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PHD2 options

Anthonyexmouth

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Marci

Marci

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(Alignment Points always says 1000 when you can’t connect to scope, otherwise as long as mount has been power cycled it’ll 0 on connect)

These have worked fine for me for a year or so:

cap.jpg.dd6998d1043dc165b5d7f2872280ac02.jpg

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Anthonyexmouth

Anthonyexmouth

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2 minutes ago, Marci said:

(Alignment Points always says 1000 when you can’t connect to scope, otherwise as long as mount has been power cycled it’ll 0 on connect)

These have worked fine for me for a year or so:

cap.jpg.dd6998d1043dc165b5d7f2872280ac02.jpg

i see your track rate is RA 1 and Dec 1 mine is 15.xxxxxx

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Thalestris24

Thalestris24

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1 hour ago, Thalestris24 said:

Hiya

Disable any backlash compensation

Don't use dithering for now

Don't use a hub - make sure you have a 'high speed' dedicated usb 2 connection for your guide cam (or usb 3 if it's a newer version). Always use a high quality shielded usb cable for the guide cam which is not too long. About 3m is max (tho might work with 5m)

Enable the star profile

With the 9x50 finder make sure the objective lock ring is tight (I seem to remember having some problems with this once upon a time. I keep it taped in place now :) )

Make sure you have 180mm for g/scope focal length and use the 'calculate' calibration step time tool

Use max guide speed in eqmod (you can adjust this later once you are up and running reliably)

I guess you want to get everything set, making sure all cables and connections are ok

Make sure you are pointing true north on a level and firm base - away from any wind gusts!

Make sure you are balanced in all three axes - RA, DEC, vertically

Set the balance slightly east-heavy by adjusting the counterweight (you could skip this until you've confirmed everything else is running as expected)

You may need to wait for scope temperature stabilisation but probably not a biggy this time of the year

At this point you could try out the Polar Drift Align tool - I've never used it but providing you can see the Pole Star you can use it to get a rough polar alignment

Calibrate (at ~30 deg DEC) (if you have a lot of backlash, PHD recommend moving the scope north for about 20s first to take up the slack)

Do more accurate Drift Alignment with the drift align tool

Calibrate again

Slew to your target

Optionally platesolve (you would expect this to be quite a small correction otherwise there may be something wrong. If you find the scope moving like 15 deg then  there's something wrong like time or lat/long)

Hopefully start guiding then imaging (it might be an idea to run the Guiding Assistant for a few minutes as a sanity check)

Fingers crossed! Monitor the guide star profile - try and find a star with high snr (100-ish is good!) but it shouldn't be clipped using a 2s exposure

Monitor the star target to make sure it's a tight cluster around the centre. Exactly what you can achieve will depend on the seeing

Make sure you don't have any excessive drift in RA or DEC. If you do, you're probably not balanced correctly and/or your calibration/PA hasn't worked properly

Display the guide graph with guide corrections and monitor it to make sure things are going as expected. Keep an eye out for any warnings/error messages

That's about all I can think of right now. Hopefully I've not said anything wrong or missed anything important out...

Louise

 

 

 

Oops! That should read 0 deg DEC for calibration not 30 deg...  Actually, it should be within 10 degrees of 0 deg DEC

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Marci

Marci

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1 hour ago, Anthonyexmouth said:

i see your track rate is RA 1 and Dec 1 mine is 15.xxxxxx

Never used unless you hit the 'custom' tracking rate button... which I never do, only sidereal, so those are irrelevant. On an out-of-the-box eqmod install they default to sidereal figures (15.041067), but the figures shown in these boxes are only of any relevance when using the custom button. 

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Marci

Marci

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PS: 180mm FL is only correct for a Skywatcher 9x50 guidescope. If it’s an Orion 9x50 guidescope it should be 162mm...  (haven’t seen make of guidescope mentioned yet, so just in case...!)

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Thalestris24

Thalestris24

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5 minutes ago, Marci said:

PS: 180mm FL is only correct for a Skywatcher 9x50 guidescope. If it’s an Orion 9x50 guidescope it should be 162mm...  (haven’t seen make of guidescope mentioned yet, so just in case...!)

From the pic Anthony posted on Friday, it's a SW. It wouldn't make a huge difference anyway though would technically be wrong were it 162mm fl.

Louise

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Marci

Marci

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(I’m refraining from posting my PHD2 settings as they may make you weep - but lets just say all mine err well on the side of 'aggressive' due to no suitable views for polar aligning via _any_ method so I just waft things vaguely northwards and let guiding do _all_ the rest! :D)

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Thalestris24

Thalestris24

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8 minutes ago, Marci said:

(I’m refraining from posting my PHD2 settings as they may make you weep - but lets just say all mine err well on the side of 'aggressive' due to no suitable views for polar aligning via _any_ method so I just waft things vaguely northwards and let guiding do _all_ the rest! :D)

I have to do my 'pseudo polar aligning' to the East as that's all I can see. Hence I only really do ALT PA and approximate the AZ. This doesn't seem to matter as I'm limited to imaging in the East so small az errors are irrelevant. If I could only see to the South I guess I'd just do the az adjustments and approximate the alt. Where there's a will, there's a way ha ha

Louise

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Thalestris24

Thalestris24

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1 minute ago, Anthonyexmouth said:

ok, sat here in the garden and its taking nearly 30 steps to calibrate, im reading that thats high, should i worry? anything i can do?

Sounds a lot... Are you pointing South at 0 DEC or thereabouts? What step size did phd calculate?

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Thalestris24

Thalestris24

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4 minutes ago, Anthonyexmouth said:

yeah +2ish   cal step (ms) 700

s/b more like 900ms, I think. Phd gets the dec value from where your pointing so easy to check in the calculator

edit you can manually change the step size to a higher value ~15 steps are usually enough. Don't forget to move north a bit to take up backlash

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Thalestris24

Thalestris24

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That doesn't look too bad. There's no need to run the backlash check every time - just uncheck it. You will have to do something about it at some point.

PA looks good. RA drift rate might be a bit high but as long as guide pulses are correcting it... You will always get periodic error when your running unguided.

Hope the image comes out ok...

Louise

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