Synguider version 2 issues

[spaceman_spiff]

Hi there,

Last night was first light for my new Synguider 2, I thought I would post my first impressions and problems with it. I originally used a Synguider 1 and it could guide very well despite not being very sensitive.

Here are the problems I came across:

- The new Synguider is way more sensitive than the older version, I have to use very short exposures to get a decent brightness level. I worry this will mean I am guiding on atmospheric turbulence rather than the actual drift of the star.

- I then found a fainter star (but this was harder to see in the finder-scope). I was expecting to find more stars just pop up on the screen as I increased the exposure time, but this didn't happen. Perhaps I need to play with the noise cut-off settings more to find the point where the background is just being cut-off and faint stars are detected.

- Strangely, after I did the auto-calibration, it gave me a DEC aggressiveness of 0, I repeated the auto calibration and I got the same result. So I started guiding and got good round stars... However when I deliberately knocked the telescope to test the guiding the DEC would not come back to zero! How did I get round stars on my 3min subs?!

- I actually like the faster refresh rate of the star on the screen, but coupled with the dimmer backlight, the brightness and guiding correction numbers are difficult to read (they change very quickly).

So overall, I guess I was expecting the Synguider 2 to be a more sensitive version of the first version but actually, I will need to learn some new set-up techniques before I get the best out of this thing.