Hi, I’m not sure if this is a question for SGP or PHD2. A couple of times recently when starting a sequence and SGP has forced PHD2 to re-calibrate PHD2 has selected a star at the very edge of the field of view when there appear to be other suitable stars much further from the edge. The calibration routine then moves the star out of the field of view and the sequence eventually fails.
Is there a way through SGP to “encourage” PHD2 to select a more central star?
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PHD2 automatically excludes stars close to the edge when it is selecting a star for calibrating – calibration moves the guide star by at least 25 pixels and PHD2 accounts for that when choosing the star for calibration. Since this logic is breaking down for some reason in you setup, we’d like to investigate it more and would appreciate your posting the needed information to diagnose it (guide log and debug log) in the PHD2 forum (instructions here)
I would also like to point out that calibrating as part of your automated imaging run is not advisable. The best practice it is to calibrate once manually outside of SGP with the scope pointed near the meridian-celestial equator intersection. Let PHD2 continue to use that known good calibration and never recalibrate. The only time you need to recalibrate is if you rotate the guide camera relative to the sky. If you make sure the guide camera orientation is fixed (mark the position with a piece of tape for example) then you do not need to recalibrate at all.
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Also note that there is an SGP setting on the Auto Guide tab to force a re-calibration when you change a new target. You should make sure that is disabled.