image. The photo is without action of filter. Let's go to play: Where is Wally ?

[ZeroID (Brent)]

Hi Paul, use an app like Sharpcap (free) to get your focus first. It will run as a 10 fps video and you can turn the gain down till you get a sharper image which will allow you to set focus. Then lock the setup and get back to setting up guiding via PHD. Use the camera setting controls in PHD to get a good star image first.
You may also want to try Metaguide as a guiding software. has more controls over exposure etc and is mostly automatic in it's setup.