Look for Some Advice on Guiding Improvement

[Steven Zuhoski]

Hello Group,

While I'm waiting for the current cloudy weather pattern to clear out of N. Texas, I'm hoping to improve my guiding performance. Here is the link to my last few logs from a couple of weeks ago. My usual polar alignment routine is the AP Daytime method followed NINA's 3 point procedure (no view of the pole star...), and sometimes PEMPro drift alignment (but not for the attached series of logs below).   

Due to the guiding performance, I'm tossing out ~10% to 15% of subs due to blurred, streaked, or double stars. I'm hoping someone can point me in the right direction. 

https://openphdguiding.org/logs/dl/PHD2_logs_CA2S.zip

Thanks and Regards,

Steve

[Bruce Waddington]

I think we need to have more information about your setup.  Are you using an OAG for guiding?  Can you identify some specific times during your July 10 and July 11 sessions when you got the bad subs, and could you post an example in raw, uncompressed fits format?  One thing I can see is that you were guiding clear down in the weeds for two of the guiding sequences - pointing to the western sky, you started guiding at a pointing altitude of only 33 degrees and then tried to run for 2 hours.  Nothing good is going to happen that close to the horizon because of thermal convection and seeing, and those areas are often prone to cable routing problems.

Bruce