Guiding with a QHY5-III 462C

[Piergiorgio Licciardello]

Hi everyone

Has anyone experience in guiding with the camera in the subject?

Have you any particular issue or is there any particular setup I have to implement if I want to use it to guide my AZ-EQ6 mount?

Thank you in advance for your kind response

Best Regards

Piergiorgio

[wave...@talktalk.net]

Hello Piergiorgio,  I'm no expert by any means and you don't indicate if you've done any guiding before. so I'll assume you haven't. I'll also assume you'll be operating from a Windows laptop. Anyway, I'll give you my impression about the camera and its use with your particular mount. What little I know about both follows a very brief glance through their on-line User Manuals.

Firstly, the QHY5-III 462C is made for colour imaging, so not the first choice as a guide camera.  A similar size mono camera would be much better. However, if that's all you have available you should try it out by following all the advice given in the PHD literature described at the top of the main forum page. Ensure the guide cables are correctly connected. The required cables come with the camera. The laptop USB to the guide camera and it's ST4 cable from the camera to the Guide port on the mount.

Both camera and mount have ASCOM drivers, so before running PHD2, install these as well as the ASCOM Platform (Google for link). In the PHD2 Connection Wizard, the 'Camera' requester lists all the cameras it supports and you'll see 'QHY Camera' is there, so select that. Use the driver settings button to set its output to 16bit. The Wizard will also require you to use the 'On Camera' setting for the Mount connection. You should use the mount's ASCOM driver name in the 'AuxMount' setting. There's also a driver settings button for this so enter what data you have about the mount. Check that the correct COM port number (ssigned by windows) is entered. Windows Device Manager will identify this for you after it's all connected. Use a Guiding Speed setting of 0.7x to 1.0x sidereal rate. Ensure to enter the Focal Length of the guide scope (not its aperture nor any imaging scope specs).

Basically, follow all the advice provided in the various guides noted above and the PHD2 User Manual.
When you've obtined a good Calibration (warning-free), start guiding and swith to the Tools/Guiding Assistant for several minutes (at least a worm cycle) and then the recommended Baseling Guiding logs. Upload the Guide log and Debug log to the forum as detailed in the manual or on the PHD2 interface under 'Help'. The PHD2 experts will then be able to tell you how things look and what to do next.
Hope this helps.
- Jack

[wave...@talktalk.net]

Hi Guys, I believe I've made some poor suggestions in my previous post on Piergiorgio's question. I saw his post was dropping down the page, so thought I'd chip in with something to get him started. Unfortunately, I don't know any way to edit the errors, so bplease ignore the suggestions on the PHD2 Connection settings.

My apologies. I need some sleep.

Cheers,

- Jack

[Jason Close]

Hi Piergiorgio,

I have the QHY5III462, and have used it for a few years. Yes, the 462C is great because it can pull double duty as guidecam and planetary cam.  I always have this on one rig and an ASI174mm mini on another.

If you look at its specs, it is very sensitive especially towards the near-IR and the rgb matrix becomes nearly transparent (i.e. mono) at these higher wavelengths. The one I got came with a near IR filter that screws into its nose for this. So disregard any advice about this color camera being substandard for guiding, they just haven’t used this or understand it.

It's very low noise.

It has a nice small 2.9um pixels so you can get near +/- 1:1 image scale in an OAG (depending on your imaging sensor of course), or other low ratio if using a shorter FL guide scope.  Or can bin it if needed.

It has a nice big sensor, 2nd only to my 174mm, so can use it in larger prism OAGs.  Its bullet style body works well in OAGs.  Has worked well in QHY Medium OAG, ASI Large OAG, and Celestron large prism OAG.

Great little camera.  And great for primary imaging: I'd be using it to image Jupiter tonight if I weren't going to be trying true LRGB with a new mono cam I want to test...

Jason