Autoguiding - beginners questions :)

[daz]

I have my B&W LX modded webcam, K3CCD 1.2 which has drift and guiding capabilities - which I believe I can use to guide.

Question is - how? And do I need anything else (hardware wise) to guide with?

I have an ST80 to use as a guide scope.

Ta

[Kaptain Klevtsov]

You need to talk to Astronomiser and get the little box that goes on the parallel cable and a lead from that to your rmount.

You need to be able to fix the guide 'scope to your imaging 'scope in a way that lets you offset it to find a guide star.

Setup wise, you frame your target in the imaging 'scope, then get a guide star on the guide camera chip.

Next job is move the 'scope using the hand controls and align the RA axis so that the guide star moves horizontally. You do this by turning the guide camera. Each time you move the 'scope to check the alignment, move it back again or you lose the framing.

Select the guide star and hit the guide button. The mount will prorbably shoot off somewhere so get ready to unhit the guide button. If it went wild sideways, reverse the guiding sense (check the box above the graph bit), same goes for if it went up or down, change the sense of the Dec.

Once you are guiding you ought to get flat graphs for both RA and Dec. I always move the guide star by messing with the manual controls to make sure it comes back to where it should be.

The various numbers can be played with to get better guiding but you don't need it to be super ace for the images to be better than unguided.

K3CCD remembers the numbers so you won't need to mess with it more than once.

Captain Chaos

[daz]

Cheers KK

Next - my lappy only has one PCMCIA port which will be taken up with a parallel port for the CCD. The wiring diagram suggests that I can't use the parallel box on this port for both guiding and acquisition. So, can I use a USB-PARALLEL converter and use that for the guiding, do you think?

[MartinB]

Daz, Maxim is whizzy at guiding - sub pixel guiding accuracy and a calibration routine that means it doesn't matter how the guide camera is aligned. Think it would work with a web cam. Think USB to paralled converters work fine but no experience.

[Kaptain Klevtsov]

Well I use the same parallel port for guiding and aquisition. The SC3 is imaging controlled through the parallel port and the Toucam is guiding sending the controls through the parallel port (same one).

The astronomiser box has male and female parallel port connections so you plug and extension into the computer, if required, stick the Astronomiser box on that, plug the LX webcam parallel plug into the other side of the Astronomiser bit and it should work. The guide cable plugs into the side of the Astronomiser box and the mount head.

Captain Chaos

[daz]

Thanks both - order on its way to Andy. I shall play and report