PHD2 options

[Anthonyexmouth]

Now, PA with sharpcap gets me here before any adjustments to drift align. Why do you think PHD polar align thinks im so far off?

[david_taurus83]

That doesn't look too as a starting point

[Anthonyexmouth]

2 minutes ago, david_taurus83 said:

That doesn't look too as a starting point

the purple circle is inside the green box, its tiny, i thought thats what i was aiming for. 

 

just noticed you didnt say whether its good or bad as a starting point

[david_taurus83]

Doesn't look too bad! When I last tried drift align it wasn't that close!

[Anthonyexmouth]

thats where sharpcap got me, alt is a little off at -9 but adjusting that now, bloody tricky with the standard bolts

[Thalestris24]

I've never used it but I think you only use the polar drift align tool to get a rough PA

[Anthonyexmouth]

1 minute ago, Thalestris24 said:

I've never used it but I think you only use the polar drift align tool to get a rough PA

i wont be using it any more

[michael8554]

PHD2 Polar Align quickly gets you roughly right after setup.

PHD2 Static Polar A!ign gets you to about 5 arc mins.

That's good enough to guide on, particularly if you have a lot of Dec backlash, you can then guide in one direction only.

If you want better than that, PHD2 Drift Align.

Michael 

[Thalestris24]

The only tool I've used is the 'Drift Align' one - the others just seem to add confusion - they should have given them different names! I think the 'Polar drift align' tool only works if you point the guide scope at or near Polaris whereas the proper drift align only works if you point due south for az then either due east or west for alt.

[Anthonyexmouth]

my latest graph and a 10min sub of M13

[Anthonyexmouth]

34 minutes ago, Thalestris24 said:

The only tool I've used is the 'Drift Align' one - the others just seem to add confusion - they should have given them different names! I think the 'Polar drift align' tool only works if you point the guide scope at or near Polaris whereas the proper drift align only works if you point due south for az then either due east or west for alt.

think im gonna stick to sharpcap for polar align then PHD for drift align. 

[Thalestris24]

2 minutes ago, Anthonyexmouth said:

my latest graph and a 10min sub of M13

Pretty good! I suspect you don't have a field flattener/reducer?

[Anthonyexmouth]

not yet, thats next on the shopping list

[kens]

6 hours ago, Anthonyexmouth said:

This is PHD2 polar drift moments later, same mount, scope and cam. 

Can you send me your debug log? PDA is not as accurate as other methods but it should not be that far out. You can use the help menu option to upload to PHD support and I’ll have a look at it there

[jjosefsen]

On 07/08/2018 at 05:13, kens said:

Can you send me your debug log? PDA is not as accurate as other methods but it should not be that far out. You can use the help menu option to upload to PHD support and I’ll have a look at it there

Fwiw Kens i used PDA for PA on my last session, and it resulted in 0.6" - 0.7" guiding, and i damn near cried (tears of happiness though)! ?

I really should learn to drift align though...

[Stub Mandrel]

I saw a big improvement in guiding by trying out different algorithms.

[jjosefsen]

5 hours ago, Stub Mandrel said:

I saw a big improvement in guiding by trying out different algorithms.

What is your typical RMS and what algorithms did you try?

[Stub Mandrel]

I got it down to 0.6" last time, using LowPass. I tried Lowpass2 on DEC and it was useless, kept losing the plot.

Before I have used resistswitch and hysteresis and not been able to get below 0.7, often worse.

Here's a single frame (jpeg). Sensor was a bit grubby, I'm afraid. It's a random choice and been stretched but no other processing.

Edit: why is it that a single frame with minimal adjustment can look almost as good as my stacked an processed version?

[jjosefsen]

There should be significant improvement in your stack, although I don't know how many frames or sub length.

Could be software related too..

[Anthonyexmouth]

Well i'm happy with this, considering its only PA with Sharpcap. The bump at the end is me walking next to the mount.

[Thalestris24]

12 hours ago, Stub Mandrel said:

Here's a single frame (jpeg). Sensor was a bit grubby, I'm afraid. It's a random choice and been stretched but no other processing.

Edit: why is it that a single frame with minimal adjustment can look almost as good as my stacked an processed version?

Hiya

Could be lucky imaging or it could be you're not stacking enough subs. See 'How to create better images' in the Deepskystacker help.

Louise

[Stub Mandrel]

56 minutes ago, Thalestris24 said:

Could be lucky imaging or it could be you're not stacking enough subs. See 'How to create better images' in the Deepskystacker help.

It's not a stacking issue, it's just that i struggle to get that colour, my nebulosity suffers the 'curse of pink'.

[Thalestris24]

1 hour ago, Stub Mandrel said:

It's not a stacking issue, it's just that i struggle to get that colour, my nebulosity suffers the 'curse of pink'.

That just sounds like a histogram adjustment issue, Neil. If stacking in dss you usually need to adjust saturation and save the image. Then it's usually just a matter of tweaking the levels/curves in your favourite image editor.

Louise

[Stub Mandrel]

44 minutes ago, Thalestris24 said:

If stacking in dss you usually need to adjust saturation and save the image.

More subtle than that, I've tried dozens if not hundr4eds of approaches, I just can't get the 'rich red' without making things look artificial.  This si probably eth bet I'v managed so far, bit still looks like its behind a sheet of tracing paper.