Another K3CCDTools Question - Autoguiding

I also just noticed that the new K3CCDTools version has a Drift Explorer and
Autoguide feature.....

Am I missing something here or does this potentially give the ability to
autoguide my LX200GPS with the Toucam Pro or DSI Pro and no additional
equipment - i.e. Guidescope and separate camera ? Just connect the laptop
via the serial port to the scope, set up K3CCDTools and hit the "guide"
button (probably not that simple, but....)

"adm" wrote in message
...
I also just noticed that the new K3CCDTools version has a Drift Explorer
and
Autoguide feature.....

Am I missing something here or does this potentially give the ability to
autoguide my LX200GPS with the Toucam Pro or DSI Pro and no additional
equipment - i.e. Guidescope and separate camera ? Just connect the laptop
via the serial port to the scope, set up K3CCDTools and hit the "guide"
button (probably not that simple, but....)


Hi,

Drift Explorer and Autoguide have been features of K3CCDTools for a while
now. You still need a separate camera for imaging. You can either use an off
axis guider on your main scope or a separate guidescope for your guide
camera. BTW do you know there is a Yahoo support group?
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/K3CCDTools/
There is also a lot of knowledge about K3CCDTools on the QCUIAG group

Robin

"Robin Leadbeater" wrote in message
...

"adm" wrote in message
...
I also just noticed that the new K3CCDTools version has a Drift Explorer
and
Autoguide feature.....

Am I missing something here or does this potentially give the ability to
autoguide my LX200GPS with the Toucam Pro or DSI Pro and no additional
equipment - i.e. Guidescope and separate camera ? Just connect the laptop
via the serial port to the scope, set up K3CCDTools and hit the "guide"
button (probably not that simple, but....)


Hi,

Drift Explorer and Autoguide have been features of K3CCDTools for a while
now. You still need a separate camera for imaging. You can either use an
off
axis guider on your main scope or a separate guidescope for your guide
camera. BTW do you know there is a Yahoo support group?
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/K3CCDTools/
There is also a lot of knowledge about K3CCDTools on the QCUIAG group

Cheers Robin - will check it out. However - it's a bit on the "new features"
page that caught my interest. It says:

"Possibility to Autoguide during WDM sequence capturing by using the same
camera for capturing and autoguiding".....

"adm" wrote in message
news

"Robin Leadbeater" wrote in message
...

"adm" wrote in message
...
I also just noticed that the new K3CCDTools version has a Drift
Explorer
and
Autoguide feature.....

Am I missing something here or does this potentially give the ability
to
autoguide my LX200GPS with the Toucam Pro or DSI Pro and no additional
equipment - i.e. Guidescope and separate camera ? Just connect the
laptop
via the serial port to the scope, set up K3CCDTools and hit the "guide"
button (probably not that simple, but....)


Hi,

Drift Explorer and Autoguide have been features of K3CCDTools for a
while
now. You still need a separate camera for imaging. You can either use an
off
axis guider on your main scope or a separate guidescope for your guide
camera. BTW do you know there is a Yahoo support group?
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/K3CCDTools/
There is also a lot of knowledge about K3CCDTools on the QCUIAG group

Cheers Robin - will check it out. However - it's a bit on the "new
features"
page that caught my interest. It says:

"Possibility to Autoguide during WDM sequence capturing by using the same
camera for capturing and autoguiding".....


Ah yes - I see (I have not upgraded yet) I think it means that you can
store the frames used for autoguiding, so with planetary imaging with short
exposures, you can stop the planet drifting out of the field of view. To be
honest, I thought you could do this already. Perhaps it worked with VfW but
not WDM. I already sometimes use long exposures for guiding and save them.
(It does not do any guiding during the long exposure frame, it just keeps
the object on the same pixels - useful for keeping any slow drift when doing
photometry for example.)
AFAIK the only ways of guiding during long exposures using one camera is to
se the Steve Chambers SC2 webcam mod which allows alternate lines to be read
more often while the other lines are accumulated for a long exposure, though
I have never met anyone who actually does this (Some Starlight Xpress
cameras have a similar feature) or use a camera like some of the SBig models
which have an extra guide chip built in. It would be worth asking for
clarification on the group though.

Robin

"adm" wrote in message
news

"Robin Leadbeater" wrote in message
...

"adm" wrote in message
...
I also just noticed that the new K3CCDTools version has a Drift
Explorer
and
Autoguide feature.....

Am I missing something here or does this potentially give the ability
to
autoguide my LX200GPS with the Toucam Pro or DSI Pro and no additional
equipment - i.e. Guidescope and separate camera ? Just connect the
laptop
via the serial port to the scope, set up K3CCDTools and hit the
"guide"
button (probably not that simple, but....)


Hi,

Drift Explorer and Autoguide have been features of K3CCDTools for a
while
now. You still need a separate camera for imaging. You can either use
an off
axis guider on your main scope or a separate guidescope for your guide
camera. BTW do you know there is a Yahoo support group?
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/K3CCDTools/
There is also a lot of knowledge about K3CCDTools on the QCUIAG group

Cheers Robin - will check it out. However - it's a bit on the "new
features" page that caught my interest. It says:

"Possibility to Autoguide during WDM sequence capturing by using the
same camera for capturing and autoguiding".....
If you think about it, using a device like the Toucam, as a 'video' input,
it is not potentially hard to look at each frame in turn, and guide on any
errors in this, while at the same time integrating multiple frames to
produce a 'psuedo' long exposure image. Downside is that with short
exposures, unless the object is relatively bright, there will not be
significant data recorded in the individual images, to give any record in
the result. However it is a simple (and cheap...) solution. It sounds as
if they have implemented something along these lines.

Best Wishes

"Roger Hamlett" wrote in message
...


If you think about it, using a device like the Toucam, as a 'video' input,
it is not potentially hard to look at each frame in turn, and guide on any
errors in this, while at the same time integrating multiple frames to
produce a 'psuedo' long exposure image. Downside is that with short
exposures, unless the object is relatively bright, there will not be
significant data recorded in the individual images, to give any record in
the result. However it is a simple (and cheap...) solution. It sounds as
if they have implemented something along these lines.

Though unless your mount is particularly badly aligned, you dont really need
to do the guiding on line, just align and stack afterwards. I believe there
is a program which does this on the fly producing pseudo real time stacked
images (Astrosnap possibly)

If anyone is interested in the effect of stacking on signal to noise ratio,
I have just completed a page on it as part of a Stacking FAQ project I am
working on for QCUIAG.
http://tinyurl.com/72s5t
http://mysite.wanadoo-members.co.uk/...stacking_noise
..htm

With a B+W rechipped vesta webcam and 8 inch aperture, I was surprised to
find I was getting down to mag14.5 in a 1000 frame stack of 0.2 second
exposures. Quite a bit of nebulosity was visible in M42 too for example.


Robin