Guide star drifts out of track box followed with Centroid not found errors

Ref: Guide star drifts out of track box followed with Centroid not found errors, by Greg Nelson, answered by Terry Lenhardt, May 17, 2021.

Dear SBIG, I have the same problem of the guide star moving up and off the camera 2 display in routine tracking using the Camera Control “guide” tab as described by the above referenced topic. How does one obtain the fix? It appears as if it was sent personally to Greg.

This bug seems to be a general guide star tracking issue, because the AO-X wasn’t used. The camera’s X and Y axis were aligned respectively with the mount’s Right Ascension and Declination axis so a guide star moving up and off the camera 2 display is a problem with the mount’s declination control.

Yesterday I more carefully balanced the declination movement and now the guide star is no longer moving up and off the camera display, but rather hovers above Y Error=0 as shown by the attached screen shot’s Y Error graph in the figure below. It seems that the guide star error control is not integrating the non-zero offset to bring the guide star average to Y Error=0.

Additionally, could I trouble you to educate me on the message shown in the figure below, “Can’t apply Simple Auto-dark in the Camera Control GUI’s column labeled “Camera 2 Information” . The guide star appears to have high signal to noise ratio, so why am I getting this message? Is there a better method than “Simple Auto-dark and how is it better?

Of a minor issue: Please note that the polarity of tabulated YPos error in “Camera Information” does not match that of the Y Error graph in the “Tracking Error Graph”.

Thanks for the help,

Evert