News

• A more responsive user interface, with a new multi-threaded design
• Improved visualization tools for observing guiding performance in units of arc-seconds or pixels
• Declination-compensated guiding, eliminating the need for recalibrating when switching targets
• Support for guiding with Adaptive Optics units
• Equipment profiles for managing multiple guiding configurations
• Internationalization improvements, with French, German, Japanese, Polish, Russian, and Simplified Chinese translations available
• A new server interface for controlling and monitoring PHD2 by other imaging applications
• New tools, such as a polar drift alignment tool and a calibration step size calculator, a Comet tracking mode, and more
• Dark-frame libraries and Bad-pixel maps

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Getting started

Known Issues

Change Log

• Guiding improvements:
• Improved tracking of the guide star near the edge of the frame
• Major improvements to auto-find star, avoiding double stars and saturated stars, and better hot-pixel rejection
• Better star mass change detection
• Calibration process improved to better restore the guide star to its starting position
• New option to force Dec axis perpendicular to RA (helps calibration for mounts with large periodic error)
• Improved recovery of guiding after dither
• Better subframe performance
• Proacative alerts for common guiding problems
• Calibration sanity checks and problem reporting
• Notification for Max Ra/dec limits guiding interference
• Device support:
• Improved resiliency to hung or stuck hardware
• PHD will no longer hang if devices stop responding or fail to connect
• Allow Aux mount connection to ASCOM drivers that won't handle PulseGuide commands, like EQMOD
• SX-AO firmware checking
• ZWO cameras native driver improvements
• New features
• Comet tracking tool
• Improved status messages
• Guide Log improvements
• Improved debug logging
• Help file updates
• Internationalization
• Allow non-ASCII characters in filenames when saving/loading FITS files
• New Russian and Polish translations
• Polar alignment tool improvements
• Calibration step calculator improvements
• Bad pixel map improvements
• Better control of phd2 by imaging apps
• darks_defects directory is no longer located under Documents/PHD2 *Mac users: need to redo darks*

• Wizard interface for setting up a new equipment profile
• Ability to get scope pointing information from an ASCOM mount connection while using an ST-4 interface to guide
• Updated native ZWO camera support for Windows and OSX
• A window for displaying guiding statistics
• Drift align tool improvements
• Dark library and bad-pixmap bug fixes and improvements
• Performance improvements
• Star auto-selection improvements
• Star SNR calculation improvements
• Event server API improvements
• Graph window improvements
• Guide log improvements
• Updated translations
• Help file updates

• New Features
• Bad Pixel Maps: a new method for identifying and removing hot and cold pixels, as an alternative to dark frames - contributed by David Ault and Bruce Waddington
• A simplified user interface for building and maintaining a dark frames library - contributed by Bruce Waddington
• Performance improvements: faster 3x3 median, plus some small image processing efficiency improvements
• New guide log entries have been added for focal length, pixel size, declination, calibration hour angle, and side-of-pier when the information is available (ASCOM mounts); the lock position is now recorded in the guide log when it is changed with nudge lock position tool
• An updated help file, updated tool tips, improved debug log messages, and some small cosmetic improvements in the UI
• Support for shifting the lock position at a fixed rate for diferential flexure compensation or comet tracking; the feature currently requires a 3rd party app, such as Laurent Schmitz's FlexTerminator
• usability enhancements
• Do not display polar align error on graph unless dec guide mode is set to Off
• Display a warning when the AO simulator is connected and the camera is not the Camera Simulator
• allow File=>Save Image when looping exposures
• A Simplified Chinese translation contributed by Linkage
• An Auto exposure option to automatically adjust exposure time to different guide stars or varying sky conditions
• Auto-find-star reliability enhancements (mostly related to sub-frames), and improved reliability starting guiding for PHD server clients, like SGP
• Native support for ZWO cameras - contributed by Robin Glover, author of SharpCap
• Bug Fixes
• fix failure to auto-load dark frames after Save Darks
• OSX: Fix crash when PHD2 is started after the target window was displayed
• Windows: suppress pop-up message when SSAG driver registry key is not found
• Fix problem with title bar not being updated correctly when guide log is enabled/disabled
• Mac: fix problem with 'b' key not working in drift tool notes window
• Fix boundary pixel handling for median and average noise reduction filters when subframes are in use
• fix a crash when socket server command AUTOFINDSTAR is called before an exposure has been taken
• QHY5L: allow updating both exposure duration and gain before capturing the frame, rather than one update per frame - contributed by Rob Cormack
• Mac: firewire camera fix - contributed by Ben
• add an option to disable slewing check for ASCOM mounts, as a workaround for mounts that incorrectly report slewing

• Fix problem with PHD2 not being able to run on Windows XP
• Eliminate dependency on MS Visual Studio 2010 C++ Runtime components

• A new Adjust Lock Position dialog, replaces "Enter Manual Lock Pos"
• Errors and warnings during capture or guiding no longer pop up a modal message dialog box. A less intrusive alert is displayed at the top of the image window.
• New options to plot Star Mass and Star SNR on the graph
• A new German language translation
• Updated French translation
• The Drift Align Tool's polar alignment circle is now sized to account for site location and alignment star coordinates (ASCOM scopes only)
• PHD2 will now work with both the original (v2) or newer (v4) Orion Strashoot Autoguider drivers on Windows without running Orion's PHD2 updater program, SSAGPHD2UPDATE.
• For some mounts, PHD2 can detect when the mount is slewing and stop guiding when slewing is detected
• More AO-related information in event server events
• Better handling of ASCOM pulse guide failures, including a workaround for a Gemini2 bug that was causing PHD2 to hang when the mount fails to complete a guide pulse
• Use multi-threaded capture for LE Webcams and QHY5II cameras
• New read delay setting for LE webcams
• Fix for RTS/DTR signal handling for LE serial webcam, with a new Cam dialog for configuring this signal.
• Mac: update to latest SBIG Driver library
• Parallel port webcams allow connecting on non-standard port addresses
• Fixes a problem where distance could be reported incorrectly immediately after a dither, primarily affecting Nebulosity users, Issue 255 in the issue tracker.
• The search region box is now sized correctly when the image window is resized.
• Fix bookmarks menu toggle item sometimes not being updated when bookmarks are shown

• The Advanced Settings window (the Brain) can now be opened at any time, even when guiding (with "unsafe" options disabled)
• Fast recovery of guiding after dither
• Improved layout of controls on the Graph when the window is narrowed
• AO improvements
• Drift Align tool improvements, and the simulator can now be used to practice drift alignment
• Bookmark commands are now available from the menu
• Mac: disable App Nap for PHD2 on OSX 10.9
• Mac: added support for KWIQGuider
• Image logging fixes
• Updated French translation
• More detailed error reporting for ASCOM camera errors

• Changes to improve reliability of interaction with Sequence Generator Pro
• Fix a bug where it was impossible to disconnect an SXAO without exiting PHD2
• Update about dialog to point to new home page URL
• Use subframes during looping and calibrating. When looping, click outside the subframe to switch back to full frames.
• Performance improvements
• Changes to focal length and pixel size in the calibration step calculator are reflected on other tabs in the brain
• Fix a potential hang or crash accessing an invalid memory address when finding star near edge of image
• Fix some spelling errors in debug log messages
• Fully rewritten Help files
• Fixed typos in tooltips
• Manual guide dialog can now adjust guide pulse duration and can dither
• Fixed display of declination in calibration restore dialog
• Updated logging code
• Disable/re-enable sticky lock position when Drift Align Tool is run
• Windows installer installs VC++ 2010 runtime when needed
• "Mini-brain" on graph displays controls in one or two rows depending on window width
• Fixed number of decimal places for camera pixel size in Brain
• Updated French translation
• Provide access to the ASCOM Camera and Mount setup dialogs in the Connect Equipment window
• Automatically save the image when Auto-Select fails
• Do not retain guide log file unless something was actually logged
• Fix possible crash when RA/Dec overlay is selected and no mount is connected
• Restore Calibration dialog shows useful stuff about what is being restored
• Update to wxWidgets-3.0.0
• Mac: renamed app from PHD to PHD2