Poor guiding with AM5 and OAG

[Jack Bernstein]

I just switched my ~650 mm refractor to an AM5 and have added an OAG with a ASI220mm. I polar aligned it and followed recommendations from both calibration and guiding help. After about 20 min, guiding was lost with multiple star lost, low SNR and mass changed. Attached are my logs. I would appreciate it if someone could glance at them and give me some feedback as to how I can make this better. The debug log is compressed because it was too big.

[Nelson Viegas]

Hi Jack,

I'm no PHD2 expert, but I too guide my 950mm f/7.5 refrator with an OAG. You need to change the guider focal length to match the telescope. You focal length seems to indicate that you were guiding with a very short guide scope before, of about 160mm. Needless to say that that won't work. 😅

One thing to remember: If calibration is done quickly with only 3 or 4 steps, then is most likely you have something off in your PHD2 profile configuration. 

Good luck and clear skies!

Best regards,

Nelson Viegas

GOAAA

Jack Bernstein <jack.be...@gmail.com> escreveu (terça, 4/08/2026 à(s) 16:36):

I just switched my ~650 mm refractor to an AM5 and have added an OAG with a ASI220mm. I polar aligned it and followed recommendations from both calibration and guiding help. After about 20 min, guiding was lost with multiple star lost, low SNR and mass changed. Attached are my logs. I would appreciate it if someone could glance at them and give me some feedback as to how I can make this better. The debug log is compressed because it was too big.

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[Bruce Waddington]

Nelson is right, whenever you make a configuration change like this, you must re-run the new profile wizard.  You did that when you first started, now you need to do it again.  Don't try to fix this by chipping away at individual parameters in the Advanced Settings dialog, you will just create a bigger mess.  

Also, going forward, please upload your logs to our server rather than attaching them to forum messages.

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

Bruce

[Jack Bernstein]

Thanks Bruce and Nelson!

Jack M. Bernstein

Sent from my iPhone

On Aug 4, 2026, at 13:55, Bruce Waddington <bw_m...@earthlink.net> wrote:



Nelson is right, whenever you make a configuration change like this, you must re-run the new profile wizard.  You did that when you first started, now you need to do it again.  Don't try to fix this by chipping away at individual parameters in the Advanced Settings dialog, you will just create a bigger mess.  

<ProfileWizard_Entry.jpg>

Also, going forward, please upload your logs to our server rather than attaching them to forum messages.

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

Bruce

On Tuesday, August 4, 2026 at 8:57:01 AM UTC-7 Nelson Viegas wrote:

Hi Jack,

I'm no PHD2 expert, but I too guide my 950mm f/7.5 refrator with an OAG. You need to change the guider focal length to match the telescope. You focal length seems to indicate that you were guiding with a very short guide scope before, of about 160mm. Needless to say that that won't work. 😅

One thing to remember: If calibration is done quickly with only 3 or 4 steps, then is most likely you have something off in your PHD2 profile configuration. 

Good luck and clear skies!

Best regards,

Nelson Viegas

GOAAA

Jack Bernstein <jack.be...@gmail.com> escreveu (terça, 4/08/2026 à(s) 16:36):

I just switched my ~650 mm refractor to an AM5 and have added an OAG with a ASI220mm. I polar aligned it and followed recommendations from both calibration and guiding help. After about 20 min, guiding was lost with multiple star lost, low SNR and mass changed. Attached are my logs. I would appreciate it if someone could glance at them and give me some feedback as to how I can make this better. The debug log is compressed because it was too big.

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