Phd2 first time

[bottletopburly]

Set up pier for the first time and tried phd2 screen shot of my graph no idea how good or bad it was  any ideas /comments 

test sub from  first guiding 300sec sub

 

[teoria_del_big_bang]

Not experienced enough to comment on the graph but definitely an nice looking image it has produced.

Steve

[RayD]

First huge challenge is done.......getting it going in the first place.

My initial comment would be that whilst there is a lot going in, there doesn't seem to be any corrections, which show as a little red or blue square shaped peak.  You can now run the guiding assistant which will help you with some of the settings, and you may need to have a play with the hysteresis and aggression settings to reduce that saw tooth effect a little, but otherwise a RMS of 1.36 "/p is not a bad start by any means.

[mikeyj1]

Looks good, you have green lights on darks and cal, and snr, all good signs! 2.5s pics is a good place to start.  Guiding around the pole area is problematic, at least for me, but you should be aiming to get (well) below 1.00" on the 'Tot' figure.  Do as Ray suggests and run through the guiding assistant and apply the corrections it suggests.  Also, if you are using an ST4 connection and change target, you need to recalibrate. 

However, proof of the pudding is in the picture, and that looks really nice!

[alacant]

Hi. Stick to stargazing. Don't become a graphgazer! The image looks great, so I'd recommend leaving it as it is. If you really want to tweak, send us the guide log; there maybe something easy which will get RA to the baseline.

Cheers and well done. Not easy that first run with PHD2 under the stars;)

[wornish]

Great image I would be happy with that.  You don't seem to have clicked the box that display the corrections being made so cant really tell if its working properly.  You should be able to get the RA variations down to below 1.00" if you follow the guiding assistants advice.

 

[bottletopburly]

3 hours ago, teoria_del_big_bang said:

Not experienced enough to comment on the graph but definitely an nice looking image it has produced.

Steve

 

2 hours ago, RayD said:

First huge challenge is done.......getting it going in the first place.

My initial comment would be that whilst there is a lot going in, there doesn't seem to be any corrections, which show as a little red or blue square shaped peak.  You can now run the guiding assistant which will help you with some of the settings, and you may need to have a play with the hysteresis and aggression settings to reduce that saw tooth effect a little, but otherwise a RMS of 1.36 "/p is not a bad start by any means.

 

2 hours ago, mikeyj1 said:

Looks good, you have green lights on darks and cal, and snr, all good signs! 2.5s pics is a good place to start.  Guiding around the pole area is problematic, at least for me, but you should be aiming to get (well) below 1.00" on the 'Tot' figure.  Do as Ray suggests and run through the guiding assistant and apply the corrections it suggests.  Also, if you are using an ST4 connection and change target, you need to recalibrate. 

However, proof of the pudding is in the picture, and that looks really nice!

 

56 minutes ago, wornish said:

Great image I would be happy with that.  You don't seem to have clicked the box that display the corrections being made so cant really tell if its working properly.  You should be able to get the RA variations down to below 1.00" if you follow the guiding assistants advice.

 

Cheers guys I will try the guiding assistant ?

[Freddie]

If you think about what PHD is trying to do, there is clearly something wrong here. PHD is trying to get as flat a line as possible along the 0" i.e. the guide star is not moving. The RA never once makes it to the 0" line and the DEC only a couple of times. Assuming the guide commands are being issued, for whatever reason the mount is not responding to get the guide star back to the 0" line. As suggested, turn on the corrections to see what commands are being issued and check the guide assistant to see what it has to say. Also physically check the mount to ensure nothing is catching.

[newbie alert]

While I agree that you shouldn't get too fixated on the graph it does tell you lots of things..

I'd first wonder why the RA and DEC  trend isn't peaking and troughing either side of the base 0 line..cant tell you why but I'd assume that you'e not guiding... a 300 sec sub is easy achieved with good PA with a small frac.. as is recommended run the guiding assistant for about 5 mins and apply the recommendations..A test is to move the mount while looping,if the stars don't move they'e not stars..been there done that and worn the t shirt!..but...great start..

[bottletopburly]

4 hours ago, newbie alert said:

While I agree that you shouldn't get too fixated on the graph it does tell you lots of things..

I'd first wonder why the RA and DEC  trend isn't peaking and troughing either side of the base 0 line..cant tell you why but I'd assume that you'e not guiding... a 300 sec sub is easy achieved with good PA with a small frac.. as is recommended run the guiding assistant for about 5 mins and apply the recommendations..A test is to move the mount while looping,if the stars don't move they'e not stars..been there done that and worn the t shirt!..but...great start..

I was getting star trails before guiding that I do know , all a learning curve, kit was 200pds , canon 1000D Eq6 pro baader cc  , will have a second crack using guiding assistant .

[michael8554]

A screen grab is better than taking a picture of your screen  - the Print Screen button should be just below your power button, puts the grab into the clipboard.

I agree your ra is not being dragged back to the x axis, perhaps it's in the positive half of its Periodic Error curve and will drop below later, but until then you might need to up the Aggression, hard to tell without the Corrections showing, but Guiding Assistant should sort your settings.

Very nice first tme images.

Oh and version 2.6.5 is the latest.

Michael 

[cjdawson]

@mikeyj1 good shout about having the dark light up green.   I'm getting PHD2 going on my setup for use with SGPro.  So, last night made a dark library for my camera.   I've also decided to switch to pulse guiding, should be interesting to see how this works with my scope.

[mikeyj1]

1 hour ago, cjdawson said:

So, last night made a new dark library for my camera.   I've also decided to switch to pulse guiding, should be interesting to see how this works with my scope.

Hi CJ, I did exactly that last night also!  Created a new darks library and bad pixel map using the USB Ascom connection - it was a good start, pulse guiding seemed better, (needed 3s exposure to reduce 'jitter') and apparently you can re-use calibration data even when you switch targets...lets see

cheers

Mike

 

[Stub Mandrel]

On 22/05/2018 at 07:48, RayD said:

there doesn't seem to be any corrections

Box isn't ticked ?

[Stub Mandrel]

With M51 straight up, that's the most challenging position to track, IMHO. The RMS ~1.4" is close to what I can get reliably on my EQ3 (best was 0.8", but not pointing up!) EQ6 should do better with 'tuning'.

You might want to zoom out on the x-axis to see long term trends better, that's only a short run in the photo - about 2-3 minutes?

2.5 second exposures might be a tad long? I found 2 secs was good. Too long makes it unresponsive and too slow 'chases the seeing' too much.

Easy to say though, I haven't got below 2" with the HEQ5 yet!

 

[newbie alert]

On 23/05/2018 at 18:17, Stub Mandrel said:

minutes?

2.5 second exposures might be a tad long? I found 2 secs was good. Too long makes it unresponsive and too slow 'chases the seeing' too much.

If your using 2 sec then you are chasing the seeing more than 2.5...what phd is doing is making guide corrections every 2 secs so you get zig zag effect....i use 3-4 secs depending on conditions .

This may help..

 

[Stub Mandrel]

Oops - I meant too fast chases the seeing, not too slow! Sorry for any confusion.

[stash_old]

One thing nobody mentions here (sorry if I missed it) but a lot depends on conditions on the night - 2 nights are never the same - windy , not windy. So even keeping the same settings will produce different info IMHO. But as all have said give guiding assistant a run but dont go over board - look at the end result and think "thats fine by me " or "want better" then do accordingly - IMO

[newbie alert]

1 hour ago, stash_old said:

One thing nobody mentions here (sorry if I missed it) but a lot depends on conditions on the night - 2 nights are never the same - windy , not windy. So even keeping the same settings will produce different info IMHO. But as all have said give guiding assistant a run but dont go over board - look at the end result and think "thats fine by me " or "want better" then do accordingly - IMO

Very true... I ran the guiding assistant as I felt the RMS figures could be better and it made a slight difference after I applied the settings..next time I setup I had the best guiding I'd ever had so far.. I'm not too fixated on graphs but trying to get tighter stars