Guiding

[MillHey Nebula]

Now I am getting confused.  If I am using a guidescope with PHD2, do I need two separate laptops: one for the guidescope camera and one for the imaging camera, or will both run quite happily from a single laptop?

[alacant]

4 minutes ago, MillHey Nebula said:

do I need two separate laptop

Hi

No.

[MillHey Nebula]

Great, thanks.

[teoria_del_big_bang]

Yes same laptop.
What software are you using for data acquisition ?
Many programs will actually talk to PHD2 and start and stop the guiding automatically so in that case needs to be on the same computer.

Steve

[MillHey Nebula]

Steve,

I am using SharpCap for the acquisition.  I have seen mention of PHD2 in there somewhere, but I am still trawling through the manual!

 

Chris

[michael8554]

I expect you're used to having Mail, Spotify, Word etc, all running at the same time on your PC/laptop ?

With astro it's the same.

You will have SharpCap, PHD2,  maybe a Planetarium etc, all happily running at the same time.

Michael

[malc-c]

As others have mentioned, it all runs on the one computer.  Depending on the operating system, you run the software to control the mount, software to navigate around the sky, such as CdC, your imaging software such as APT or sharpcap, and PHD2 for guiding all from the one device.

[rickwayne]

Or you run One Program to Rule Them All, he snarked KStarishly. (That's the package  I  use and am always banging on about, it has its own guiding module but can also work with PHD.)

As teoria notes, it's helpful if the software you're using to run the camera either includes its own guiding software or can talk to PHD2. There's a technique called dithering which moves the scope a few pixels' worth between exposures, so that the same bit of sky isn't always walloping on the same pixel -- very helpful for reducing certain kinds of pattern noise. Obviously you want that to happen between exposures, not during them!

Any laptop sold today has ample processing power to run acquisition software and guiding at once. In fact many of us do exactly that on a Raspberry Pi.

[MillHey Nebula]

Thanks for all the replies. I am now reassured. I must admit it was not the processing power I was worrying about, but conflict on the usb with two cameras. But when I sit down and think about it, the imaging camera is only passing an image down the line every few minutes.