I fail to see the use case for this. If the mount tracking is already accurate enough to produce good 30-second subs, then there is no need whatsoever to guide. Sure, there may be drift from one sub to the next, but so what? The subs will need to be registered anyway prior to stacking, so any drift is irrelevant.
One important detail: if there is drift from one sub to the next, then there is also drift within each sub, maybe too small to produce adverse effect, but it's there. An OAG corrects for this; interleaved guiding won't.
A separate question could be whether 30-second exposures are long enough to swamp read noise, but interleaved guiding wouldn't change that.
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Regarding strain wave mounts—the evolution of this kind of mount is is progressing quickly. I use the iOptron HAE29EC. It can go 2 minutes with a 350mm scope without guiding and still be within the 2.1 arcsec scope resolution. And that's with a guide exposure of 2 seconds. I guide primarily to introduce dithering, which is not a seperate option on my rig. Guiding runs between 0.25 and 0.75.
My Celestron 925/ASI2600 has a resolution of .335, and the 0.25-0.75 peak-to-peak guide range is still a good match (I use the beefier iOptron CEM40 conventional mount with the Celestron). Guiding is, of course, more beneficial with the narrower FOV.
Both. assemblies use a conventional guide camera mounted on top.
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If we're recentering on a scale small enough that individual subs won't be affected by tracking effects, there will presumably be not dithering motion which is a recipe for nasty artifacts when you go to stack. Hopefully that doesn't open a whole new can of worms.
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Aaron Dalton:
If we're recentering on a scale small enough that individual subs won't be affected by tracking effects, there will presumably be not dithering motion which is a recipe for nasty artifacts when you go to stack. Hopefully that doesn't open a whole new can of worms. Correct. There are ways to dither without actually guiding (e.g., "Direct Guider" in NINA) that would take care of that.
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Something similar was implemented long time ago from StarLight Xpress: its name was Star2000. Having used such a system back in the days, I tend to agree with @andrea tasselli : a waste of time today. Ciao. Lorenzo
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Dave Rust:
Regarding strain wave mounts—the evolution of this kind of mount is is progressing quickly. I use the iOptron HAE29EC. It can go 2 minutes with a 350mm scope without guiding and still be within the 2.1 arcsec scope resolution. And that's with a guide exposure of 2 seconds. I guide primarily to introduce dithering, which is not a seperate option on my rig. Guiding runs between 0.25 and 0.75.
My Celestron 925/ASI2600 has a resolution of .335, and the 0.25-0.75 peak-to-peak guide range is still a good match (I use the beefier iOptron CEM40 conventional mount with the Celestron). Guiding is, of course, more beneficial with the narrower FOV.
Both. assemblies use a conventional guide camera mounted on top. I might have misunderstood something, but you say it can go two minutes without guiding - yet you also say you are guiding with 2s exposures? Unguided of course works better the lower focal length you have though and 350mm is fairly wide. I guide my AM5 with 0.5s exposures and it is between 0.2-0.3, or 0.4-0.5 if seeing is not the best.
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Aaron Dalton:
If your mount needs to correct its position in between every frame, your tracking is not good enough to go unguided that long. You could say the same thing about sending guide pulses every few seconds....
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Aaron Dalton:
If we're recentering on a scale small enough that individual subs won't be affected by tracking effects, there will presumably be not dithering motion which is a recipe for nasty artifacts when you go to stack. Hopefully that doesn't open a whole new can of worms. True but that opens up the possibility of the guiding software using an offset star centroid while still referencing the guide star. I believe that could dither every frame without the need for a discreet dither session.
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To summarize:
Most mounts need some sort of guider input during the sub to keep things sharp. This is normal. Some high end mounts are precise enough to not need guiding or have encoders. This is also normal.
Some amount of random movement in between subs is actually a good thing. This is dithering and it helps with fixed pattern noise and enables drizzling later if desired.
Random movement between subs can already be achieved with dithers triggered by PHD2 or the "Direct Guider" in NINA which just injects a very small slew between subs.
Centering between subs to keep the object framed is also a NINA feature and can be configured both in tolerance and frequency of subs. This is the "Center After Drift" trigger.
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Aaron Dalton:
To summarize:
Most mounts need some sort of guider input during the sub to keep things sharp. This is normal. Some high end mounts are precise enough to not need guiding or have encoders. This is also normal.
Some amount of random movement in between subs is actually a good thing. This is dithering and it helps with fixed pattern noise and enables drizzling later if desired.
Random movement between subs can already be achieved with dithers triggered by PHD2 or the "Direct Guider" in NINA which just injects a very small slew between subs.
Centering between subs to keep the object framed is also a NINA feature and can be configured both in tolerance and frequency of subs. This is the "Center After Drift" trigger. After running this by the N.I.N.A. discord it seems that everything I'm looking for is possible by using N.I.N.A.'s advanced sequencer so I'll be experimenting with that.
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This is a possible approach to one chip guiding, let's call it Interweave Guiding. There's a better solution - the ASI2600MC DUO - a guide camera co-focal with the main sensor. Guiding occurs as usual while the main camera does its thing. One scope. Two sensors. No OAG, no guidescope. Now all we need is for funky-shaped narrowband filters with a clear patch for the guide sensor to make the 2600MM DUO really useable.
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MaksPower:
This is a possible approach to one chip guiding, let's call it Interweave Guiding.
There's a better solution - the ASI2600MC DUO - a guide camera co-focal with the main sensor.
Guiding occurs as usual while the main camera does its thing.
One scope. Two sensors.
No OAG, no guidescope.
Now all we need is for funky-shaped narrowband filters with a clear patch for the guide sensor to make the 2600MM DUO really useable. it's a solution of a sorts but it seems a bit clunky to me. Plus, why would I want to spend $2000 for a camera I don't need?
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MaksPower:
There's a better solution - the ASI2600MC DUO - a guide camera co-focal with the main sensor.
Guiding occurs as usual while the main camera does its thing.
One scope. Two sensors.
No OAG, no guidescope. That's not really different than conventional guiding. It is simply a guide camera (in effect) placed in a different location. From the perspective of the guiding algorithm, it is no different than a guide scope or an OAG. And it has a significant disadvantage with narrowband filters as you pointed out. What would be different is the ability to non destructively sample the main sensor since in that scenario you could use whatever segment of the main sensor you'd like for guiding. Modern sensors have very fast download speeds, so even if the data gathering was interrupted during sampling, it would make no difference.
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Gondola, I'm a little unclear on exactly what problem you are trying to solve. The basic idea behind guiding, whether it be guide scope, off axis guider, on axis guider, or a separate guide chip within the main camera, is to provide corrections to the mount's tracking during an exposure. I gather that having a second sensor--regardless of how it is attached or housed--seems inelegant or cost inefficient. OK. So, what are the options? If you don't want a separate sensor to do the guiding? - Use the main camera for guiding
- Take short enough exposures that you don't need to guide
- Get your hardware to track better so that you don't need to guide, even for long-ish exposures
I think those are the only possibilities. The problem with option one is that there is no way to read out a sensor's data without effectively erasing the sensor. Readout is intrinsically destructive. You can't measure the charge without erasing the charge. Even the old Starlight Xpress systems simply read out either even or odd rows and threw away the resulting data, effectively doubling the total integration time required since you would need to come back and re-acquire the lost data. Not a good approach. Option two is, I think, what you are proposing. If your telescope can handle 30s unguided, go with 30s, then periodically re-center. One can still use something like NINA to introduce random shifts for dithering. This should work fine, but you would just be balancing how long you can go before FWHM numbers erode to an unacceptable level vs. "optimal" exposure time. It is necessarily a compromise since you probably won't be taking exposures that are as long as you'd like to. It's also going to be problematic for harmonic drive mounts and for longer focal lengths. You might be using very short exposures indeed, nowhere near thirty seconds. And even if you can take 30s exposures, the data volumes can grow very large very fast. My system, for example, would need 1GB of storage for every four minutes of exposure. I would need half a terabyte of storage for a typical subject (30-40 hours of data = 500GB at 240MB/minute). Some of my imaging exceeds 100 hours per target. That would be well over a terabyte just for the raw files! Definitely not a direction I want to head, personally. I see option two as workable for people using smaller sensors (APS-C or smaller) with shorter focal lengths systems where they are typically capturing 8-10 hours or less of data per subject and not using harmonic drives. That could be a pretty significant group of imagers, but it is far from a universal solution. Option three is really attractive if you have the budget. With a solid mount, absolute encoders, a really good pointing model, connectivity to a weather station, and moderate focal lengths (under, say, 2,000mm) it is possible to take ten minute unguided subs with FWHM that is indistinguishable from a guided image. But it's not exactly a cheap solution. And if you think getting guiding setup and working well is a struggle (especially for a beginner), imagine getting a high precision pointing model optimized and weather station connectivity working reliably. Perfectly doable, but not a trivial problem. And the usefulness is limited if you don't have a permanent observatory. It isn't without merit--you can build a simpler pointing model for just the object you intend to image on a given night during astronomical twilight and just skip the weather station integration--but I don't think I'd suggest it is more elegant than guiding, even if it does avoid the need for an additional camera. So, I don't really see a way for the average imager to avoid guiding at this time if they want the best data quality their equipment can provide. Your recommendation of option two is a compromise solution that will work for some imagers, but certainly not all, and it eliminates the problems inherent in guiding by simply, well, not guiding. Longer term, I expect a completely different solution. If read noise gets low enough, it should be possible to take very short exposures (A second? A couple seconds? A fraction of a second?), perform live stacking with a master bias frame and a bias subtracted flat frame in real time, and just save the live stack rather than each individual raw frame. The software to do this already exists in the amateur realm. SharpCap will do exactly this, for example, and integrates with PHD to allow periodic dithering. No storage problem. No need for guiding--even with harmonic drive mounts. Likely sharper images than we can get even with good guiding. The only barrier to this becoming a real solution is read noise. Even 1e- is just too high for this to work well with really faint objects. But that could change in the relatively near future. Personally, I think guiding, whether with a separate guide scope, an off axis guider, an on-axis guider, or a second sensor in the main camera, is a pretty elegant solution. Yes, it may require some struggles for the beginner to get the system working, but I think the solution to that problem is continuous improvement in the software configuration, not elimination of the additional guide sensor. As long as read noise stays in the 1e- range I don't see anything replacing traditional guiding as a universal solution on how to take long-ish sub exposures. - Jared
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For me, solution #2 is the closest for what I'm doing. I use the fairly small 585 sensor so even when I have a lot of subs, it's not really a data problem. This camera has very low read noise of 1.1 e-rms at HGC gain. I typically run exposures anywhere between 10 and 30 sec. with a typical integration time of 3 hours per session so I'm already living in the many frames, short subs world. One major benefit in doing short subs is the ability to cull frames taken when the seeing goes south without loosing much data. I think that helps to keep things sharp when a longer sub exposure would be affected. It also helps to keep brighter stars from clipping.
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In order to maximize sharpness by culling subs you are already exposing way too long though. I'd say maximum 1s subs for that to be viable, and I think that's a stretch too. Probably 0.25-0.5s and you should have less than 1e read noise and mono for that to get the best snr/efficiency.
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Jared Willson:
It isn't without merit--you can build a simpler pointing model for just the object you intend to image on a given night during astronomical twilight and just skip the weather station integration--but I don't think I'd suggest it is more elegant than guiding, even if it does avoid the need for an additional camera. I own an Astro-Physics Mach 2. It is an absolutely outstanding mount - if any mount can be said to be capable of going unguided, it would make the list. I could very easily set up a Dec Arc model and go unguided. That I have not bothered to do this is testament to how well modern guiding works. Other than for comet tracking, I have never considered not guiding, simply because guiding works beautifully. Sure, some people may have problems with guiding, but most often they are easily solvable. I expect, judging from the large number of very nice images on this site, the very vast majority of them using guiding, the users who do have problems with guiding simply don't yet understand how it works, have made basic mistakes, or have equipment issues that need to be addressed before guiding can be successful.
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This simply isnt guiding, this is unguided with extra steps. That is the fundamental issue here. You are not doing anything to actually correct for potential error that will arise within an exposure, which is the entire point of guiding. Star alignment takes care of the registration of the frames in processing, as long as its close it does not matter in the slightest whether or not one subframe is aligned with the next, in fact we dither to avoid that happening at all. The solution is just to guide. The hardware required is not problematic, if this is an issue you are having I would think this is an edge case or a personal issue.
Additionally, if your mount can go 30+ seconds at a time unguided you shouldn't need to babysit it. If you do need to babysit it, I highly doubt it is actually able to perform well unguided for even 30 seconds.
Just guide. Its not hard.
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In order to maximize sharpness by culling subs you are already exposing way too long though. I'd say maximum 1s subs for that to be viable, and I think that's a stretch too. Probably 0.25-0.5s and you should have less than 1e read noise and mono for that to get the best snr/efficiency. Yes, but it's a balance right now. At 30 sec. there are still bad subs because of seeing even at 400mm. You're right though in that most of the really small scale damage that seeing does happens within the first 1/10 sec.
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Arun H:
Jared Willson:
It isn't without merit--you can build a simpler pointing model for just the object you intend to image on a given night during astronomical twilight and just skip the weather station integration--but I don't think I'd suggest it is more elegant than guiding, even if it does avoid the need for an additional camera.
I own an Astro-Physics Mach 2. It is an absolutely outstanding mount - if any mount can be said to be capable of going unguided, it would make the list. I could very easily set up a Dec Arc model and go unguided. That I have not bothered to do this is testament to how well modern guiding works. Other than for comet tracking, I have never considered not guiding, simply because guiding works beautifully. Sure, some people may have problems with guiding, but most often they are easily solvable. I expect, judging from the large number of very nice images on this site, the very vast majority of them using guiding, the users who do have problems with guiding simply don't yet understand how it works, have made basic mistakes, or have equipment issues that need to be addressed before guiding can be successful. I'm not saying that people who are guiding are wrong because that's the vast majority of astrophotographers out there. In my case, I have been forced to shoot with a mount that's not capable of guiding with any accuracy and for a long time, couldn't replace it. I shoot unguided out of necessity and have learned how to make it work. I see nothing wrong with exploring alternatives.
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Charles Hagen:
This simply isnt guiding, this is unguided with extra steps. That is the fundamental issue here. You are not doing anything to actually correct for potential error that will arise within an exposure, which is the entire point of guiding. Star alignment takes care of the registration of the frames in processing, as long as its close it does not matter in the slightest whether or not one subframe is aligned with the next, in fact we dither to avoid that happening at all. The solution is just to guide. The hardware required is not problematic, if this is an issue you are having I would think this is an edge case or a personal issue.
Additionally, if your mount can go 30+ seconds at a time unguided you shouldn't need to babysit it. If you do need to babysit it, I highly doubt it is actually able to perform well unguided for even 30 seconds.
Just guide. Its not hard. I say we go back to film ;)
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An interesting look at how things might change. Why guiding needs to die |
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Charles Hagen:
This simply isnt guiding, this is unguided with extra steps. That is the fundamental issue here. You are not doing anything to actually correct for potential error that will arise within an exposure, which is the entire point of guiding. Star alignment takes care of the registration of the frames in processing, as long as its close it does not matter in the slightest whether or not one subframe is aligned with the next, in fact we dither to avoid that happening at all. The solution is just to guide. The hardware required is not problematic, if this is an issue you are having I would think this is an edge case or a personal issue.
Additionally, if your mount can go 30+ seconds at a time unguided you shouldn't need to babysit it. If you do need to babysit it, I highly doubt it is actually able to perform well unguided for even 30 seconds.
Just guide. Its not hard.
I say we go back to film ;)
Attacking people like @Charles Hagen who are offering comments with the argument that they’re against innovation is telling. Are you familiar with the Dunning-Kruger effect? What Charles and I have been trying to convey is that if your equipment is good enough to produce good unguided subs for the sub duration that you want, you don’t actually need to guide at all. The interweave guiding system you proposed in your first post would re-center the frame between subs, before the next sub begins. That is actually not a problem of any relevance in astroimaging, because image registration (which is anyway mandatory before stacking) is already taking care of any drift. No one worries about that. It might actually be detrimental to the quality of the stacked master frame, because the same astronomical features would always fall on, more or less, the same pixels, making hot pixel rejection and fixed pattern noise removal very problematic. That is why we use dithering, which by itself does not mandate guiding.
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I say we go back to film ;) The guy is responsible for today's IOTD. I'm gonna take a wild guess that he knows what he's talking about. But astrophotography is a personal hobby. Nobody is under any compulsion to do it a certain way. Feel free to lead the crusade against guiding  |
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I'm not saying that people who are guiding are wrong because that's the vast majority of astrophotographers out there. In my case, I have been forced to shoot with a mount that's not capable of guiding with any accuracy and for a long time, couldn't replace it. I shoot unguided out of necessity and have learned how to make it work. I see nothing wrong with exploring alternatives. What mount are you using that can handle 30s sub exposures unguided at 400mm focal length without any issues, but can not be effectively guided? Not trying to cast aspersions, but I am surprised by this particular combination. I would think that most mounts capable of solid tracking for thirty seconds at a time, even at a relatively short 400mm focal length, would also be capable of decent guiding performance. I'm not really a proponent of the, "Guiding Needs to Die" approach since I think guiding is actually a pretty elegant solution to the real problem of wanting to make tracking corrections in the middle of an exposure. But I certainly agree that for lots of imagers it's not a requirement, and it may soon go away entirely if read noise drops much from its current levels. I would love to get to the point that we are all just live stacking a few million 0.1s images! For me, it wouldn't be about getting rid of guiding--it would be about incorporating "lucky imaging" into even faint deep sky subjects and improving resolution. If we could spin up an AWS server with the appropriate level of GPU power to do real-time image calibration, complete with error rejection, such that my "computer" could keep up with 10 frames per second and just give me a final stack, I think that would be really great. Then I'd need a really good internet connection to my telescope, but that's about it. No home NAS system, no terabyte size directories of raw files, and all the resolution planetary imagers are used to but applied to galaxies, clusters, and nebulae. We're not quite there yet. I know my observatory couldn't handle transferring 10 full resolution raw files per second to an S3 storage bucket, so right now I would have to pay for the latest and greatest NVidia has to offer stuffed into a desktop at the observatory, but there are already Python repositories out there that can keep up with live stacking 61 megapixel files at the rate of one every second or two as long as you can bring a high end graphics card to bear. Let read noise drop a bit more, and guiding will lose relevance.
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