Having problems with guiding that Im unable to fixed need some help.

[Darien]

Hello all...

I just recently joined this community from the recommendations  of others and thought I'd give it a try in hopes of fixing my guiding problems having yet to BE fixed in a very long time.

Ive never been able to get my guding to work correctly except one time when doing th flame nebula being able to get 240sec with tight stars but ever since ive always see the message on PHD saying, "the RA/DEC axis are questionable". Now I have been told to make my AVX mount east heavy which haven't really grasped what it actually means....Meaning it the weight of the SCT moves eastward? I don't know. Ive tried putting 5 points on my Ra and Dec for backslash my guiding rates I'm not familiar with though its listed at 50 at the moment...

Below shows what I typically see on PHD when doing imaging. Its pretty disgusting to be honest. Thanks for your help guys I really appreciate it. I wanna get this fixed before going to Texas Tech University in the fall.

 

 

 

 

[RuralBill]

I may be wrong here, but I don't think you should have the backlash on 5 it should be "zero"or "off" when guiding with PHD....

but I may stand corrected by someone

cheers

Bill

[Darien]

6 minutes ago, RuralBill said:

I may be wrong here, but I don't think you should have the backlash on 5 it should be "zero"or "off" when guiding with PHD....

but I may stand corrected by someone

cheers

Bill

Hello Bill,

At this point anything will help because I tried everything and nothing seemed to help but its probably a simple solution when I find thanks for your help!

Best regards,

Darien

[Owmuchonomy]

Hi Darien and welcome to the forum. It is a friendly helpful place. I will be very honest and say that trying to guide your SCT with its long focal length will provide very significant challenges compared to lighter, short focal length scopes often used for images. That said, my first question to you is have you sorted out the polar alignment of your mount? How accurate have you been able to get it?

[blinky]

My eq6 is polar drift aligned and I can guide perfectly at 2m focal length my SCT in maxim dl but when i tried PHD (even though I used it for the drift alignment) I got the same sorts of warnings as the op did. I now always just guide in maxim......

[RuralBill]

I guide an SCT at 2000mm focal length, and have had subs  of 15mins with nice round stars, it is very very doable.

the secret is to make sure the mount is very well balanced on all axis, I normally balance mine on my bench in the garage, and then when on the mount the loom of cables acts to keep the mound back end heavy, and all this on a wedge mounted fork driven SCT....

it really does work contrary to popular belief....

but in your case you have an Equatorial mount so much easier to balance, but try with backlash off, and see if that helps.

Bill

[Darien]

14 minutes ago, Owmuchonomy said:

Hi Darien and welcome to the forum. It is a friendly helpful place. I will be very honest and say that trying to guide your SCT with its long focal length will provide very significant challenges compared to lighter, short focal length scopes often used for images. That said, my first question to you is have you sorted out the polar alignment of your mount? How accurate have you been able to get it?

I've been able to get it pretty good to were the star is in the eyepiece. In a polar scope.. is there a particular side were Polaris should be? I've been turning the scope to correlate as Ursa Major begins to dip to the horizon. Darien

[Darien]

4 minutes ago, RuralBill said:

I guide an SCT at 2000mm focal length, and have had suns of 15mins with nice round stars, it is very very doable.

the secret is to make sure the mount is very well balanced on all axis, I normally balance mine on my bench in the garage, and then when on the mount the loom of cables acts to keep the mound back end heavy, and all this on a wedge mounted fork driven SCT....

it really does work contrary to popular belief....

but in your case you have an Equatorial mount so much easier to balance, but try with backlash off, and see if that helps.

Bill

Ok Ill give it a try and see what happens!

[Darien]

16 minutes ago, blinky said:

My eq6 is polar drift aligned and I can guide perfectly at 2m focal length my SCT in maxim dl but when i tried PHD (even though I used it for the drift alignment) I got the same sorts of warnings as the op did. I now always just guide in maxim......

These Images are Beautiful! Will it work with a SSAG?

[Darien]

Chris the Eastern Veil is pretty fantastic. Darien

[Freddie]

15 minutes ago, Darien said:

I've been able to get it pretty good to were the star is in the eyepiece. In a polar scope.. is there a particular side were Polaris should be? I've been turning the scope to correlate as Ursa Major begins to dip to the horizon. Darien

It would be worth you talking us through your PA routine as that answer is a little odd related to PA. If your PA is out, it isn't going to help your guiding.

[Owmuchonomy]

If I were in your shoes I would concentrate on making sure the mount polar alignment process you use is sorted out. Drift alignment is the best method but will be difficult at long focal lengths in your scope. PHD2 has a very easy to use drift alignment tool so you could use that via your guide scope.

this guide is very useful.

http://openphdguiding.org/man/index.html

[Darien]

3 minutes ago, Owmuchonomy said:

If I were in your shoes I would concentrate on making sure the mount polar alignment process you use is sorted out. Drift alignment is the best method but will be difficult at long focal lengths in your scope. PHD2 has a very easy to use drift alignment tool so you could use that via your guide scope.

this guide is very useful.

http://openphdguiding.org/man/index.html

Ok Ill read this after work. In phd what about the max dec and max ra? the ra was at 2500 and dec was at 1000

Darien

[Darien]

So I came to conclusion that turning the RA off and adding 5pts to both positive and negative would mostly like be the cause. Ill give it a try tonight and see if this helps at all. Thanks all again!

[mwayne]

Go Red Raiders! My old high school alma mater has 3 alumni on the football team, last time I checked.

[michael8554]

To me it looks like it's your Dec guiding that is really poor.

Try setting it to "off" (it's on "Auto" in your image), turn on Trendlines, and see where the Dec is going to.

If your mount has been well Polar Aligned the Dec shouldn't need a lot of guiding, but if the Dec guiding line and Trendline go shooting off, it's not your PHD or mount settings  that need sorting, it's you PA.

Michael

[Davey-T]

It doesn't appear to be making any RA corrections.

Could you do a screenshot using the snipping tool rather than a camera, can't make out your settings with my eyesight

I also use an SCT guided with PHD.

Dave

[Darien]

1 hour ago, Davey-T said:

It doesn't appear to be making any RA corrections.

Could you do a screenshot using the snipping tool rather than a camera, can't make out your settings with my eyesight

I also use an SCT guided with PHD.

Dave

Absolutely  ill be trying it again on Thursday I'm going to see if shutting off th RA and adding 5 for +/-  on dec will work my friend had graphs light mine and by doing this it drastically improved it My PA is pretty good to where the star will be in the eyepeice

[Darien]

2 hours ago, michael8554 said:

To me it looks like it's your Dec guiding that is really poor.

Try setting it to "off" (it's on "Auto" in your image), turn on Trendlines, and see where the Dec is going to.

If your mount has been well Polar Aligned the Dec shouldn't need a lot of guiding, but if the Dec guiding line and Trendline go shooting off, it's not your PHD or mount settings  that need sorting, it's you PA.

Michael

Yes that's what I'm concluding I'm going to add 5 to the dec and shut off the ra backslash and see how it goes

[Darien]

Good news guys... Dramatic improvement was made after turning the RA backslash of and add 5 to the DEC but it has some small to minor spikes on the graph mainly from the RA but some times from the dec, The RA and DEC are inner twinning with one another which is good. Any suggestions?

Darien.

 

[Freddie]

On 14 July 2016 at 02:28, Darien said:

Absolutely  ill be trying it again on Thursday I'm going to see if shutting off th RA and adding 5 for +/-  on dec will work my friend had graphs light mine and by doing this it drastically improved it My PA is pretty good to where the star will be in the eyepeice

Good to hear things have improved. I still don't understand your comment about PA being pretty good because the star will be in the eyepiece. A comment about getting a star in the eyepiece usually relates to GOTO accuracy not PA. They are completely different things. How are you setting and checking your PA?

[Darien]

4 minutes ago, Freddie said:

Good to hear things have improved. I still don't understand your comment about PA being pretty good because the star will be in the eyepiece. A comment about getting a star in the eyepiece usually relates to GOTO accuracy not PA. They are completely different things. How are you setting and checking your PA?

Hello Freddie,

Assuming "PA" means, Polar Alignment... I do the usual procedure in aligning to Polaris using my polar scope I try to mimic the constellations in the night sky to what it shows in the polar scope. For some reason it dosent always end up in the eyepiece after it slews to the star I choose but its not too far away... its usually some minor tweaks tills I find the star. Darien.

[Freddie]

That's not a very accurate way to polar align. You may want to look at drift alignment using DARV and PHD also has an alignment tool you could use before starting your guiding. There are many other software alignment tools but I prefer using my imaging cam with DARV.

[Ken82]

Use the "guiding assistant" in PhD to measure backlash and other common problems . Then post your guide log and debug log so we can better analyse your mount . The different speeds for RA and Dec is an inherent issue with all celestron mounts and is mainly caused by Dec backlash (along with other things) . Have a read of the help file from the PhD software developers. 

[Darien]

8 hours ago, Ken82 said:

Use the "guiding assistant" in PhD to measure backlash and other common problems . Then post your guide log and debug log so we can better analyse your mount . The different speeds for RA and Dec is an inherent issue with all celestron mounts and is mainly caused by Dec backlash (along with other things) . Have a read of the help file from the PhD software developers. 

I did fix that problem by turning the RA backlash of and adding 5 to the dec making huge improvements in my dec/ra graph in PHD though I still have some spikes that appear that I need to get rid of.