I have finally got polar alignment(PA) sorted (not great) and using Alignmaster(AL) I get a close PA. Last night I tried using the DSI II and PHD to get a better alignment with the aid of the bullseye overlay in PHD.
I plugged the camera in, fire up AL & PHD, start taking images in PHD and WOW my starts are in focus and really sharp. This surprised me as I hadn't focused since taken off the diagonal and putting in the 2"-1.5" adaptor and the camera. To easy I thought but started following AL's instructions, slewing to the 1st start, check alignment in PHD, nothings changed, the nice crisp star is in the same place, mmmm, check lense caps etc, pull cam out look thru scope, alls clear, replace cam, take more pics (playing around with exp. time, etc.) star doesn't move. So I held a torch infront of the scope, no change in image. Tried maxium DL and again got stars that didn't change.
So my question is what am I doing wrong, should the image just appear in the window or do I have to load it into PHD?
PHD has a "bullseye" overlay I use to center stars, It sounds like if you arent focusing between changing eyepieces and cameras and the "stars" are in all your programs, they are just bright pixels and not stars.
Hi Peterm i thought about hot pixels but I thought by shining a very bright torch into the front of the telescope would give me something other than hot pixels.
Carl, I can't find a simulator mode in PHD anywhere but that sounds like whats happening.
John, I haven't used PHD myself (yet) but many of those types of software have a "simulator" as one of the "camera/ccd" choices. Just a thought. Dunno?
Hi Carl, Found it, its listed under the list of available cameras. But I didn't have it selected. I will try again tonight and play around with the focus a bit more. I just tried the cam on its own just plugged in to the lappy and got a white image when I tried with the lense cap off.
Well after playing around with focus and adding an extra couple of inchs of back focus I was able to use PHD with the bullseye overlay and alignmaster to align my scope.
