In this blog post, I will try to explain the changes I made to the multistar code to address the issues I discussed in Part 2. A change of Focus The flagging code in the official version of Multistar guiding is focused on keeping the secondary star deviations close to zero. This sounds good!…but it completely ignores what the primary star is witnessing. The primary star may be showing that a significant guiding error is occurring, but the secondary stars are being flagged and ignored simply because they agree with…
Category: Imaging
Open PHD2 Multistar Guiding -Part 2
In part 2, I will go into detail explaining what I found when examining Multistar guiding. I wanted to keep this simple, but it was not possible to do so. I will probably revise this a few times so that it’s easier to follow. I knew that the debug logs contained a huge amount of data that was screaming out to be displayed in graph form. It turns out that all of the secondary stars’ data is logged, as well as the flagging, error detection, and final results for each…
Open PHD2 Multistar Guiding -Part 1
I have always been interested in improving my astrophotos. My focus has always been on how to improve how I process my astrophotos and how to improve the autoguiding of my telescope mount. Because of my 30 years of experience as an Electrical Engineer, I focused on the software/firmware and hardware involved with autoguiding. With the introduction of PHD2 Multistar guiding, I immediately jumped on this bandwagon. By the end of 2023, I was still looking for improvements, so I decided to take a deep dive into the Open PHD2…
Stray Light in my BK80ED Refractor
April 21st,2024 I have found an issue with stray light getting into my astrophotos when using my BK80ED 80mm refractor. Here is an example of the stray light. Those arcs of white light appeared immediately after I performed a Meridian flip. I tried everything to verify it was not terrestrial light, and nothing changed this issue. When I finally moved the mount away from this target a little bit, I noticed that these arcs of light moved as well. I concluded that the source of this stray light is starlight…
Off-axis Guider…the first year
Over the 2021/2022 winter I bought a ZWO OAG. I spent those cold months figuring out how to incorporate this device into my set-up. My post Adding an Off-Axis Guider to my Set-up goes into lots of detail regarding back focus requirements for my two telescopes (Celestron 8” EdgeHD SCT and a Skywatcher BK80ED refractor). It wasn’t until May that I finally got a chance to use my set-up “under the stars”. Don’t let your imaging camera drop to the ground! My post “First Light” using an Off-Axis Guider explains…