Best Place for me to calibrate

[Christian Hoeferlin]

Hi all,

I'm new here and I only have one question. Unfortunately, I only have a very small section of the sky from my location (balcony), it is the declination from + 60 ° to + 90 ° around Polaris. So far I have been guiding with the Mgen, but have now switched to PHD2.

It's about the calibration, PHD2 would like to have it at +/- 20 ° around the equator, which is impossible for me and PHD2 always complains about a bad calibration.

My question is, where in this 30 ° circle is the best place for a calibration? If I understood that correctly, as close as possible to the equator, then actually up towards the zenith at the meridian, is that correct?

Clear Skies Chris

[Brian Valente]

Hi Chris

Ideally you want to be calibrating at the *celestial* equator, near the meridian. 

It's not critical you do it at exactly that place, but you do want to avoid near the horizon and near the poles. You definitely want to avoid calibrating near the poles so get as far from polaris as possible. Calibrating at the poles has relatively little star movement and can create a poor calibration that could lead to compromised guiding

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Brian Valente

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[Bruce Waddington]

Hi Christian, welcome to the forum.  Just get as close to Dec= 0 as you can and somewhere close to the meridian.  You should make it as far south as you can, relying on auto-select to find stars you probably can’t see yourself.  If you are getting alerts about bad calibration results, that’s probably because they’re bad, not because you’re pointing too close to the pole.  Calibration problems are discussed in the manual so you should probably become familiar with those topics.

 

I assume you’re just experimenting at this point because working from a balcony like that isn’t likely to produce great guiding results – you’re going to be considerably hampered.  If you want to get specific help in the future, you’ll need to upload your PHD2 log files using this procedure:

 

https://openphdguiding.org/getting-help/

 

 

Good luck,

Bruce

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[Christian Hoeferlin]

OK., thank you. So as I suspected. In my case as high up as possible on the meridian. I understand that I have the worst location one could wish for (except for the dark sky), but since I have a physical handicap I have no choice and I have to make the best of it. And so far, PHD2 has done its job well, can you switch off this warning message? CS Chris

[Bruce Waddington]

What warning message are you talking about?

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[mj.w...@gmail.com]

" In my case as high up as possible on the meridian."

No, as low as possible above Dec = 0, close to the meridian.

Michael

Wiltshire UK

[Christian Hoeferlin]

@Bruce

I don't remember the exact wording of the message, but I think it was that the PHD2 would like to have a recalibration, I can no longer check that because the scope is packed (bad weather). But I have attached the log file.

@Michael

Thanks for your correction

CS

Chris

[Bruce Waddington]

The guide log doesn’t show the alert message, that stuff is contained in the debug log file.  That’s one of the many reasons I asked you to follow the ‘Getting Help’ link, which tells you how to upload both (potentially large) log files to our server. 

 

Is this the alert message you’re talking about:

 

 

If so, I can give you a way to avoid this alert in the next release.  In the meantime, that message doesn’t do you any harm other than sitting at the top of the display and being annoying - guiding is proceeding.  A Dec value of >60 degrees is the number we use for triggering this message.  If you can do a calibration at a Dec of <= 60 degrees, you won’t see it.

 

Regards,

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[Christian Hoeferlin]

This is exactly the message Bruce then in the future I will try to get <60 °. Maybe I can manage ~ 58 ° on my balcony.

I thank everyone involved.

CS

Chris