best auto guide rate to use for a eq6rpro

[shawn killian]

Hi, I am brand new to this forum, and I have a question regarding what is the best auto guide rate to use for a eq6rpro mount running phd2 guiding. I have an eq6rpro mount with a ed 80 imageing scope, a 60 mm orion guide scope, a qhy5ii 2 m guide camera and a qhy 163 m camera. I recently got the mount and switched over to pulse guiding with phd2, I have the guide rate set at 0.5x the problem is my guiding seems to be all over the place with an average rms of 1.2 . I know this mount is capable of much better guiding than this, on my last mount an avx my rms average was 0.6 to .0.7 and to me there is no comparison between an avx and an eq6 r pro. my question is does anyone have a similar setup, and what guide rate and settings in phd 2 are you using to get good guiding, I know all mounts are different, and no 2 perform alike, im just looking for some suggestions that I can try till I get my guiding better. btw, my polar alighnment is very good I use sharp cap for that and my balance and everything else relevant to getting good guiding is good. so please share some of your suggestions. thank you,   Shawn.

[Skipper Billy]

Welcome !!

There is a very good guide to getting PHD2 to work properly that you can download from my website - its second item down on this page.

Shout if you need further help.

https://sites.google.com/view/astro-imaging/how-to

[RayD]

1 hour ago, shawn killian said:

Hi, I am brand new to this forum, and I have a question regarding what is the best auto guide rate to use for a eq6rpro mount running phd2 guiding. I have an eq6rpro mount with a ed 80 imageing scope, a 60 mm orion guide scope, a qhy5ii 2 m guide camera and a qhy 163 m camera. I recently got the mount and switched over to pulse guiding with phd2, I have the guide rate set at 0.5x the problem is my guiding seems to be all over the place with an average rms of 1.2 . I know this mount is capable of much better guiding than this, on my last mount an avx my rms average was 0.6 to .0.7 and to me there is no comparison between an avx and an eq6 r pro. my question is does anyone have a similar setup, and what guide rate and settings in phd 2 are you using to get good guiding, I know all mounts are different, and no 2 perform alike, im just looking for some suggestions that I can try till I get my guiding better. btw, my polar alighnment is very good I use sharp cap for that and my balance and everything else relevant to getting good guiding is good. so please share some of your suggestions. thank you,   Shawn.

Hi and welcome to the forum.

It is unlikely that you will need to change the actual guiding rate, more likely that you will need to run the guiding assistant and make some changes to the hysteresis and aggression settings to get the mount to perform better.  You may find it is a little more responsive than the AVX, so reducing the aggression rates and upping the hyst. will smooth things out a little.

[RolandKol]

Hi Shawn,

As I noticed, SharpCap PA is not good enough.... I usually use it to get an initial alignment on my NEQ6+130PDS (guiding with EvoGuide50+ASI224MC), later I do 2 or 3 star alignment for EQMOD, calibrate PHD2 guiding and do Drift Alignment in PHD2, - recalibrate PHD2 after once again, also run Guiding Assistance if I moved mount or scope for any reason.
I guide with 2sec exposures and have around 0.7 RMS. My setup is on the tripod in the backgarden, I repeat all every third-week approximately. 
I do not balance my set up East Heavy as 0.7 RMS is good enough.

[spillage]

Try 2 second exposures so you are not chasing the seeing, If you make any changes then only change one setting at a time and allow time for it to take effect. If you get good PA you can even try turning off Dec guiding, this will allow you to make adjustments in RA. As you have not listed your kit I would suggest also look here as this may help with the mechanical side of the mount.

[1DegreeN]

Hi Shawn

I have a very similar setup to yours - an AZ EQ6-GT mount (belt driven, like your EQ6R Pro and possibly the same motors etc.), a 60/280 guidescope with a qhy5L camera giving a scale of 2.8 arcsec per pixel. Is your quoted RMS in arcsecs or pixels? If it is in arcsecs then I have no advice for you because that is as good as anything I've achieved. If its in pixels then maybe I am doing better and getting rms around 0.3 to 0.4 pixels which is around 1 arcsec. The PHD2 developers have recommendations for EQASCOM (EQMOD) settings to use with PHD2 - here: https://github.com/OpenPHDGuiding/phd2/wiki/EQASCOM-Settings  I've followed those and use a guide speed of 0.9x

I'm using short exposures for guiding - just 1s, or even 0.5s. I set minmo on both axes up to 0.25 (the guiding assistant usually recommends around 0.21) and did that after monitoring with guide output disabled and reckoning the amplitude of seeing was around 1.5 arcsec i.e. 0.5 pixel. Settings for aggression and hysteresis are the defaults. My mount, the AZ EQ6-GT, had an issue with the initial firmware release for the motor controllers and this caused frequent spikes in RA guiding. A firmware update resolved that. Your EQ6R Pro is a newer model but it may be using the same motor controllers. If it is, hopefully it already has the latest motor controller firmware but it is worth checking (via the handset) that this is the case.  The biggest improvement to my guiding performance came from cable management. It took a few iterations but I'm reasonably confident that I have that under control now. 

cheers

John

[Rob63]

I am guessing that you are talking pixels for your RMS as I used to own an AVX and there was no way I could get anything like 0.6" (arc sec). Its always best to use arc seconds as other people can accurately compare to their setup.

Anyway, I am an EQ6-R owner and my average guiding is 0.67" (0.35 pixels) the best I have had up around the zenith was 0.47". I image with an ED120 at 1" per pixel.

I struggled at first using the same sort of setting I used on the AVX,  however, after getting some help from sky-watcher via FLO I was advised to go with lower aggression and have settled on the following as a starting point:

RA aggression 42, Hysteresis 12 Dec aggression 90, min move is 0.16. I use 3 sec exposures in PHD2 (depending on the seeing I am using 2-4sec).

Hope this helps, the EQ6-R is a very good mount and I am sure you will get there.

 

Rob.

 

 

[shawn killian]

On ‎24‎/‎11‎/‎2018 at 04:45, Rob63 said:

I am guessing that you are talking pixels for your RMS as I used to own an AVX and there was no way I could get anything like 0.6" (arc sec). Its always best to use arc seconds as other people can accurately compare to their setup.

Anyway, I am an EQ6-R owner and my average guiding is 0.67" (0.35 pixels) the best I have had up around the zenith was 0.47". I image with an ED120 at 1" per pixel.

I struggled at first using the same sort of setting I used on the AVX,  however, after getting some help from sky-watcher via FLO I was advised to go with lower aggression and have settled on the following as a starting point:

RA aggression 42, Hysteresis 12 Dec aggression 90, min move is 0.16. I use 3 sec exposures in PHD2 (depending on the seeing I am using 2-4sec).

Hope this helps, the EQ6-R is a very good mount and I am sure you will get there.

 

Rob.

 

 

Thanks Rob I will try your suggestions, as I have been using rather high aggression rates. 

[shawn killian]

Thank you all for your advice! it is greatly appreciated. I will try some of your suggestions and let you know how things are going, biggest problem now is that I only get about 1 good night a week, (if that) because of the lousy weather here in central PA. thanks again Shawn