FreeLists / az-observing / [AZ-Observing] Re: Guiding Problems

[Jeff Hopkins <phxjeff@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Stan,

What was the advice?

Jeff

At 23:33 -0700 04/06/2008, Stan Gorodenski wrote:
>Thanks Jon for your advice. It worked like a charm tonight. Guided for
>at least an hour and a half and no problem.
>Stan
>
>Stan Gorodenski wrote:
>
>>Chris Schur, Jon, Rick, and anyone else with significant _experience_
>>guiding for imaging or for whatever reason:
>>
>>I am having a serious problem guiding using the Meade DSI Pro I, the
>>current version of Envisage in the Autostar Suite, my 16" f/10 Meade
>>LX200R,  and a laptop about 1 year old that has XP Pro on it. The
>>project I am involved with does not allow me to track with the camera
>>that is taking the image. I am tracking off reflected light that goes
>>through a 50mm focal length doublet before it hits the chip on the DSI Pro.
>>
>>I have had so many problems that I have the laptop solely devoted to
>>guiding only, but I still am having problems. The guiding will sometimes
>>freeze and when this happens I have to go out of Envisage and then go
>>back in and re-establish the guiding. Last night it kept loosing itself
>>and started rather quickly going off in declination directions. I have
>>played around with the software anti-backlash adjustment (setting it to
>>a very low percent should help reduce corrections in declination, which
>>I do not need for what I am doing, when guiding ), the Guide setting as
>>a percent of the base rate, the correction-gain setting, increasing or
>>decreasing exposure time which will increase or decrease image size, and
>>probably other things I have done that I cannot remember now. At the
>>time I thought I was making progress, but last night showed I was not.
>>
>>Can anyone with experience guiding offer some insight into what I can do
>>to correct this problem? Is Envisage difficult to use for guiding,
>>should I go to a separate guide scope with different software than
>>Envisage, etc. I suspect part of my problem is that the reflected image
>>I am guiding off is too large and atmospheric turbulence is causing the
>>guider to get lost. I am thinking there is a compromise between going to
>>too small a guides scope and one too large. Too small will not give the
>>guiding accuracy needed, too large will introduce too much atmospheric
>>turbulence. These are just guesses.
>>Stan
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>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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-- 
Jeff Hopkins
HPO SOFT
Counting Photons
http://www.hposoft.com/Astro/astro.html
Hopkins Phoenix Observatory
7812 West Clayton Drive
Phoenix, Arizona 85033-2439 U.S.A.
(623)849-5889
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