Astroart 9

[Mr Jack Martin]

I’m considering changing from PHD2 for Spectroscopy guiding on the slit of a LhiresIII.
Questions:
What are the pros and cons?
How easy/difficult is it to set up?
I am using a Starlight Xpress Lodestar guide camera PHD2 linked to The SkyX Windows 10.
Advice most appreciated thank you,
Jack

[John Coffin]

Hi Jack, just a thought, is it worth posting this in the ‘computer’ forum?
Best wishes, John

[Andy Wilson]

As posts too all the different forums appear in a single list on the front page of the BAA website, I unfortunately doubt that posting to another BAA forum would gain any extra responses.

I have not been doing active spectroscopy with my LHIRES III for a little while, though I used PHD2. I found it very easy and user friendly. It did need a little setup and tweaking, but no more than other software. I would set it up and try it out. Different people prefer different software, so I think it depends on what you find works best for you.

Best wishes,
Andy

[Mr Jack Martin]

John and Andy,
I see on the forums it guides down to sub pixel level and is more stable than PHD2.
No more jitterbugs!
Regards,
Jack

[Les Brand]

Following up on Jack’s question. I am an occasional spectroscopy observer having built a Sol’Ex and Star’Ex spectroscope with the hires and lores optical kits from Shelyak based on the Christian Buil designs. I have also used PHD2 and guided on slit but also using field stars with the PHD2 multiple star guiding approach. For the limited amount I have done (relatively short exposures) it seems to perform ok. (I run Sharpcap and PHD2 for acquisition)

Christian Buil advocates using CCDCiel which also does slit guiding – I haven’t yet tried that so interested if any more experienced users here have done so?

[Robin Leadbeater]

PHD works well on field stars but guiding on the slit works best if you have a program specifically designed to cope with the “hamburger” star image with the slit running down the middle. Programs like PHD designed for normal star images tend to hunt back and forth as they alternately lock onto one half or the other of the split star image. With PHD, I found playing with the exposure can help, for example deliberately saturating the image but the best solution is a program designed to run on the split image. CCD Ciel can do this and is highly regarded among many spectroscopists as it can can handle the whole process up to and including fully automatic acquisition of spectra. AstroArt I believe also has the capability to guide on split star images. I’ve not tried them though as they are not compatible with my ancient guide camera.

Cheers
Robin

[Robin Leadbeater]

Mr Jack Martin wrote:

I see on the forums it guides down to sub pixel level and is more stable than PHD2.
No more jitterbugs!

What program is that Jack?

EDIT Sorry, Astroart. It is in the title! Ken Harrison got this split image guiding feature added to AstroArt many years back but it does not run with my camera so check for compatibility. (I think there is a free trial version ?)

• This reply was modified 6 days, 9 hours ago by Robin Leadbeater.
• This reply was modified 6 days, 9 hours ago by Robin Leadbeater.

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