PHD Guiding Software Helpers

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Stark Labs PHD guiding software helpers

One of the big difficulties with Stark LabsPHD guiding softwareis getting the brain

settings set to the optimal guiding. Inmany cases the default settings will workvery well but for others the guiding will becompletely unsatisfactory. Thats when itstime to start playing with the settings.Problem is the settings are defined byterms that can be very confusing to a newuser. So many people will just startchanging them without the knowledge ofwhat each one does and how it interrelateswith the other settings. This normally justends in frustration. I have followed theYahoo groups for Stark Labs since I firstbegan using PHD and Nebulosity. Over timeI have been able to determine what worksbest for me. However it was still mostly

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9/7/13 Stark Labs PHD guiding software helpers

www.astronomyforum.net/astronomy-software-forum/112778-stark-labs-phd-guiding-software-helpers.html

trial and error (many more errors thansuccesses!) Today (5/20/11) Neil Heacock(a very accomplished astrophotographer!)posted the following. It does a very good

job of explaining what each function does.Keep in mind the settings he is describingare for a specific guidescopeand OTA sothey may not be applicable to your setup,however the descriptions and what they doshould be very helpful to those starting up.Keep in mind the settings you use for onearea of the sky may change when you

image in another.

Posted by Neil Heacock in Starklabs YahooGroup 5/20/11.

1) RA aggressiveness at 120 means thatyou are going to apply120% of thecorrection to the RA movement. This isprobably too much. Anywhere from 80 to100 should likely be what you want. Butnot over 100.

2) RA Hysteresis is applying the samecorrections ahead of time, anticipatingcorrections based on past correctionsmade. If your mount has a high rate of

reproducible periodic error, this number(43) is probably okay, but for an EM200,I'm sure it's too high. 10 is likely more thenenough.

3) Min Motion (pixels) - this is the minimalamount that the star is allowed to move*without* sending a correction. If thatnumber were .25, then the star would beallowed to "float around" a quarter pixelwithout PHD sending corrections to themount. This is partly to counteract seeingand partly to counteract normal gear error.A setting of 0.05 means that at a 20th of apixel fire off a correction. This is sure tointroduce oscillation and loads of over

correction. I'd raise this to nothing lowerthen .15 or you are sure to send acorrection for every guide frame - which is*not* what you want if you can help it.

4) Max [RA/Dec] Durationis how large of a*maximum correction* PHD is allowed tomake (in milliseconds). 360/350(respectively) are probably adequate unlessthings are considerably bad. Massiveperiodic error or significant polar mis-alignment. You can raise it to, say, 800, butIf PHD needs to send an 800ms pulse (forexample) then you've most likely gotserious polar alignmentproblems thatyou're asking to guider to accommodate

for that are probably unreasonable. I'drecommend rather then increasing thatnumber too high (500 should be more thenenough for any mount), learn how tobetter polar align. There are lots of tutorialsand options online. I've personally beenusing PHD to aid in drift aligning and itworks great.

5) Calibration step - this is the length of apulse in milliseconds that PHD will send toyour mount during the calibration process.If 500ms move the star a pixel or so duringcalibration, then leave it there. But if itbarely moves and you need to make like50 steps in the various directionsand
http://www.astronomyforum.net/wiki/Polar-Alignmenthttp://www.astronomyforum.net/wiki/Seeinghttp://www.astronomyforum.net/wiki/Scope


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calibration is taking 3 or 4 minutes, then it'sway too low. To know where to put thatnumber, play with it until you see the starmoving about a pixel for each step and PHDis only taking about 15 to 20 steps in anydirection and fully calibrates in about a 90seconds or so. For me, my 50mmfinder/guider is set to 2500 and my400mm ZS66 guider is set to 1000.

6) Star Mass tolerance.. I haven't figuredthis one out yet... but in Craig's

documentation he says if we set it to 1.0then it will basically turn it off (as o f 1.12.2I think). I have mine set to 1.0 becauseuntil I understand what it does, I want it tonot affect things. I have no idea of your 0.3is the right number for the typical guidestars you get. My recommendation, itsounds like you have enough on yourhands to deal with... turn it off by setting itto 1.0.

7) Regarding your guide exposures of 10seconds in one link and 1 second in theother link, it's important to understand thattoo short of guide subs will possibly correcttoo frequently causing the problem of

"chasingthe seeing" (which isn't too bad ifyou lower your aggressiveness to 75-80%or so), while too long of guide subs -coupled with bad polar alignment - willcause lots of Dec corrections and never RAcorrections because PHD can only send onecorrection at a time (unless you're pulseguiding) and if every 10 seconds it needs tocorrect for Dec because of bad polaralignment, then it will never correct for RA.So, my recommendation is to find a subexposure that is somewhere between errorand seeing. Probably 1.5, 2, 2.5 or maybe3, but based on what you are showing us,I'd be surprised if 3 is good for you. Try 2second exposures along with the other

things I've mentioned here and see if youcan get things to settle down.

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Now thats a very helpful piece of info' . Definately puts the settings into some understandable meanings. Now , all I need isdark skies and weather , been absolute ages since I guided with PHD.

Thanks for posting it and thanks also to Neil for writing it up.

Clear Skies

Pete

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excellent piece of info.Its nice to have a better understanding of what the settings in PHD are all about.I know my settings changed dramatically after the DEC was repaired on my mount but weather prevents me from tinkering.this should help tremendously in setting up without fighting the programthanks for posting it Gordon

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Thanks guys!

As I mentioned above, PHD is a great tool, but I have found it sometimes can be a bit 'touchy'. It's really nice to have abetter understanding of each of the adjustments.


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In my experiments the adjustment which made "the big difference in achieving great guiding" was increasing calibration stepnumber up higher. My numbers are very similiar to Gordon's for setting on this adjustment. I also change my mount guidesettings to approximately 70% for guiding settings, I read that recommended setting is actual at sidereal rate according toCraig Stark. With original PHD settings my mount would loose guidestar frequently and take forever to calibrate if it did at all,now with the settings changed it calibrates in minute and half, and guides all night long without one hiccup....I now calibratefor every new object, since calibrations works so quick, and guiding varies according to position in sky.

Good list.

UPdate- My settings vary a bit depending if I am imaging with the 8" at F/10 or with the faster scopeat F/6. With the 8 inch Ihave tweaked things to work well with guiding rate of mount set at sidereal rate. I then slowly cut back on max correctiontimes until they were slightly higher than the max correction seen after watching graph for at least 4 full runs of the wormgear. So my new method is to change max duration to about 10% to 20% higher than the max correction seen on graphafter watching few revolutions of the worm.

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I found that I have to 'adjust' the calibration step from time to time depending on what part of the sky I'm trying to guide in. Iusually try to keep the "steps" down to 15 or so for RA. (dec will usually be about the same maybe a bit more).

I use the "pulse guide" feature in EQMOD and set those sliders down to about 20% or so for the "width gain". Just have toremember to slide them back up to 100% if I need to recalibrate.

Using both methods I get get relatively flat RA / Dec lines.

It all just takes time and lots of trial and error! (Many fruitless nights!)

Gordon

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Very helpful information. Thanks

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Again it should be noted that the better your Polar Alignment, the better that PHD Guiding can work for you [or the less workthat PHD has to perform. Nothing can compensate for poor polar Alignment.

If your Guide Camera can Bin x2, then by all means Bin x2.

Takes Darks. Most Guide Cameras are not cooled CCDChips and make noisy subframes. Darks [and binning x2] will helpclean the subframes up for PHD Guiding. It is frustrating to find out that the Program failed to guide because you were on ahot pixel. AlanP


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