First night with PHD2, help :)

[OleMyrvoll]

Hi everybody.

 

So in the time of COVID-19 and finally some clear skies I was eager to go out and try to do some first light with my setup.

Celestron AVX mount

Orion SSAG guidecam with Orion 50mm Guidescope

SW ED80-ds pro with 0.85 focalreducer/flattener

Altair Astro 269C camera

 

I'm wondering if there is anything fundamental wrong with my guiding, i see lots of bars on the upper end, and usually highest numbers in the RA graph..

I have gone trough guide assistanse once, and saved my setup in PHD2. 

I do get exposures with round stars at 60-120-180sec...but feel still unsure if the guiding is as good as I can make it

I Polaralign with Sharpcap and usually gets excellent with around 3-10seconds off..but that graph keeps going up and down with every frame it seems like.

 

Would be great to hear from some of you experienced users out there, trying to go out tonight as well as it seems to be the last day of clear skies here i Oslo, Norway for a while.

 

I'm also debating if I should bring my Celestron C6" SCT to do some galaxy imaging..with a 0.63 reducer/flattener, but feel kinda unsure about the guiding part

 

Greetings and hope everybody stays safe in this time!

Ole

PHD2_DebugLog_2020-03-21_101410.txt PHD2_GuideLog_2020-03-21_101410.txt

[teoria_del_big_bang]

My knowledge not enough to help but following to see replies. Funnily enough it started clear here last night and to the best of my knowledge got my imaging rig out for the first time this year. However, as it does the clouds rolled in fairly quickly so imaging went out of the window but enough stars about to also take a bit of time improving my guiding.

Hopefully somebody will give advice soon.

Stay safe yourself, sounds like Norway is in a similar stage in the spread to the UK.

Steve

[OleMyrvoll]

Thanks Steve 

I may have some additional info, came to think of this: I did my polar align with my main scope in Sharpcap, I read alot of people are doing that with their Guidescope...Can that be of extra info?

 

Best wishes!

[bottletopburly]

If you have round stars forget about it you’ll get ocd like me lols 😂 

[alacant]

Hi

2 hours ago, OleMyrvoll said:

feel still unsure

Either:

The guide log is empty so difficult to help. From the little trace we can see, I'd say the polar alignment may need attention.

Or:

11 minutes ago, bottletopburly said:

If you have round stars forget about it

+1. Look at the images, not the numbers! Unless the stars are so fat you can't bear it...

Equally, stay safe.

Cheers

 

Edited March 21, 2020 by alacant

[OleMyrvoll]

Hi all, and thanks for replies

Yes I managed to get the wrong log file, right is here.

I may have been abit quick about round stars..they are somewhat round with small eggshapes...not much. I was kinda happy with the result actually..hehe

I feel there's so much to learn, and enjoying staying out at night..but this is way more complicated than any youtubers describe

 

PHD2_GuideLog_2020-03-20_210302.txt

[almcl]

If you're happy with the result, that's probably all that matters!

However, it's always worth running the guiding assistant and accepting its recommendations at the start of a session.  It's quite good at min move (better than randomly altering it in the hope of improving things, at least).  If you have to set up and dismantle every session, it may be worth re-calibrating, too.

You have quite a bit of periodic error (image below), but PHD2 should be able to guide most of that out, although you may need to re-run the new equipment wizard and let it sort out the settings.

[michael8554]

Hi Ole

I've looked at your log, but it doesn't include a Calibration or Guide Assistant run?

Guide Rate is 50%, I would increase that to 80%, which will allow PHD2 to make bigger corrections. 

Similarly Aggression is only 15, so this is reducing the Corrections too, so try 80 - did you set it to 15, or was that the default?

Alternatively the RA Periodic Error mentioned can be guided out with the PHD2 PPEC setting in the RA Guide Algorithm settings, you need to enter your mount's worm period, might be 480 seconds? 

Run the Guide Assistant for several minutes and accept the recommendations, don't worry just yet if it fails the Dec Backlash test. 

Your Star Profile HFD is 5.76, use that reading to improve focus down to 3 to 4. 

Your stars may be round if the mount is misguiding equally in RA and Dec, creating large stars, the aim is to image the true size. 

Michael