Yes! I can guide again!!!!

Over the past year or so, I have had serious autoguiding issues with my setup. I had suspected that it was soemthing to do with my Serial cable adapter that sits between the laptop, which runs PHD Guiding, and the Celestron CGEM hand controller on my mount. So, I purchased an Orion Star Shoot AutoGuider (SSAG) which connects directly into the autoguiding port on the CGEM mount itself.

Installation of the SSAG drivers was fairly straightforward. I also downloaded the newer version of PHDGuiding (PHD2) which, I must say, has a slicker interface and a lot more options to explore.

So, before the moon came up last night I set up at a local dark sky spot and tried it out. After spending an hour-and-a-half wondering why nothing was working and finally figuring out that I had plugged the SSAG guide cable into the wrong port, the system worked flawlessly. I ran a test of several 5 minute exposures on M42, with this image being the result. No fancy processing here, just a few test captures to make sure my guiding was back on track.

The SSAG camera is great. Sensitive, love plugging directly into the guide port on my mount, and just super easy to use. I'm looking forward to getting back out there this year and shooting some more stuff!