Dirk Tetzlaff created a new topic ' OAG focus monitor' in the forum. 3 years ago

I just wonder, whether the following implementation would make sense: while guiding with an OAG the HFR of the guide star(s) is constantly beeing measured. To get reliable results, the average of every x exposures is being recorded. Based on these values a moving average is being calculated. When the system moves out of focus, the HFR gets worse and hence at some point the most recent HFR value will surpass the moving average (last n (e.g. 20) measurements). One could set a threshold value (e.g. HFR +10%) and once this is surpassed the imaging run is paused at the end of the current exposure, the autofocus routine is being initiated and thereafter the imaging session continues.
This idea is derived from the ONAG real time autofocus. While the ONAG seems to correct the focus while imaging, the idea here is simply to gain an indication, if and when the imaging train moved out of focus (mirror flop, temperature change, other) by a pre-defined threshold.
All the critical algorithms and data are already there: the autoguide makes an exposure every n-second(s) anyway, the HFR value could be measured by the same algorithms used for autofocus. It is simply a question of calculating the HFR value, the average and comparing the actual values to a moving average; additional system load should be minimal. Only flip side I can think of is that this approach can not differentiate between change of HFR values due to "out of focus causes" and variable seeing-conditions. But even this could be build into an additional feature: if the focus can not be enhanced (i.e. because of deteriorated seeing conditions), the imaging run could be paused and restarted once HFR values get better again. 
Anybody thought about that ? Does this make sense ?

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