Guide star video for testing guiding........

[stan26]

Guy's, I may be having a completely mad moment here, but I seem to remember a while back, somewhere kicking around on the net, possibly youtube? there was a video of what replicated a moving star that could be used for testing a guide setup.....? I stummbled across it by accident age's ago before I understood anything to do with imaging, but now thinking back it all makes sense to have such thing and it would be really handy to know if my recently tuned/re greased HEQ5 is performing as it should.......

Regards

James

[Bloom]

http://sweiller.free.fr/SGE/SGE-star-guiding-emulator.htm

... But I tested it and it proved almost useless!

[cfpendock]

I used a light in a box with a pin [removed word] hole. It's true that I found it worked at around 20 m - but I was able to play in a long barn. I tried the moving star on the PC screen - not enough S/N for PHD guiding to work. But the light in the box worked a treat - you move the box a few mm side to side or up and down and watch the scope follow it.

[Merlin66]

Bloom,

I've used SGE many times without problems...what happened to make you think it "proved almost useless"?????

[stan26]

Excellent, thanks guys! I knew I wasn't going mad!

Stan

[Bloom]

Merlin66, it all happened a long time ago, so I do not exactly remember what were the problems. I do remember that if one fails to align the whole setup accurately, nothing works. But the details elude me. I was trying to calculate the periodic error of my CG5. I gave up the effort, took the mount outside (yes, it was a cloudless night and I set up my equipment indoors) and measured the periodic error from a real star...

In theory there is no reason why SGE should not be working. Maybe I was doing something wrong, but on the other hand I do remember the whole procedure was not easy. I cannot say SGE is user friendly.