Lacerta mgen autoguider settings

[emyliano2000]

Hi again guys.

Watching the weather forecast it looks like Monday night it's gonna be a good night for stargazing so I'm planning to give my imaging setup another try. I'm gonna be using a 700d at prime focus on my 200p f5 OTA with an off axis guider a Baader mpcc and the lacerta mgen autoguider. There are so many things that I need to learn but unfortunately I don't have enough time to do it.

I'm wondering if there is somebody using a setup like mine or something similar that could help me out setting some parameters on the autoguider.

The dslr will be connected to the lacerta mgen.

 

[emyliano2000]

For example I need to enter the the focal length of the guider optics used with the Camera, in millimeters or

the CCD binning.

I need to enter the correction RA/DEC (autoguiding) speed (relative to sidereal rate) set in the mount’s controller too. Do I enter the same one as the one in synscan hand controller. I think it's 0.5x.

[RSM]

Hi, I've had the MGEN II guide system for a year now. Once the camera was focussed on my guidescope, the only adjustments I make to the MGEN settings when I'm setting up are:

1. Adjust the gain so that the star it is guiding on is a reasonable size in live view. 

2. Always calibrate the guiding once the star is chosen. 

3. Adjust the dithering setting, usually random square, pixel move of 10-14. 

4. Set the exposure settings, wait time between each exposure. 

5. Start it going. 

6. Check after an exposure or two that there is no star trailing and also the exposure histogram on the Canon is between 20 & 40%.

I have a 200PDS, Canon 500D at prime focus, Skywatcher CC.

always worked perfectly without the need to adjust anything else.

Hope this helps!

Richard. 

[emyliano2000]

Thanks Richard. Any idea how to calculate yhe object focus? I know it's set to 180mm when used with a 9x50 finderscope but I'm using an off axis guider so the telescope is gonna be the camera's optics.

[emyliano2000]

On Saturday, December 31, 2016 at 11:17, RSM said:

Set the exposure settings, wait time between each exposure. 

I have a bit of trouble understanding this wait time. Like for example if I take a single 1min exposure the camera takes 1 more minute to process the image. Should this wait time be 1 minute. I haven't tried to do multiple shots so I don't really know what's happening between exposures. Do I need to set the mirror lockup and if I do what should that be?

Thanks and Happy New year!

Emil

[RSM]

Hi, sorry for the delay, not been on the site for a while. I use a bahtinov mask to achieve focus and use the live view on my camera to check when I'm in focus,not sure what calculation you need. My wait time between images is about 4 seconds but if your camera needs time to process the image, then I guess it may need to be longer. My EOS 500D must have some sort of buffer to allow this to happen. When I run off a set of flat frames, I can take about 8 raw images before it refuses to release the shutter again whilst it saves to the SD card. 

[alacant]

On 1/1/2017 at 18:55, emyliano2000 said:

the camera takes 1 more minute to process the image

Hi. Be sure to disable long exposure noise reduction on the 700d.