Analyzing PHD2 Guiding Tutorial

[David Jardine]

I am new to astrophotography, so I have been reading a LOT of tutorials lately. Just tonight, I encountered Bruce Waddington's, "Analyzing PHD2 Guiding Results – A Basic Tutorial." (https://coldphotons.com/Reference/Analyzing_PHD2_Guide_Logs.pdf) I was impressed. Given the complexity of the subject, I expected a dry technical document. Instead, I was treated to a readable, lucid and understandable tutorial. Parts of it were even entertaining. Wow! I wish more technical material was written like this. 

Then, I put 2 and 2 together and realized he is one of the overseers of the PHD2 project. Even more impressive.

Many thanks for your efforts. I am very grateful for those who put astrophotography within reach of interested amateurs.

David

[Bryan]

David

Bruce's tutorial is also available on the PHD2 website

https://openphdguiding.org/

along with other useful info for PHD2, e.g. Best Practices

Bryan

[bval...@gmail.com]

>>>  realized he is one of the overseers of the PHD2 project.

He's more than that, I think!

Along with Andy, Bruce is one of the authors of PHD2. Greg Stark started all this, but since PHD2 it's really been the Bruce and Andy show all the way since then.

We all owe them both an incredible amount

Brian

[Bruce Waddington]

Thanks for the kind remarks, David.  There are lots of people who freely invest their time and energy to help others out, not just with guiding but with all aspects of imaging.  That’s one of the things that distinguishes this hobby from many others.  The tutorial you referred to is necessarily pretty basic, but if you want to develop a sense of how it is applied “in the wild” with real set-ups, this forum is a good source.  We typically analyze 500-1000 guide logs per year from users and mounts all around the world, and the most common problems become clear pretty quickly – backlash in declination, uncorrected periodic error in RA, fragile and unstable guiding assemblies, and a great variety of operational mistakes.  It is undoubtedly a challenging and unforgiving hobby but it can be very rewarding when you’ve worked things out and things start to fall in place.  If you’ve been studying the available reference material, you’re already off to a better start than most.

 

Have fun,

Bruce

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[b.bi...@gmail.com]

I uset this simple routine during field events to preset the tripod very near Polaris prior to fine tuning:  Setup the Tripod, Rotate the tripod roughly north, put a 1x1x50 inch piece of weed across the bottom of the two southern tripod legs, set the Iphone Compass or Boy Scout compass square to this wood, rotate the tripod mount to north.   Step #2, using an inclinometer I set the mount to the elevation for this new location. I find the iphone compass to be fairly accurate.   Result: this gets the initial setup very close to Polaris before proceeding with normal adjustments to zero in on Polaris.