Exposure Time and Star Selection
The guide star can be selected (clicked on) while "looping" is active - in fact, this is the recommended method. It can also be selected after looping has been stopped, but this opens the possibility that the star might have moved since the last exposure. No great precision is required in clicking on the star - PHD2 will find the star nearest to the cursor. After you do this, a green box will appear to frame the star. If you pick a star that is too bright, a message box will tell you the star is "saturated", and you should either use a different star or decrease the exposure duration. The choice of exposure time will depend entirely on your equipment, sky conditions, and the available stars. The exposure time you choose has two major implications:
1.
It affects the signal strength (brightness) of the selected star - a brighter star will stand out better from the background and will generally produce better guiding results so long as it is not saturated.
2.
It also determines the frequency with which guide commands are sent to the mount - guide commands cannot be sent any more frequently than once for each exposure cycle. Some mounts benefit from frequent small guiding adjustments while others do not - you may need to experiment to understand what works best for your situation.
As a starting point, try using exposure durations in the range of one to five seconds. Rather than choosing the star yourself with a mouse-click, you can let PHD2 Auto-select the guide star by using the Alt-S keyboard shortcut after stars are visible in the main display.
There is also an Auto exposure time selection available. When exposure is set to Auto, PHD2 will attempt to adjust the exposure to keep the selected guide star at a constant signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) value. The Auto setting can be especially beneficial for AO users who want to minimize exposure time without losing the guide star. The settings to control Auto-exposure are on the Global Tab of the Advanced Dialog.
Automatic Calibration
Conventional Mounts
Two things need to be measured by PHD2 as part of guider calibration:
1.
The angle of the camera relative to the telescope axes
2.
The length of the guide pulse needed to move the telescope by a specific amount
PHD2 handles these measurements automatically by sending guide pulses to the mount and "watching" how far and in which direction the star moves between guide camera images. This process begins after you have selected a star and then clicked on the Guide icon button. Yellow cross-hairs will appear over the original location of your guide star and PHD2 will start to move the mount in various directions, tracking how the star moves as a function of what move commands were sent to the mount. The status bar will display the commands as they are sent to the mount, along with the incremental movements of the guide star relative to its starting position. PHD2 will do this on both axes, first moving east and west, then north and south. PHD2 wants to move the star up to 25 pixels in each direction in order to get an accurate calibration. Once this is complete, the crosshairs will turn green and guiding will start automatically..
In most cases, calibration will complete automatically without any user involvement. Obviously, this assumes that the mount and all the cable connections are working correctly. If they are not, the calibration is likely to fail with a message that the "star did not move enough"; and you'll need to do some trouble-shooting. If the star has basically not moved at all in one or more directions, you should look first at the cable connections and mount behavior. The "manual guide" function under the 'Tools' menu can help with this as can the trouble-shooting section of this document. But if the star has moved by some amount in each direction, you may need to adjust a calibration setting called the calibration step-size. PHD2 uses this parameter during calibration as a fixed-size duration of movement. The default value has been chosen to cover a wide range of typical guide scope set-ups, but you may need to adjust it for your situation. For example, an off-axis-guider on a long focal length scope will probably need a setting that's different from the default value. To adjust it, go into the "brain dialog" (Advanced Settings) and click on the 'Mount' tab. On that tab, you'll find a setting for 'Calibration step(ms)', and that's where you change the value. There's even a 'Calculate' button that will help you choose an optimal value for the parameter. Once you've set this value, it will be remembered as part of your equipment profile and you probably won't have to adjust it again.
You may also see a calibration failure if you're using a star too close to the celestial pole. In those locations, fixed-length movements in right ascension often move the star only a very small distance. In that case, move to a star location closer to the equator, ideally somewhere in the range of -30 to +30 degrees declination, and re-run the calibration. But if this is not feasible, you can adjust the calibration step-size upward until calibration succeeds.
Like all other guide settings, the calibration data is automatically saved as part of your current equipment profile. If nothing has changed in your configuration from one session to the next - even over an extended time period - you can restore the previous calibration data and start guiding immediately. This function is located under the 'Tools' menu and is labelled 'Restore Calibration Data.' Remember, the data are saved whenever a full calibration is completed or when you use the 'flip calibration data' command under the 'Tools' menu (see below). If you're using a German equatorial mount and the ASCOM interface or you have an 'aux' mount connected, the saved calibration data will include the side of pier where you were last guiding; so PHD2 will adjust automatically for your current pointing position. But if you are not using mount interfaces that can return pointing information, you'll need to remember which side of the pier was being used the last time you were guiding.
If you're using an ASCOM mount (or 'aux' mount) connection, PHD2 will also include the calibration and target declinations as part of its calculations. In that case, guiding moves in right ascension will be automatically adjusted to account for the declination of the current guide star, as opposed to the star you used for calibration. This is really just a refinement and isn't critical in most situations, so absence of pointing information is not a big problem. However, if you are concerned about it and are imaging near the celestial pole, you should consider calibrating using a star that's also at high declination.
After a calibration is completed, PHD2 will "sanity check" the results to be sure the calculations at least look reasonable. If they don't, you will see an 'alert' message at the top of the main window that describes the calibration result that looks questionable. You can choose to ignore the alert or click on 'Details' to get more information. It is generally advisable to pay attention to these alerts because there is no point in trying to proceed using calibration results that are significantly in error.
Adaptive Optics Devices
If you are using an adaptive optics device, there are actually two calibration processes that must complete. The first handles calibration of the tip/tilt mirror in the AO and calculates the magnitude and direction of the adjustments as they relate to displacements of the guide star. The second calibration is the one described above, dealing with guide commands that need to be sent to the mount. Known as "bump" commands, these will be issued when the guide star has moved beyond the range of corrections that can be achieved with the AO alone.
Guiding
Once guiding has begun, diagnostic messages will be displayed in the status bar to show what guide commanda are being sent to the mount. PHD2 will continue guiding until you click on the 'stop' icon. To resume guiding, simply start looping exposures again, select your star, and click on the 'Guide' button. You will not need to repeat the calibration in order to resume guiding. In some cases, PHD2 may "lose" the guide star and you'll be alerted by an audible beep and flashing orange crosshairs. There are several reasons this might occur:
1.
Something may be obscuring the star - clouds, the observatory roof, a tree, etc.
2.
The star may have abruptly moved out of the tracking rectangle because something shifted in the mount/camera/cabling infrastructure - cable "snags" often cause this
3.
The star may have "faded" for some other reason, perhaps because it is overly faint
Obviously, you'll need to identify the source of the problem and fix it. However, it's important to understand that PHD2 will not start moving the telescope around in an attempt to relocate the guide star. It will simply continue to take exposures and look for the guide star to reappear within the bounds of the current tracking rectangle. When you first start guiding, you may see an 'alert' dialog at the top of the window if no dark library or bad-pixel map is being used. You can choose to ignore this warning and continue with guiding, but you are likely to get better results if you spend the few minutes needed to construct a dark library for future use.
If you are using a German equatorial mount (GEM), you will usually have to do a "meridian flip" around the time your image target crosses the meridian. This means you will move the telescope around to the opposite side of the pier and then resume imaging. Doing this invalidates the original calibration, typically because the declination directions are now reversed. If you are using an ASCOM (or 'aux' ) mount interface, your calibration will be adjusted automatically and you can simply resum