Dummies guide to off axis guiding with PHD2/N.I.N.A?

[Martyn87]

Is there such a thing as an idiots guide to guiding with PHD2/NINA? I've got the physical side of the setup done, OAG is in the image train, guide camera and main camera are in focus (roughly, on terrestrial objects), OAG is aligned with the long edge of the sensor and the back focus is set correctly at 105mm from the Celestron x0.63 reducer, but I've no idea how to use the thing, and I don't want to waste a whole night trying to figure out what I'm doing wrong, so I'm hoping someone can point me to a good guide?

A few things I'm struggling with at the moment: 

The mount; do I have this connected in PHD2 or NINA? I'm thinking it must be NINA otherwise I can't control it, and connect PHD2 as the guider? 

Calibration; Do I just set this off and let it do it's thing? I'm assuming it'll need to be polar aligned first?

Focus; how perfect does this need to be? I'm assuming I can't use a bahtinov mask as I will be getting the edge of the light on the scope.

Do I need to configure anything to say how often to guide? or does it just guide continuously? 

 

Sorry for all the questions! 

Edited August 7 by Martyn87

[michael8554]

Most of the questions seem to be about guiding.

Have you read the PHD2 Instructions ?

Focus can be adjusted using the PHD2 Star Profile, for the lowest HFD reading.

The OAG stars may well be elongated, as they are from the edge of the image circle, but PHD2 will cope.

A sensitive mono guidecam is essential for OAG.

Michael

[Vroobel]

I assume the scope is a kind of Celestron SCT, EdgeHD, etc., am I right? If yes, its focal length is quite big, so you may find not too many stars to guide it with on the tiny guide cam sensor. Not easy setup for the beginning. 

[Martyn87]

Thanks for the replies both. I have read through what I thought were the relevant bits of the user documentation, although I'm going back through it again now (with a bit more understanding, as last time I read it I don't think I'd even taken a single exposure yet) and think I might have found the answers to a couple of my questions at least.  

The scope is indeed a Celestron SCT, C6 to be precise, so about 1060mm focal length. I'm hoping to be able to do some testing on stars soon but I've been able to get an image at least, so I'm hopeful it should work ok. The guide camera is an IMX 290 Mono so I'm keeping my fingers crossed!