G41, ST2000XM and autoguiding

[Darth Takahashi]

Last night I tested my new G41 mount together with the following equipment;

1. Sky90II-SV

2. SBIG ST200XM

3. Pulsar controller

4. Vista Laptop

Normally I would have an additional guide scope and an ATIK16IC as the guide ccd, however the ST2000XM has its own guide chip so I thought that I would try to use that instead.

Connection via MaxIm DL5 went well, however, as soon as I try to start auto guiding with PHD things when immediately wrong. PHD started and recognized the guide chip and even captured a few frames, but then both programs, MaxIm and PHD died and were not able to be killed by the O/S. A restart was in order...

Does anyone have an experience or advice on guiding with the built-in guide chip inside the ST2000XM, or should a just go back to my separate guide scope and ccd?

I hope someone can help?

The mount performed perfectly and the slews were very accurate via The Sky6, this is definitely going to be a time saver on clear nights. Although I would change my approach as finding your own target bring an additional satisfaction.

Neil.

[anthony]

Hi Neil,

Have you let maxim take care the guiding as well as imaging. It will manage both for you quite well. I have an St2kxcm and find that imaging and guiding is straight forward.

Anthony

[Darth Takahashi]

Hi Anthony,

No, I don't really know how to let MaxIm DL5 guide my exposures. I like PHD because there is no need to make an special alignment of the guide camera, everything is taken care of by the calibration routing.

I had also thought about used the ST4 output of the camera directly, but again I have no experience of such a setup so any advise would be helpful...

Neil.