PHD2 Guiding with an Orion Atlas 10 EQ and Shoestring modification to manual controller

[Kevin Mathews]

I have an older mount which only has a manual RA and DEC control with 2,8,16x speed selection. The Shoestring modification allowed me to connect my ASI174 MC (autoguider) to the manual controller using RJ6 connector cable. I did not choose a star at zero DEC for this calibration. I have not used GA or Drift Alignment yet an plan on it when the weather cooperates. Since this is using the manual control I believe any pulse commands would be causing a 2X, 8X, or 16X signal to the motors depending on switch position. I have to adjust the guide speed to 2.00 to achieve sufficient movement to complete calibration. I have installed your latest release and read/watch all your material and hope to get better results. I don't have a view of a zero DEC star it will be something probably 15-20 degrees DEC. Thank you for you review in advance.

Kevin

[Andy Galasso]

Hi Kevin,

I took a quick look at your log and it looks like your settings are pretty much whacked.  I would recommend you go back to the PHD2 defaults and start from there.  The easiest way to get back to the defaults is to open the Connect equipment window and select Manage Profiles => New using Wizard...  From there you can select your equipment and start fresh with default settings. When prompted to build a dark library, do so.  I think you will find you have much better results just by using the default settings.

Regarding your point about choosing a star near Dec zero for calibration... that actually does not apply in your situation.  Since you are using On-camera for your mount you need to calibrate at your imaging target's declination.  Each time you change your target you should re-calibrate.

On a separate note, we recently released version 2.6.0. You may want to consider upgrading to that newer version since among other things it has better diagnostics for improving guiding.

Feel free to post back with your guide log once you've tried those recommendations.

Good luck!

Andy

[Kevin Mathews]

Andy,
Thank you for the quick response. I did upgrade since the log I sent your. I spent last night setting up only to have the clouds chasing my FOV. I tried to chose a star in the West, I don't have a good view of the the meridian in the South. Clouds foiled that attempt so I went back to the Orion nebula in the East. and then at the end tried the low horizon in the West. I tried the drift align tool. I was uncertain how applicable it was to my German Equatorial mount but thought altitude would correspond to my 39 degree latitude location and inclination of my polar axis.  I did not do the Azimuth thinking that my scope wasn't and Alt -Az mount, I should have. I set my scope up leveling and then rotating my Polar axis scope to the 1 degree offset from the NCP for that time of day. I checked the position of Polaris ~10 minutes later and it was still in the circle. As you can see from the log I used the Guiding Assistant and apply the recommendations. A review of the calibration looks like there is a oscillation about both RA and DEC. The one time I thought I finally achieve a good configuration, I think I locked onto a hot pixel because the RA and DEC were very quiescent. When I selected another star in the field the erratic behavior returned.  So at 19 F I called it quits.
I have include the log from the attempt with PHD2 v 2.6

[Andy Galasso]

Kevin,

A quick question to help me understand what I see in the guide log: are you using a guide scope or off-axis guiding?  If it is a guide scope, is the focal length really 1200mm?

Andy

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[Kevin Mathews]

Andy,
I'm using my 10" Newtonian with the ASI174 MC camera as the guider with a Nikon D90 piggybacked on the telescope. There is no off axis guiding. The camera is mounted at prime focus.

Kevin

On Monday, 11 January 2016 16:18:15 UTC-5, Kevin Mathews wrote:

[Andy Galasso]

Hi Kevin,

I'm still a bit baffled by what I see in the guide log file. Would you mind posting a link to the corresponding PHD2 debug log?

Andy

[Kevin Mathews]

Andy,
Here is the corresponding debug file.

[Kevin Mathews]

Andy
Sorry about that, I located the correct file again this time

Kevin

On Saturday, 16 January 2016 23:45:26 UTC-5, Andy Galasso wrote:

[Andy Galasso]

Kevin,

Thanks for sending the Debug Log.  I was concerned about one of the sections in the Guide Log where PHD2 was not issuing any Dec corrections but the Debug Log showed that the reason was that the Dec guide mode had been set to None, so not unexpected behavior.

Back to your original question about your guiding performance.   We see from the guide log that both RA and dec are responding to guide corrections, but appear to be a bit "sloppy", or sluggish in their reactions, giving about 2.5 arc-sec RMS error.  This may not be a problem at all, and the guiding performance may be adequate for your piggybacked-camera which I presume has an image scale of at least around 2"/pixel or more?

I think you should try guiding for a longer period of time... at least 10 minutes or more. Try taking some exposures with your camera too. You may find that you are already guiding well enough to get some good images. If not, you can post your guide log and we'll take a look.

Andy