Unguided Dithering

Stjepan Prugovečki:
I am doing this all the time (have a mount with encoder, so, no guiding) . Under "Equipment" you have to chose Guider , select direct guider and connect to it . There you can set dithering parameters. Then in imaging sequence you enable dither and set how frequently you wish to do it. If you done all this and yet you have a feeling that images are not shifted, then adjust for how many pixels you want to shift  on dither command. For me it works like a Swiss watch.

Stjepan Prugovečki:

Jerry Gerber:

Stjepan Prugovečki:
I am doing this all the time (have a mount with encoder, so, no guiding) . Under "Equipment" you have to chose Guider , select direct guider and connect to it . There you can set dithering parameters. Then in imaging sequence you enable dither and set how frequently you wish to do it. If you done all this and yet you have a feeling that images are not shifted, then adjust for how many pixels you want to shift  on dither command. For me it works like a Swiss watch.

Hi Stefek,

Thanks for replying!  I don't understand, if I am not using my guide camera, and I turn off guiding, the mount is using the encoders to track.  The stars are looking excellent and round.  I've disconnected the guider and PHD for now so I guess my question is, if the mount is relying only on the encoders for tracking, which it is,  and I turned on Dither in my sequence, is the mount dithering?  I think it is, as I notice very slight image shift, but not 100% certain.

I am not using PHD in such cases. I am using for this case direct guider that is par of NINA. When you connecting to that direct guider, you can setup how big (in pixels) your dither will be. For a trial , you can set it to 20 or 30 pixels and then it will be visually more than obvious. I hve that value set to 14 pixels (100/800 scope with IMX571 based camera.

Mark James Ford:
Hi Jerry,

This may seem really silly (sorry if it is) as a comment but it does assume that the GM1000 is mounted in NINA (which would mean that you would have all the very many advantages of the (excellent) 10 Micron NINA plug-in ;-).  (I used NINA for a good while without having any connection to my GM1000 mount). Once connected the direct guider dithering works just fine.  The randomness of the dither is only in the direction of the dither, the dither amount is always the same.  The direct guider is not actually doing any guiding per say, though the virtual key pad will show the symbol that it is being controlled at a "custom rate".

Cheers, Mark