webcam and scope for guiding - No stars

[saysme (Steve)]

I have an old tasco 99vr 60 x 300mm scope to use a a guide scope modified to accept my agent v5 web cam. I achieved daytime focus to about 500m (the furthest object I could find) and I still had what I thought was sufficient front and rear focus for stars- the intent was to use this combo as a guide scope. When I tested it last night I couldn't focus/find a star on my screen at all. Do I need to remove the IR filter from the front of my CCD chip to get stars or does the old tasco just not have enough light gathering power? Ive read about 50mm conversions for guide scopes so I should get enough light??

[Astroman (Andrew Wall)]

I have a 50mm finderscope modified with a toucam and can generally find the brighter stars. Are you sure the stars you were trying to find were bright enough? I usually try on the Crux stars or the pointers, they are bright enough to get focus on... It could be you need to adjust the gain also (if you can), but try one thing at a time... If there is a way to adjust settings try adjust something like gain or exposure. Testing during the day is one thing but at night you need a bit of sensitivity.

[swannies1983 (Dan)]

I use an unmodded toucam in combination with a 60mm f/11 tasco refractor. With this setup, I can find stars down to about mag 6 from suburban skies. It can be difficult at times but I'm yet to not find a suitable guide star when imaging something.

[saysme (Steve)]

Thanks, I should be able to find a star, I'm pretty sure now that it is a focus issue. I need to fiddle with the settings to reduce some if the noise I'm capturing. When the moon is up again set the focus and go star hunting, whilst fiddling with the settings. I have established that I can adjust all my camera settings whilst in PHD so this should be a good opportunity to familiarise myself with the program.

[saysme (Steve)]

Placed my solar filter on my guide scope with the purpose of focusing the scope for approx focus for guiding stars. I got it to focus nicely in yawcam yet when I moved it over into PHD it appeared way out of whack. I tried adjusting everything down and still couldn't obtain a sharp focus. Probably just the built in parameters for PHD, however when I moved it back to yawcam it failed to recognise the original focused settings changed back manually. What I did notice though was that if I blocked out an additional 90% of the light it appeared to focus. Is it a case of the CCD getting hot despite the filter?