SPC900 unmod for guide

[Kirien]

Hi Everyone. I got a spc900 unmod and id like to use it for autoguiding. As it is not moded for long exposures, it offers 5fps. I can easily see brighter stars but no way to see starts that are fainter than 3-4 mags im afraid. Acording to that, shall i use manual exposure and gain or switch to automatic gain control in PHD? Any of You using it for guiding?

[Waldemar]

5 fps is a bit fast for guiding (only 0,2 sec.). you will need a longer exposure time to get the dimmer stars, like 1,5 or 2 sec.. In PHD there is a setting to change that, but I don't know if the unmodded spc900 can cope with that. You will have to try.

Waldemar

[Kirien]

Well, shutter speed indeed cause the picture is refreshed every 2s if set so, but i doubt the camera sensor is "opened" for such a time. Most probably i will switch either to ALCCD5 or SynGuider standalone...