Troubleshooting

Suggestions and tips for Avalon Instruments products

PHD2 guide parameters

The best guiding performance with our belt driven mounts comes by using the lowest possible guiding speed ( 0,2 / 0,4 ) , the shortest possible guide exposure ( 1 sec is ok ) and the lowest possible RA/DEC pulse guide duration (300 / 600).

Due to the Fast Reverse Belt Drive System fast pulse guide responding, it is strongly suggested to use a smoothed guide settings, to avoid overcorrections/oscillations. The above PHD2 guide parameters table can be used as starting values that must be adjusted on depending of the setup and the live performance, we also suggest to use the Off Axis Guider, specially with long focal length longer then 800 mm or/and mirror telescopes, to avoid differential mechanical flexure that can create issues on the final star shape quality.
The below showed parameters refer to the Guidescope.
It is importanto to note that in order to have good guide performance the Guide Scope focal length should be at least half the main scope.
The guide camera pixel resolution should not be too poor compared to tha main camera.

 Focal length 250 mm 500 mm 1000 mm 2000 mm

RA/DEC Max Duration

600/800

400/600

250/400

200/300

RA/DEC Aggressiveness

100

90

80

70

Minimum Move

0,00 0,00 0,00 0,00
Mount Guide Algorithm Lowpass2 Lowpass2 Lowpass2 Lowpass2
Guide Exposure in seconds 0,5 to 1 0,5 to 1 1 to 2 1 to 2
RA/DEC Autoguide Speed 0,50/0,60 0,35/0,45 0,25/0,35 0,15/0,25