Hi Leonard,
That was a great post!... You had already explained the basics of
autoguiding in previous posts, but this goes farther in that you touch upon the
various autoguiding paramaters within the software, such as in Metaguide. That's
a great help. Last week, I had three consecutive nights of photography (packing
it in at about 3 AM each time). The photo sessions were deep-sky using my Canon
300D at prime focus, and centered on M101 and M51. I had no autoguiding yet. But
this week its rainy so I will take the time to set up everything to try
autoguiding the next time around. With an exposure time of 60 seconds, I get
between 35% and 50% of frames OK. The others show stars like grains of rice. I
would like to increase that proportion, and eventually increase the exposure
time itself. So maybe the autoguiding will help.

Bye, Monti.