Auto Guiding Success

[leon]

Hi Guys, well tonight with the great assistance of John G, and a long telephone call I have finally learn't to Auto Guide, and it wasn't a scary as i thought.
So hopefully in the very near future you will see some of the results.
Just thought i would mention it as i'm pretty excited.

Leon

[ballaratdragons (Ken)]

EXCELLENT!!!


WHERE'S THE PICS, LEON???

[pvelez (Pete)]

Hey Leon - thats great.

I've been using your old ED80 and a Stellarvue finder to do the same thing.

Now if only I could get put to some clear skies so I can show off what I've learned

Pete

[leon]

Settle down Ken the pics will be coming shortly, I only forgot to do one thing, and that was to change the ISO setting on the camera.

I'm used to short exposures of about 30 Sec's each, so 800 ISO was Ok for that, but when i took some tonight for 3 min's each that setting was to fast and although the stars were nice and round the exposure was over exposed and very light.

Should have set it to about 200 or so, Ah well, i'll fix that tomorrow night.

Pete, hope you have success as well, it isn't quite as hard as i thought, and hopefully with some more practice things will be better.

But then I did have a good teacher.

Cheers Leon

[pvelez (Pete)]

Thanks Leon. Have managed to get the mount and lappy to talk - only issue I ad was that the guide rate was too low and PHD made the scope chase the seeing all about.

Next time - when there are no clouds and the moon is away - I'll give it another go.

Pete

[leon]

Pete it was suggested to me tonight that the guide rate should be 1-1.5 sec's which i found worked for me quite nicely, however i still have lots to learn, but tonight was great.

leon

[ballaratdragons (Ken)]

Originally Posted by leon

Pete it was suggested to me tonight that the guide rate should be 1-1.5 sec's which i found worked for me quite nicely, however i still have lots to learn, but tonight was great.

leon

Yep, and if the seeing gets bad, just jump it up to 2 or 3 seconds. Then you aren't chasing dancing stars.

[Tamtarn]

Well Done Leon

On your way now to producing even greater images.

[leon]

Thanks David, that's the plan, only experience and time will yeild the results.

leon

[radu5er]

Good work Leon...glad to hear there is another expert in the area to call on when I decide to try it.

Of course you do realize that now it will cloud up for a few days just to try your patience...

[leon]

Your dead right Rick, I am ready to go out tonight, but already the clouds are rolling in, Ah well, that is Astronomy.

Leon

[g__day (Matthew)]

Well done! I had a positive experience with PHD last night too - doing a 20 minute guided shot of NGC 6093 - and finding the stars are beautifully round!

So to me 20 minutes at 2.3 metre focal length is impressive. Some nights the mount see-saws or yo-yos when PHD drives into over-correct mode ever 3 seconds - some night its spot on - some nights variations kick in by hour 3-4 of imaging - go figure.

I have two hints for you:

1. Tune "minimum pixel's before guide pulse sent". I upped it from its default 0.25 of a pixel to between 0.70 to 1.1 of a pixel and this improved the consistency of my results dramatically.

2. If your mount slews a long, long way - consider re-calibrating PHD - press the brain and tick force calibration. I notice after a few hours PHD can suddenly invert and when it tries to centre a star it actually moves the mount in 180 degrees the wrong direction = whoopsie! Then its time to re-calibrate.

With city glow I can see 20 minutes is really pushing things - but 4 * 8 minute shots combined may give me a much nicer result, its just a pleasure seeing how fine your tracking and PE can be if you finally get everything working well!

[Geoff45 (Geoff)]

Leon, I know just how you feel after I managed to autoguide last night for the first time. Great!
Geoff

[leon]

Thanks Guys, yep it is magic just to see it working.

Leon