Hi, I have the STT-8300 with the self-guiding filter wheel. They have been updated with the latest drivers and firmware and I am using Maxim DL 6.08 for acquisition. I was having problems with frequent Star Faded messages while imaging. It was quite bad when using simple dark calibration (in Maxim) and improved with full calibration, but I still had star fade messages several times an evening. I read in other threads that turning off auto-bias in the configuration might help. I did this and it did help quite a bit and I rarely see star fade messages that are frequent enough to mess the guiding up. However, I still see the star fade message occasionally, but it does not repeat through multiple exposure cycles like it used to. While taking darks and bias frames after turning off Auto-Bias, I noticed that with each series of bias and darks there were always 2 or 3 frames that were extremely noisy. I had also been noticing in my guiding logs that I was getting periodic spikes (every minute or so, sometimes more frequent, sometimes less) that caused the guider to make rather large corrections and had initially attributed it to noise generated by seeing conditions. But after looking at the recent bias and dark frames, it lead me to believe that these noisy frames could be the cause of the spikes. Last night the seeing conditions were good enough (~1.5 FWHM) to be able to observe if the noisy guide images were happening at the same time as the spikes in the guide graph. They do happened at the same time and leads me to the conclusion that these noisy frames have been the cause of the issues all along. The problem has been minimized by turning off the Auto-bias setting and using full calibration, but the problem still exists. My understanding is that there are others out there that are getting these star fade messages and that SBIG has yet to be able to figure out the exact reason. Could this be the reason and can anyone with the star fade problem confirm that they too are getting these periodic noisy guide exposures when taking dark and bias exposures. I checked to see if might be the Guider ABG setting but I have it turned off. I also checked to see if it I got the noisy frames using SkyX Camera Add-On and it has the same issue. Can someone at SBIG let me know if there are any solutions to this issue or if I need to send the camera for service. Best, Samuel
Hello Just wondering if someone from SBIG can comment on the problem I noted in my last message. I see that other threads have had responses and I'd like to know if my questions regarding the periodic noisy guide CCD images I am experiencing can be answered as well. Best regards. Sam
Sam, Looks like you were helped on the other thread http://www.diffractionlimited.com/f...eriodically-noisy-guide-images.785/#post-3689
Hi Tim. I had reposted my question in the Maxim forum as I had no response here. However, based on the feedback from Owen Laurence It seems like the issue I am experiencing could still be related to the driver or firmware of the camera. I know many people are experiencing the same issue that I am and I have seen this issue on other application (which is the reason I posted in the SBIG forum to begin with) but it doesn't seem like there is any acknowledgment of this issue. Please take a look at this thread and let me know if there is anyone at SBIG taking a look at this issue or perhaps shed some light into what is currently being done to address it. http://www.diffractionlimited.com/f...eriodically-noisy-guide-images.785/#post-3975 Thanks. Sam
