...
- Turned on ASCOM, TCS, Thesky6, opened dome
- Onkar mounted the ICRON Extender Box using double-sided gorilla tape on the GAM-Lite
- Connected the ICRON to outlet 3 of the remote power strip, relieving the small ladder of its ICRON holding duty.
- Closed the dome and covered baffle/finder scope in order to take dark frames on PHD2
- Collected dark frames for the on-axis camera first (ZWO ASI 178MM), then the for the finder scope (ZWO ASI 2600MM Pro)
- Select the desired camera, then follow Top Taskbar → Darks → Dark Library → Start to begin taking dark frames
- Made a new profile for each camera (ASI 178MM and ASI 2600MM Pro) so that multiple dark libraries could be saved
- Retook dark frames on each respective profile
- Uncovered main scope and finder scope and opened the dome
- Slewed to Orion
- Attempted to focus the main scope using SharpCapFWHM focusing tool to the best of our ability and the seeing
- Connected on-axis camera to PHD2 and attempted to begin guiding, but couldn't get a bright enough source to guide with
- Switched to finder scope profile and connected finder scope camera to PHD2 and began guiding
- Calibration failed because PHD2 couldn't register enough relative movement of any source with tracking set to 15.042 arcsec/sec
- Onkar comes back.
- Slewed to Mars and fixed the pointing in the on-axis camera
- set object position
- slewed to capella
- set object position
- fixing the focus, set to 2270.9
- slewed to HD 81567
- Close to celestial eq and apparent magnitude of 6 (why does this matter?)
- being close to the celestial eq matters because this would have the most apparent movement with not so great tracking
- the apparent magnitude being around 5-6 is preferable to phd2, not 100% sure why
- set object position
- attempting guiding
- phd2 having trouble locating the star, very fuzzy (why does this matter?)
- It would seem that the fuzzier the star, even if the center mass is super bright, phd2 has a hard time keeping a lock on target
- attempting to increase SNR from 70 to 150 (what does this mean and how do you do it?)
- this is the signal to noise ratio, the higher the number the higher the contrast (I think)
- tried forcing phd2 to autoguide anyway, could not accurately tell if it was guiding or just following the star
- onkar stole speaker, installed onto DC
- advanced settings in phd2 (brain button)
- changed to saturation via star-profile under star saturation detection
- target SNR at 3.5
- noise reduction from none to 2x2 mean under general properties
- follows for a bit, then loses star "star lost, HFD"
- attempting guiding of dimmer star to the bottom right of the picture
- set minimum star HDS from 1.5 to 1
- noticing SNR changing values between exposures (27-32)
- turns out it was a hot pixel, attempting original star again
- it was pretty bad, see screenshot below for calibration woes.
- the screenshot is on the dc, will upload soon -onkar
- Close to celestial eq and apparent magnitude of 6 (why does this matter?)
- slewed to Gaia DR2 810952158347151360
- reduced gain back to 0 (why does this matter?)
- wanted to adjust exposure before adjusting gain
- exposure at 0.5 sec, saturated
- finds star, loses star, sad
- SNR hovering around 20
- eventually got to guiding
- "keeps making the maximum corrections for each command" -Gabriel
- "phd2 cannot make sufficient corrections in ra and dec" -phd2
- verifying settings in phd2
- when connecting mount and camera, phd2 suddenly closes
- reduced gain back to 0 (why does this matter?)
- abandoning autoguiding at this point
- took some images of Gaia DR2 810952158347151360
- took 5 captures at 5 minute intervals 3 times (5 captures at 11:16PM, 5 captures at 11:21PM and 5 captures at 11:26PM)
- Filter wheel was not showing up on Sharpcap, tried to fix it by updating drivers and restarting DC, but that didn't work
- Going to attempt again tomorrow
- took some images of Gaia DR2 810952158347151360
- closing up
- made sure it closed this time -Onkar
- visually verified dome was closed - Shrey
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