PHD2 Beta came out a while back with a spiffy new feature. It can now track up to 12 stars at the same time. It is supposed to even out the tracking errors. I wanted to test this claim against reality.
So I updated my PHD2 to the beta version and “let er rip.” The Telescope is a lowly 102 Achromatic refractor from Explore Scientific with a ATIK 414 EX CCD camera using a photometric v filter. The guidescope was made out of a 70 mm binocular objective with a cheap Ebay helical focuser glued on. The mount is an Orion Sirius mount controlled by EQASCOM.
The image of the Andromeda galaxy is a mosaic of two 100×60 second images and one 25×60 (shortened due to clouds) stictched together in Microsoft ICE. They were stacked in Maxim DL5 and tweaked with RawTherapee 5.8.
The PHD2 really worked well. The stars are round and the image is pretty stunning for a monochrome one with a 4″ telescope! The tracking was way better with the muiltiple targets. This version of PHD is a real winner
