Handling guiding when partly cloudy

[yomamma]

I have been thinking about how to handle guiding when you know there may be a chance of clouds during the night and that your guiding is going to be interrupted possibly several times

I have considered having an approximate 10 minute loop(I would control it with number of frames depending on frame length) on image capture and then issuing a "start guiding if necessary" at the end of each loop. My question is, is this kosher? Would this cause any problem with PHD2 or the Sequencer? This way I could be assured that if guiding was not available the last time thru the loop it may be the next time.

Guiding seems to be the only issue that I need to control a little better and maybe something like this would help.

Thanks for your help.

BTW, I shot this with the Sequencer running a script that did the Fireworks galaxy then Andromeda at 2:30. Lost guiding and got only 36 frames but the photo turned out nice.

[admin]

Hi,

the photo definitely turned out nicely - plenty of detail there. Always a nice target for this time of year when full darkness starts to come back

The 'Start guiding if necessary' step should be harmless if run when already guiding - basically it checks the current PHD2 state and works through the steps needed to bring it from whichever state it is in to guiding. That might include

* Connect default hardware
* Start looping
* Select a star
* Calibrate (if not already done)
* Start guiding

If it finds PHD2 already guiding it will do nothing. If it finds it looping but no star it will start from the 'select a star' stage and so on.

cheers,

Robin

[yomamma]

Thanks Robin. I believe this will solve my problem