first try at autoguiding

[Gerhard]

Hi all!

Yesterday evening I finally was able to have a success with my new setup.

Since february / march I have been struggling with getting autoguide up and running, but due to various mishaps and lots of bad weather, I haven't been able to produce a single image, up until now.

This is what came out:

M13. As you can see the stars are not very clean... So guiding apparently wasn't as good as hoped for...

I also used flats, but there still is a bit of a gradient, but a lot less than previous.

These are 180 sec exposures at 800 ISO, so I guess I have to be at least a little bit happy with this result, because without autoguide I could go up until 90 secs, approx.

Any thoughts on what can influence good guiding?

FWHM was around 5, so not perfect... maybe that could be better, but I never seem to be able to go below those numbers, and often in the past it was way higher...

yesterday morning I wanted to set the focus point on the guide scope, so I pointed the moon during the day, and focussed it as best as possible, and marked that on the scope. this night, focus was in fact very close to that mark. But FWHM says it wasn't perfect...

I also did drift alignment beforehand, and the guide error graph in Maxim was pretty nice, after initially having to redo the calibrate, because "guide star faded". There were no clouds, however, and the images from the guide scope showed good clear stars (I use a dew shield on the guide scope)... Any idea what this could indicate?

I collimate every time, so that should not have been a problem either...

 

Any thoughts much appreciated!! :-)

 

Gerhard.

 

[Davey-T]

I would try PHD2 for guiding always found Maxim a pain and as for the "star faded message" this has been ongoing for years and Maxim can't or won't fix it.

PHD2 will give you much more control and feedback.

Guide stars do not need to be perfectly focused in PHD.

Dave

[Gerhard]

hmmm. food for thought. in fact in my astro club there is a dichotomy between who uses maxim and who PHD... But the astrophoto course they organise focuses on Maxim, so I started with that...

[Davey-T]

 I bought Maxim many years ago as a one thing does everything program but after wasting many hours trying to get guiding to work I gave up and changed to PHD, it can still go wrong and needs a bit of setting up but at least it gives you some pointers on any problems.

Dave

[Gerhard]

I also don't really like the stacking and calibrating Maxim does. I always return to DSS. but maybe that's my inexperience... in all Maxim seems a bit too complex for me... 

I will definitely give PHD a try... Is it easy to get up and running? is it intuitive, or will I have to look up some stuff here on the forum, and elsewhere? for that matter, is there a PHD tutorial? a quick google resulted in the manual from PHD. I'm guessing there's the world to be found! 

but any suggestions as to good points where to start learning PHD would be appreciated, if available :-)

[Davey-T]

I never used Maxim for DSLR use only mono CCD.

Used APT and DSS.

There are a few good PHD video tutorials on Y'Tube and there's a thread on here somewhere, I'll have a look for it.

Dave

[wornish]

2 hours ago, Gerhard said:

I also don't really like the stacking and calibrating Maxim does. I always return to DSS. but maybe that's my inexperience... in all Maxim seems a bit too complex for me... 

I will definitely give PHD a try... Is it easy to get up and running? is it intuitive, or will I have to look up some stuff here on the forum, and elsewhere? for that matter, is there a PHD tutorial? a quick google resulted in the manual from PHD. I'm guessing there's the world to be found! 

but any suggestions as to good points where to start learning PHD would be appreciated, if available :-)

 

I found this tutorial and Part Two great for a beginner.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRY2jN3xTBQ

[Gerhard]

excellent tutorial!!! thanks a lot!!! looking forward to putting it in practice!! :-)