Thanks again Ray I figured it out - a combination of wrong timzeone and I adjusted J2000 to JNOW or vice versa, I'm not 100% sure

thanks for the reply Ray i'm running 6.4sp1 I'm 99% certain this is user error, just trying to hunt it down.

Hi folks we are working on first light for out 1600AE down at obstech It's going good so far(?) I can get an image and platesolve via SGP - for this very first solve it predictably fails over to blind

>>> .can I expect to go 10 min or longer unguided with AE's and a good pointing model?? i thought AP mount + AE + unguided + good pointing model = APCC

Hi Ray >>>Some large mirrored scopes don't model well but refractors usually model very well is that primarily from mirror flop, or other issues? we have a planewave CDK17, hoping it models well :)

I'm already not going back to the polemaster app! the main problem i found with polemaster is that it's just not that accurate. around 30 arcsec but with my main camera/ota and sharpcap i can usually

>>> BTW polemaster will work with sharpcap's polar alignment and that's what I use for my AP900. It literally takes less than 3 min to be polar aligned with polemaster/sharpcap combo. interesting! i w

Any idea how much of that drift rate is due to polar misalignment vs other sources of RA drift (atmosphere, etc.)

>> Have you ever seen what the periodic error looks like with a microstepper running a belt drive? Do you think it is smooth and accurate? Would you like to see? yes please! i would like to see

you might consider polemaster, it's a couple hundred, but so incredibly simple and will work with your DSLR setup

Rolando that's great how long was each exposure?

Leon I am a regular over at PHD, i put together a baseline guiding tutorial that should get you most of the way to a working setup, it's often used as a first step to getting your guiding dialed in: h

Hi Mojo We're not so far apart on our setups: i have an OAG with Lodestar that is 752 x 582 8.4u @840mm focal length Your camera has the TC-237 tracking CCD (657 x 495 pixels at 7.4u) @ 1620mm focal l

Hi Mojo PHD2 will lock onto any clump of noise and hunt around the sky trying to guide on it. I'm not sure what issue you are having, but i image in the san fernando valley (the worst) and i have no p

Joe SGP Direct Mount dither does not require moving back to CWD first. It moves a specified amount of time in a random direction, for example 0.10 seconds

UPDATE: i poked around on settling with direct mount a bit, the settle at parameter is kind of irrelevant as the amount will always be 0 however you can use the settle time and set if to a few seconds

I don't believe settle has any impact since there is no guide star to settle on but if you go the other route of using PHD, i would set the settle extremely high, like 5 pixels for 0 seconds, so essen

>>> In your SGP equipment profile, change it from PHD to Direct Mount Guider. Configure how much you want to dither and set your settling time and you should be good to go. You can dither but no need

Generally people build PEC using their main scope, provided it's 0.5"/pix or less resolution.

If you have very low dec backlash and/or absolute encoders, lowpass2 is the preferred algorithm Brian