I have a 20 inch RCOS in building 10 and recently installed an SBIG 16803, Starchaser and AOX and filter wheel. I can find a good guide star with camera 2 set for Starchaser but when I position the guide star in th AOX window, the star is spread all over the window and rapidly moves out of th window when I start tracking . I performed the drive and AOX calibration with the AOX and log said it was successful. So, for now, I am unable to image. Can help me with this? Martin Ascherl asc1@flash.net
Sound like a nice system. By building 10, is that at SRO? We have a few questions for you, below. Can you explain what you mean by "star is spread all over the window" ? Did you adjust the mirror position and focus of the StarChaser SC-3 ? Which software are you using? e.g. MaxIm DL Pro 6.28 ? When you say "rapidly moves out of the window when I start tracking" do you mean when you start tracking after locating the star? Did you verify that basic guiding was working, before enabling AO operation? e.g. does the guider correctly move the mount in all 4 directions? What mount do you have? Yes, and likely my colleague @Brian Brown will have some ideas as well.
When I move the guide star onto the image in camera 2 which is the starchaser which is 1280x1024 pixels at bin 1, the guide star appears focused. I then locate the star with the AOX and the star is very small in the entire field of the pickof mirror. I calibrate the guidestar with the drive and AOX and can see the star moving in the AOX window and the AOX log says calibration was successful. I could not see if the moves were orthagonal because the star was so small and dim in the AOX window. I then start tracking with a 32x32 panel and the star is spread all over the tracing panel and rapidly moves out of sight. I am using Maxim dl pRo 6.28. I have a Paramount ME II with direct drive.. As far as focusing the Starchaser, we left the pickoff mirror in betweeen all in and all out. we then moved the Starchaser focus knob 35 times clockwise to focus a guide star
