First time with PHD2

[jacko61]

It's been a very clear week up here so I've sorted my wiring and got the pier / mount properly Polar aligned.  Wednesday night I managed to have a play with PHD2 for the first time. Guiding is with a Svbony 60mm guidescope and ASI290mm mini using the ST4 cable.  All I did was follow the idiots guide so everything was set to the defaults. Focusing was a bit of an issue but I read somewhere that PHD2 works better if the guide stars are slightly out of focus so that's ok   Images were taken with a Canon 70D DSLR through my C8 on the Advance GT mount and I reasonably happy with the guiding so far.  All pictures are 20 to 30 second single exposures with ISO ranging from 2500 (m3) to 6400 (M51) - M42 is ISO 1250. I did find that anything over 60 seconds was getting oval stars and there were the occasional hiccups when something seems to have gone wrong with the guiding but it's a start.  Guiding exposure was 2 seconds.  Hopefully I'll get another clear night this weekend as I want to get to grips with APT and stacking but I'm quite please with the single exposures - especially as I've never managed to even find M51 before   One problem I'm having, especially with M51 is that there's nothing to see on the Canon screen so getting a focus is a bit of guesswork at the minute. Hopefully with an image on screen in APT it'll be a bit easier.  (I'm doing this a bit at a time to get used to each aspect of software - ultimately I'm planning on getting an ASI533MC pro in the summer (big birthday) and doing everything including goto and focusing from APT/Stellarium/PHD2 etc.  

 

Graeme

 

[michael8554]

22 minutes ago, jacko61 said:

Focusing was a bit of an issue but I read somewhere that PHD2 works better if the guide stars are slightly out of focus so that's ok

Wrong.   PHD2 needs best focus on the guidecam. Go for the lowest HFD reading in the PHD2 Star Profile window.

Focus the imaging camera on a bright star near your target, if there's none available on-target.

If you post the PHD2 GuideLog file, the quality of the Calibration and the guiding can be assessed.

With more experience you should get round stars with longer exposures.

ISO above 1600 might be excessive.

Have a read of the many help files available through the help menu.

Michael

[Clarkey]

42 minutes ago, jacko61 said:

One problem I'm having, especially with M51 is that there's nothing to see on the Canon screen so getting a focus is a bit of guesswork at the minute. Hopefully with an image on screen in APT it'll be a bit easier. 

Don't focus on your imaging target if it is faint, use a star(s). They are all at infinity so focus on something easy then move to your target. APT has focus aids so this will help.