AOX and Dithering in Maxim DL 6.26

Discussion in 'Guiding and Adaptive Optics - StarChaser and AO' started by Greg Nelson, May 3, 2021.

  1. Greg Nelson

    Greg Nelson Cyanogen Customer

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    I have been working with my AOX which is using a Starchaser SC-3 Long Guider for imaging. I have finally got it working well with my mount and am getting long runs without errors that drive it off the guide star. However, I am now trying to dither and although the Setup tab on the AO Control has dithering checked and an amplitude of 5, I get no movement of the main image when imaging with an Autosave sequence. I've tried larger amplitudes up to 16. The Track tab status box says "Dithering, Tracking" but I get no apparent dithering. Am I missing something in set up? Thanks for any guidance.
     
  2. Doug

    Doug Staff Member

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    You're right... it turns out dither doesn't work with the StarChaser series guide cameras when operating an AO unit. It was an oversight on our part. Thanks for pointing out the problem.

    It's not a trivial fix so it will take a little bit to sort it out.
     
  3. Greg Nelson

    Greg Nelson Cyanogen Customer

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    Doug, thanks for getting back to me. At least I can take that issue off my list for a while. Do you know if any of the oversight programs like ACP, CCD Commander, or Voyager handle dithering of the AO externally to Maxim? I will ultimately go one of those directions anyway for observatory automation when I satisfy myself that I understand my base system and software. I have been producing some nice images despite the inability to dither, but when looking at very low levels of light, I am competing with some of the natural CMOS Chip patterns and dithering would help me bring out those features. I may have to wait for a while or move to traditional guiding while I wait on the Maxim fix.
     
  4. Doug

    Doug Staff Member

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    I don't know about third party software. They likely use our dithering feature, though it's probably possible to do it externally via the COM interface. It would require stopping the guiding, tweaking the target guide star position, and starting again.
     
  5. Greg Nelson

    Greg Nelson Cyanogen Customer

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    Thats what I was thinking. I assumed from the documentation that this is the strategy employed internally with Maxim as well. I'll keep up to date on Maxim releases addressing this issue.
    'll
     

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