PHD2 Logviewer

[TerryMcK]

Whether you use PHD2 or EKOS guiding (I use the latter) at some point you will want to analyse your guide logs. I have been using PHD2 Logviewer https://adgsoftware.com/phd2utils/ for a couple of years now but only just got around to reading the manual!

Anyway I decided to have a look through the documentation https://openphdguiding.org/Analyzing_PHD2_Guide_Logs.pdf and stumbled across page 6 of the guide talking about enabling SNR within the log viewer.

 

I was looking at last nights (actually this mornings) guide logs. I enabled SNR which is the grey line in the graph below and saw this:

 

At around 02:48 until 02:53 there was a marked dip in star mass. Also guiding went a bit spikey.

I had already previously Blinked the subs I captured in PixInsight and put a few bad ones in the bin. So I went to the bin and saw this:

 

I had visually thrown these out and PHD2 logviewer concurred. So it really helps using this utility to ensure you don't miss something in your blinking.

 

Also it is great to analyse a variety of other maladies that can happen in guiding.

 

[GazAstro]

Thanks Terry, you post such useful info, I too use log viewer but just blindly ticked everything 🙂 It does as you say help to see the dip in guide star quality when finding the poorer subs (combined with DSS scores)