Thank you. It was great you created graphs of common scenarios. I'm sure there is a possibility of scenarios being combined in one session, such as a backlash issue, some stiction, add some poor seeing or wind. I suppose guiding with wide FOV guide scope is easier than an OAG. Of course the quality of the mount is very important. For German Equatorial mounts I suppose the ones with belt driven worm gears have better guiding although Losmandy GM8,. GM811, GM11 mounts, which use gears between the motor and worm gears, their users report very good guiding, well below 1" RMS. Strain wave mounts advertise no backlash but seem to have higher Periodic Error (PE) than GEM. The new AM5N reports lower PE than the original AM5, less than 10" average vs 20". Which problems do you think would be eliminated if you owned a strain wave mount? I know you don't have one but what is your opinion? I guess you'll talk about Predictive PEC algorithm in you video of Periodic Error Control.. I switched to this in PHD2 under NINA and it seems to be a little better than Hysteresis algorithm but I still have inconsistent guiding. But I'm using a C8 SCT with OAG at 1442mm. I wonder about polar alignment. I've used polar alignment under NINA (TPPA) and the ASIAir. If I repeat the polar alignment neither of them on the second alignment show me the same error from the first alignment. I imagine the same is with any polar alignment method. I also find guiding is affected by the orientation of my scope to the target. A target higher in altitude seems to guide differently at lower altitudes with my AVX.
Hope you are doing well! Yes, guiding on a wider field of view is easier than a smaller field of view due to a wider field having less affect to motion (think of my comparison of two phones side by side one zoomed all the in and one standard zoom). The more zoomed in you are the more movement will affect your image which is why guiding is so much harder. You can experience multiple issues at the same time, you just need to look at what the graph is telling you and work on the most prominent issue first. On top of that, we are fighting all of the other variables that go along with guiding. I have seen and experienced something as simple as focus being the difference of ready to pack away for the night vs best guiding ever, but that is because focus will mimic very poor seeing conditions. Every mount will perform differently and it comes down to the quality of components. Having high precision encoders can yield tracking so good you don’t even need guiding, but those mounts come with a very high price tag. When it comes to strain wave, the research I’ve done is that they are pretty good mounts. They are able to hold a high payload without counterweights, but that’s relative to other factors and apples to oranges since other types of mounts need counterweights. The point I’m bringing across is that that are accurate and possess high torque. What I’m a little driven off of from them is they cannot handle a high enough payload for what I run, but I have seen and heard very good things about them. Another aspect that I have noticed, at least with the AM5 that I interacted with, seemed a bit unstable and can topple over easily. That’s not really a huge issue as proper balancing, maybe a tripod upgrade, should put things right there. TPPA and ASIair go off of an average with plate solving so the second run with either one will give you a different result compared to the first. That’s normal and why I run TPPA twice back to back. If I’m feeling a little uneasy or something didn’t go quite right, I’ll even run a third time (three times is rare). I apologize, I can’t remember if you guide via ASIair or PHD2. PHD2 has a calibration assistant which will put you in the best possible sky position in order to calibrate. Remember when you are low on the horizon, you are looking through up to 2x more atmosphere than you are looking straight up. This means seeing conditions will vary. Also, your mount behaves differently in different positions which is where balancing comes in as well. PHD2 has a multi star guiding algorithm that utilizes multiple stars which averages out the seeing conditions. Also, are you using ST4 or USB pulse? (This is another piece I can’t remember). If you are using ST4, I highly recommend going to USB pulse guiding as this allows you to do one calibration and you can use that for the entire night no matter which target. When you use ST4, you need to recalibrate for each target.
I’m very happy to hear this helped! Yes, I have plans for an ASIair series. Now that the weather seems to be clearing up finally, I can get more scope time for different videos :)
Loved your explanation of guiding. I used to get hung up on the graphs but this video has answered a lot of my questions. Looking forward to your video on PEC training. Clear skies!
Awesome, I’m very happy to hear this! I’ll have that out as soon as weather permits. I have a couple of clear nights here, but seeing isn’t good enough to attempt it right now. We should be coming out of monsoon season soon though :)
@@Hidden.Light.Photography Well no, not yet. So far didn't have the time to have a look at my logs. But it gave me a greater understanding of what to look for and that is great. I didn't know much of guiding. I just did set everything up and it worked out of the box, so I never bothered digging deeper into it. Lately I'm getting higher than usual RMS values and I wanted to look into it. Your video is a great starting point for me so I can look at the graph understand what is happening and drew my own conclusions - and that's really valuable for me :)
Great info. I have alot to learn it would seem on this quite techical subject. My guiding is at best 1.3-2x my resolution. (my res is a bit oversampled at .48)
Off the top of my head I dont but I need some clear nights to watch the chart live. I still have the "failed to settle in time issue" despite a new guide scope. Days have been too flakey lately to get much imaging time for experiments unfortunately.@@Hidden.Light.Photography
I understand the flakey weather. Hopefully soon we have some nice crisp nights! I apologize if you’ve already gone over this (I tried looking and couldn’t find it), but have you checked that your primary scope and primary imaging camera are at or less than 1:5 compared to your guiding camera and guide scope on astronomy.tools/calculators/guidescope_suitability Another thing I’d check would be your dithering amount and also your ratio set in PHD2. From there, on your next clear night check out the graph and see what it’s telling you. If you have questions grab some pictures and email me at Tony@HiddenLight-Photography.com and we can to over them together :)
@@Hidden.Light.Photography I still need to send some SCs and logs to you that I captured last month. It happens after many, but not all dithers or upon initial guiding start(when it is triggered via program not manualy) Once and a while it completely looses guide too and I will have many 5min frames with 1" long stars...lol. Unfortunately my graph read skills are not seeing issue and google doesnt have a good solution either. I recently grabbed a new guide scope(the 3 zwo cams finaly caused me too many connection issues and zwo staff was clueless) The phd2 settle issue remains, not sure bout tracking loss. Wow that was longer than intended...lol And im not done😆 Finaly... I use an oag or duo guider(mostly oag) so all use 1600mm ota. Resolution of my asi2600duo through scope is .48(yes, oversampled) and new guider(qhy5iii678) is binned at 2x so it is about .52res so scope to guider is bout 1:1 Old guider(asi220 mini) where issue began was binned 2x so res was 1.05. So scope to guider was 1:2 I will send logs soon. Thank you!!!!!!!
Let’s see what we can do to get you up and running. Send me the logs with the graphs as well as calibration data to tony@hiddenlight-photography.com and we’ll go through it together :)
Hi, Tony. Thanks for these videos. Since switching to a ZWO AM3 mount, my guiding has averaged 0.3-0.5 RMS. However, recently, I switched cameras from an ASI294MC-Pro to an ASI2600MC-Pro. No change to the guiding scope or camera. Not sure if it is related, but I now notice more separation in my RA and Dec guiding graphs - they don't overlap each other anymore. Total RMS is still around 0.7 on average. No drift, just separation between the two plots. Thoughts?
Good to hear from you! Is yours a permanent setup or do you set up each time? Have you don’t a recalibration since the change if you are on a permanent setup? If you take it down each night, do you calibrate each time? Also, have you checked astronomy tools to see where your guiding ratio is with the new setup?
@@Hidden.Light.Photography The setup is not permanent but I attempt to replicate it each time by having tripod orientation marks on the pavement, orienting the mount to the tripod in exactly the same way, and ensuring the tripod is level and rig balanced. I use an ASI Air Plus, and the latest firmware does a calibration at each startup and after each meridian flip. Guiding ratio with the new setup is 1:1.22, which is ok, per the tool. I've only run this new setup once due to weather - will try it again and see if it happens again.
Are you using ST4 or USB pulse guiding? Also, how does your guiding graph look in terms of RA and DEC stability plus guide pulse commands? Do you by chance have any photos of it?
Keep me posted on what you find with the graph as that’ll be important to fully dial what’s going on. USB is the best way to do it. I can say that I’ve had it happen to me twice and once was polar alignment related and the other was a calibration that listed as good, but the data points during calibration were not quite as good as they could have been. Well take a look at the graph together when you get it and dial it back in :)
