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Quick PHD2 questions please.


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I tried to set up PHD2 tonight - there is  a large moon so it was just an exercise for the future but I didn't get very far !!

ST80 scope, QHY5 camera, Orion Sirius mount (HEQ5).

Does a beep and a red flash on the screen mean the star has been lost ???  Some high cloud came in at about the time the graph went berserk and the screen started flashing

At about this time the box where PHD thinks the star is was some way off the cross hairs. See photo.

Calibration took ages - 45 steps in each direction - nearly 25 minutes - is that normal??

Any ideas ????

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post-33941-0-31090800-1410385598_thumb.j

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firstly go into the brain and click on the mount settings, there at the bottom will be some setting you can enter to work out the calibration steps for you, should only take two or three minutes to calibrate, increasing the calibration steps will shorten the time it takes to calibrate, but don`t make them too short, 

secondly if phd can`t see the star due to cloud cover then it will bing and the green square will show red, it it only happens once or twice then phd will pick up the star again and carry on, if it goes on for a while then phd could lose the star altogether, then i would stop phd, click on the green arrow to start looping again and then click on the star again then click phd button, as you have calibrated in that area of the sky already it should start guiding straight away.

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Hi Billy

There is a newer version of PHD2 - 2.3.1 so always good to have the latest version :). Um, you might have to adjust the gain of your guide camera, especially if using an ST80 as guide scope. As suggested above, it's usually recommended to set your exposures to around 2s - I think 10s is too long really (going by your screen capture). Also looking at your screen capture, I'm not sure if I'm seeing stars or noise... I suspect it's probably noise! I had a go at imaging tonight but seeing was very poor so didn't get very far :(. I did manage to calibrate and took a couple of test subs but packed up after that. I find that especially if it's misty and lots of water in the air, then I get a lot of noise reflected back from the sky. Sometimes I can still guide and image, it all depends. It's worth using the inbuilt calibration step calculator :). Also it's useful to make use of the star profile display in tools. I also use the target display.

Lets hope for clearer skies soon!

Cheers

Louise

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The calibration step in the " Brain " is a fuction of the FL of the guide scope, the longer the FL the lower the number of the steps. In PHD and with a 50mm ( 170mm FL ) I use the figure of 2500. ST 80 is at 400 of FL so a figure of 1000 is probably a good starting point, I am sure that PHD2 is quite similar.

A.G

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Hi

I guess PHD2 is a 'work in progress' so not necessarily bug-free though I've not had problems with it. That's not to say I haven't had guiding problems but I've never had any indication that any trouble has been caused by the software itself. Still, it's always worth being wary, especially when a new version has just been released.

Louise

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Hi, 10s capture is way too much. Your star will have wandered off by the time your screen refreshes. I always use 1s. Your screen capture is interesting. I usually work in a small area of the complete view and turn up the gain. I'm not familiar with your guide camera but my Lodestar will work through light cloud cover ( not that that is much use for imaging!).

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