Star Adventure GTI - I notice an improvement in the guide

Open PHD Guiding Project PHD2 Acquisition Guiding Deep Sky Troubleshooting
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Roberto MR avatar
Roberto MR avatar
Hello

considering the issues at my first guide experience now i feel i'm getting closer to a good solution, at least least night is been positive i think.

i see that guiding at 0.75 and calibration steps 2000 i did a very good calibration, for guiding i have tried to change something to make it more stable, i had to reduce the max ra and dec steps to a value of 300 and by adjusting the aggressiveness more or less well I managed to guide at 0.85 arc/sec ... the guide star I was using was a bit ugly, not very round and of a strange shape, I always try to figure out how to find the right focus point and I don't understand why even though I tighten the lock system of the svbony 165 well I end up losing the focus point every time.


shutting speed at 2s was better then 3s
  • any advice ?
  • What do you think of the graph?

 
https://youtu.be/pH85SaadGng?t=8511

I uploaded the video of the session very quickly, but maybe I'll also upload the phd2 log file but I'd like to do it more calmly in the next few days, I'm a bit tired after the last two sessions and the video seemed more comfortable to me at moment.

 Ra always seems a bit unstable for example here "https://youtu.be/pH85SaadGng?t=9245";
  • Is maybe the peak value too high at 3s exposure and for it is worst ? or maybe is too slow to response.
  • What do you think of the shape of the star?
Tony Gondola avatar
Tony Gondola avatar
I don't speak Air but I believe it uses a version of PHD2. In that program, if you do a good calibration and do an analysis you usually get a good result. 2 sec. would be a good starting exposure time.
Roberto MR avatar
Roberto MR avatar
Tony Gondola:
I don't speak Air but I believe it uses a version of PHD2. In that program, if you do a good calibration and do an analysis you usually get a good result. 2 sec. would be a good starting exposure time.



Stars looks fine yesterday.

but yesterday i had more issues, okya maybe there was more moon light and was a bit cloudy, but i don'k know, same settings didn't worked properly 

what i have notice is that:

- the calibration graph was not good, was good only when i did the calibration at 0.5 keeping calibration steps 2000 , max ra/dec 2000

- RA was very unstable and i was not able to fix it, dec was okay.

- if i keep the max ra 250 and max dec 300 when i start to guide the DEC is very slow or don't appear at all the on the graph and i don't know what is to cause that because least time was just fine: https://youtu.be/C88iA1UAtHw?t=223
Tony Gondola avatar
Tony Gondola avatar
I seems like your changing settings a lot. I would go back to the settings that gave you the best results and let that run. A lot of things can mess with guiding, seeing, mount balance, wind, minor cable snags. It's also possible that it's a mechanical issue with the mount. It really seems to be chasing the R.A. so it could be that it has binding or excessive backlash. I would check the web for how to do that. There's a lot of those mounts out there so you should be able to find some info on YouTube.
Concise
TiffsAndAstro avatar
TiffsAndAstro avatar
Have run ran guiding assistant and applied it's recommended settings? 

If not run calibration where phd2 suggests, then guiding assistant and apply it's suggestions then run calibration again and see what happens?

Also check focus in guide scope. I tended to use 1 to 2 sec max guide exposures.
Roberto MR avatar
Roberto MR avatar
Tony Gondola:
I seems like your changing settings a lot. I would go back to the settings that gave you the best results and let that run. A lot of things can mess with guiding, seeing, mount balance, wind, minor cable snags. It's also possible that it's a mechanical issue with the mount. It really seems to be chasing the R.A. so it could be that it has binding or excessive backlash. I would check the web for how to do that. There's a lot of those mounts out there so you should be able to find some info on YouTube.

because first night i guide well at 300ms for max ra/dec but least night at 300ms dec was to slow to go in the position !

first night i have guided at 0.85 arc/sec and was stable, i can't notice any backlash at all on the RA axis.
Roberto MR avatar
Roberto MR avatar
TiffsAndAstro:
Have run ran guiding assistant and applied it's recommended settings? 

If not run calibration where phd2 suggests, then guiding assistant and apply it's suggestions then run calibration again and see what happens?

Also check focus in guide scope. I tended to use 1 to 2 sec max guide exposures.


i use the asiair, i did the calibration on the target M101.
focus was good, it's difficult say how good is that but stars was small as you can see on the video that i have posted
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