I received my Hinode Guider the other day and although there was some high cloud cover today it looked uniform enough to give the new "toy" a try. I posted the unboxing earlier so won't deal with that here but I'll say the Guider is put together well and adding it to my Lunt LS60T DS was very simple. I replaced the Sol Finder with the included mounting block that comes with the guider. You specify what scope you will be mounting the guider on when you order. Set up was extremely easy, and if you don't want to control it with your computer there is no software to download (more on that later). Here is my set up with the guider in place:
I have marks on my patio that I set my tripod on so that I am roughly polar aligned as long as I don't adjust the Altitude or Azimuth bolts on the iOptron CEM25P mount. But setting up using a compass and your altitude adjustment on your mount should suffice for the guider to work.
The guider has three ports, the USB port which supplies power either from your computer or a powered hub. It can also be utilized to control the guider and I'll touch on that later. A port for the hand controller and then an ST4 guide port. There is a rough alignment setup on top that is utilized just like the Sol Finder by placing the disk of the sun in a yellow dot on top of the guider:
Once attached, I powered up the mount and as soon as you plug the USB cable into your computer the Guider powers up and the hand controller lights and the guider indicates it is ready with a beep. At this point it is in Finder Mode. A set of lights in the lower right of the HC indicates whether the guider is aligned with the sun. When you slew to the sun you simply place the image of the sun in the yellow spot on top of the guider and if the guider is aligned well the hand controller will indicate that by lighting the central light in the group of LED's on the lower right of the controller. I had my camera attached so utilized the image on my laptop to get the sun centered in the FOV.
Once the you have the sun centered and the central light is illuminated on the HC, you hit calibrate and the guider goes through a series of steps where it takes out the backlash from both axis and then moves the image in different directions to determine the amount of movement. The four LED's around the central one will light at different times to indicate the direction the guider is moving the image. The calibration takes about 1 minute and if you have a permanent setup you can save that calibration as an AM or PM calibration depending upon which side of the Meridian you did the calibration on. The guider beeps indicating it is ready.
Now you move your image to the area of interest you want to image and when you have the prom or spot or whatever else you want to focus on where you want it in your FOV you simply push the Guide button and the guider begins guiding. You can see which direction the guider is correcting in by watching the LED's on the lower right of the HC. They will blink at different intervals depending upon which way the guider needs to adjust the mount:
The LED's just to the left of the circle of LED's indicates the aggressiveness of the guider. The default is moderate and you see the middle LED illuminated. Aggressiveness can be raised or lowered using the direction buttons to the left.
I ended up capturing images for 4 separate Animations of 30 minutes each. What a relief to simply hit Guide and the image stayed right where I wanted it with no drift. Typically I would sit and make minor adjustments with the hand controller on the mount, which wasn't all bad because I could see any changes that might be happening as I was capturing, but what a nice thing to just set it up, hit guide and I could leave it to do its thing. Extremely simple to set up and very effective. Here are two of the animations I have already processed from today:
After utilizing the guider with the hand controller I downloaded the companies software for controlling the guider with the computer. Once I downloaded it and started using it, I wondered why the company doesn't offer the guider without the hand controller since once you have the software, there is really no use for the hand controller unless you get a kick out of watching the LED's blink as it is guiding. To me, it's one less cable to have to deal with as the guider is controlled through the USB cable that powers it. Here is a shot of the software as I was using it for one of the captures: (Sorry for the reflection of yours truly!)
You also can save a log of the guiding and you get an indication of the brightness of the sun on the guider so you know if it changes there are likely clouds getting in the way which did happen during my last session. If the guider loses the sun due to clouds it attempts to find it again and you will see the length of the guiding pulses increase as it moves the image back to where it was as in this shot of the guiding graph:
On the image you see on the top graph the image brightness drops dramatically and in the bottom graph the guider doing longer pulses to get the image back to where it was centered.
From my standpoint the guider is a welcome addition to my setup since I spend most of my imaging time getting images for animations so need the area I am capturing to stay put for extended periods of time. I can see going after 1 and 2 hour animations since I won't have to attend to the mount to make corrections for drift due to imperfect PA and variations in the tracking by the mount. For most imagers that are interested in simply getting static shots I don't see the guider as something that will really improve their experience (particularly taking into account the cost) since they are shooting short videos and moving to other areas of interest. But for those that want to image the same area multiple times over a long period of time, I think the guider is invaluable! I also see it as a benefit for use during outreach to ensure that the image is always where you want it during an extended viewing time.
