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First time guiding

AndyM

By AndyM
in Imaging - Discussion

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AndyM

AndyM

Posted
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Tonight was a night for trying out some new toys. :D I recently bought a guiding kit from Bern at Modern Astronomy which is a QHY5 guide camera and a ST80 refractor with guide rings. I also got a new Canon 450d body (£339 from Play.com including the £50 cashback deal).

Setting up took a bit longer than the usual routine mainly due to the extra wiring involved and setting up a laptop outside for the first time.

Using Canons live view on the laptop made focussing so easy compared to the hit and miss affair of the 350. Setting up the other functions such as ISO, shutter speed, interval between shots etc is also an easy task using the EOS utility software.

Setting up the QHY5 and PHD didn’t pose any major problems and I soon had the thing guiding like a good ‘un.

However, this is where the problems started. When Canon EOS utility and PHD were running together, I could take a couple of 3 minute exposures and then the Canon software would stop responding, or if I started PHD after the Canon software then PHD would give up. I’m guessing that one of these is a bit of a system hog - I haven’t looked too deeply into this yet. It’s an easily solved problem as I can just use my eBay special intervalometer after I’ve used the live view function to frame and focus.

I’m very pleased with the results that guiding gives, even on a very rough polar align it performed flawlessly over 3 minute shots whereas an unguided comparison was trailing badly after a minute. Hopefully this will make my imaging sessions even more enjoyable in the future.

These shots were both with the 450D + 2X teleconverter and the ED80 aimed roughly (very roughly) in the direction of M45.

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Reggie

Reggie

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I'd be interested to see some shots from the QHY, just 1 or 2 second shots to see what your guiding on? PHD and the 450d eos utils play nice here, have you setup the power save settings on the 450d?

I had fun with my 450d tonight, the goto was well off so I used deneb as a marker and shuffled it around the screen and star hopped so I could frame the north american nebula, very faint stars but they're there to be used (deneb is super bright though).

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ChrisEdu

ChrisEdu

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Tonight was a night for trying out some new toys. :D I recently bought a guiding kit from Bern at Modern Astronomy which is a QHY5 guide camera and a ST80 refractor with guide rings. I also got a new Canon 450d body (£339 from Play.com including the £50 cashback deal).

Did you go to Play.com via Quidco? You'd get a bit of extra money back then! :help:

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Aza

Aza

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Congrats Andy, now you are guiding you will be having much more fun :D

Personally I use Nebulosity to capture as it works flawlessly alongside PHD.

For what it is, it is incredibly cheap, version 1 is perfectly fine to use and is only $45.

Its also great for the processing of the raw files, it does all the preprocessing, aligning and combining, before moving into photoshop.

And no I dont have an affiliation with them :help:

Just love the software!

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Aza

Aza

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what settings were you using with the QH5Y and PHD ??

Like Andy I use an ST80. With that PHD works with everything default. Simply plug and play!

If PHD has issues then you need the older .DLL file from the astrosoft website.

Really is easy :D

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steppenwolf

steppenwolf

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Congratulations on getting guiding up and running despite the software glitches which I hope you are able to resolve. The example of the guided stars looks great so you are now well on the road and it will make a huge difference to your results.

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AndyM

AndyM

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I too hope to be guiding with the QH5Y and PHD, what settings were you using with the QH5Y and PHD ??

I haven't played with any of the settings yet - its working, its not giving me too much grief, so the best plan at the moment is leave well alone and stick with the default settings for now! :D

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