So yesterday I finally got a chance to go out and do some imaging, though session was interrupted by clouds and was really breezy (guiding was all over the place), but hey .. not complaining got some more experience, getting better with Polar alignment and set up of the rig etc
So here is the issue, Target for the night was M81, nice above horizon but not too high-up near zenith.
- Polar aligned, ASIAIR pro found and centred the object correctly.
- Started Guide looping, found star (HFD was between 3.9 - 4.27 indicating hot pixel wasn't selected by default or myself), guide camera exposure set to 1s
- RA Calibration failed, it said something on lines of no movement of star or star didn't move.
- Tried a number of times same problem.
- I change target to M33, started calibration and calibration was completed successfully and started guiding. No issues..other than clouds and breezy conditions affecting guiding.
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Now this is not the first time this has happened, back in Oct I tried the same... same target (M81) and calibration failed in RA, I thought I has picked a Hot pixel as guide star.
back then I changed target to M33 and calibration was successful and guiding commenced.
Now I don't know if it is the mount, or balancing of the mount (I tend to balance slightly biased towards camera side in Dec).
i.e. something off with balancing which means it has issue a target (M81) which is above horizon but not too high
but is OK with M33 which is high above and close to zenith (some what close) and some how results in ease of calibration.
There is an issue with the ZWO ASI174MM USB 3.0 camera where I can't set exposure > 1s, it freezes guide looping and in preview I get "Exposure Failure".
I've attached the PHD log, if anyone experienced could shed some light that would be great.
ps: guiding was affected by the breezy conditions but on occasions when wind died down guiding was @ ~ 1.53"
Thanks in advance,
Nihal.