Where to start. I was a beginner like everyone has to be at some point. The learning curve is steep and lessons are sometimes hard to learn, as you invest so much time only to find something you’ve worked hard at won’t work. An example was my use of my wood turning skills on a lathe to make parts – e.g. to hold the scope on the mount. I made some lovely stuff and then had to bin it because wood, no matter how solid it looks, flexes too much. When you think that you are trying to guide out errors of a few pixels magnitude, any flexure in the kit drowns out your capability to guide. Tough lesson, there are lots more which I won’t go into. Here are some tips.
Flexure between the imaging scope and the guidescope is problematic, especially as the mount moves the lot across the sky and the scopes may move relative to each other. A guiding system won’t guide that out. Make it all rock solid. I thought mine was, but my definition of rock was not good enough! Egg shaped stars is the result.
Buy qaulity gear from the outset – I was on a limited budget – but in the end I settled for a lodestar guide camera with a cheap 3 inch f5 refractor. That worked well when I had the imaging scope as a refractor. When I changed to a C11 SCT as the imager, I used an off axis guider – in my opinion (and many others), the only successful way to guide an SCT, due to the main mirror movement inherent in an SCT. Don’t waste your time – use an OAG if you have an SCT.
I have always used PHD and then PHD2 – it is easy to use and works well. When there are problems – and there are always problems with everything aren’t there? PHD2 is really good for two reasons – the online support forum is great and PHD2 software produces session logs which can be analysed.
PHD2 integrates well with Sequence Generator Pro – another piece of great software.
