PHD2 for dummies

PHDEmailer
1

Hi all
Have been using SGP Pro for a while now, but as I use a 10u 2000HPS, have not guided for 2 years! Any way, I am now using a much longer FL scope with a small pixel camera (scale 0.39 arc sec/pixel) so have started to use my autoguider and PHD2. I’ve looked through the instructions and also this forum, but I am still not clear exactly how PHD 2 works.

The manual says I have to set up guiding before starting a sequence, so am I right that I need to calibrate, then start guiding first?

Next, the meridian flip bothers me as I don’t know how PHD2 behaves, does it find a new guide star automatically? (I couldn’t find this in the manual) and does it switch the DEC automatically as the scope is now on the other side of the pier. My first attempt last week failed to guide once passed the meridian.

A brief demo of how PHD behaves would be great.

Thanks
Adrian

2

SGP will call PHD to star automagicaly. If started this way PHD will go ahead and calibrate if set to do so.

However I find it best to calibrate and get PHD running before starting SGP.

For a flip guiding is halted until the slew has settled and then PHD will select a suitable guide star and ‘hopefully’ continue on.

3

Thanks Ulterior, you sound a little unsure of if it works. I managed to find Chris Woodhouse’s videos on SGP and PHD, looks like it should all run automatically. I had my guider exposure set to 10 seconds, so was taking a little longer than usual for settling etc. Explains why I gave up :slight_smile: