PushTo direction

[admin]

Hi Fabrice,

thanks for the feedback.

I can look into the message being replaced by 'in progress' straight away, but you will need to do a little checking on the plate solving issue.

There are a few reasons that the results could be different between the two versions...

Firstly, check the camera settings are identical (particularly bit depth, gain and exposure)

Second, check that the SharpCap plate solving settings are the same in both versions, in particular, check the 'sigma' setting if you are using it and the '8 bit' setting.

If that doesn't reveal anything then we may learn something by capturing frames in each version of SharpCap and then trying to solve the frame captured in 4.0 in both 4.0 and 4.1 (using the folder monitor camera or 'test camera 1') and the same for the one captured in 4.1

cheers,

Robin

[Cyg]

Dear Robin,

Finally I could make it usable by increasing a lot the camera gain, 330 on v4.1 VS 130 on v4.0 and it could solve almost everytime with 20-30 stars.
Also for the stacking I had to activate the "faint stars" detection to enable their alignement, then I was back to a gain of 130.
And I am pretty sure that the settings are the same as I save it to a Profile.

In the end this is so easy and efficient, in 3min and it's done, which at 1700mm focal length is not so obvious !

PushTo.jpg (890.92 KiB) Viewed 4175 times

Only thing maybe is the size of the PushTo window that prevent from seeing the photo in the behind to fine tune the centering, but not a blocking point at all.

And sorry the exact message that replaces too quickly the latest success is "Not yet known"

Thank a lot again !
Best regards,
Fabrice

[admin]

Hi Fabrice,

glad that you got the plate solving worked out

I have adjusted the code so that the previous co-ordinates and adjustments will remain in view if plate solving fails, but a warning in red will appear telling you that the data is XXX seconds out of date (XXX will increase as more frames fail to solve).

The size of the window is an interesting question. I deliberately made it quite large on the assumption that people will be standing away from the laptop/screen to move the telescope, so large text and meaningful colour highlights help you see what you need to do without having to keep moving back to the screen. However, as this is very much a first try I am happy to reconsider if that doesn't make sense. It would be interesting to see what a few other people make of it to get a consensus.

cheers,

Robin

[Tiago Ferreira]

Can't wait to try it...

[Tiago Ferreira]

Tried tonight and it's GREAT!!!!
I noticed that after close the push-to box, sharpcap keeps platesolving and i close the platesolve info horizontal bar. Is it intentional?

[admin]

Hi,

it's not supposed to keep plate solving after closing... If it just finishes the plate solve that is already in progress then it's not too bad, but if it keeps repeatedly plate solving then I had better fix it. I will go check!

Glad that it works nicely for you. Any feedback for improvements?

cheers,

Robin

[Tiago Ferreira]

Nice!
So far i tested only once yesterday and it was with a 2nd instance of sharpcap, where i have a synscan goto attached.
First impression is not to lower the font size IMO otherwise we will get into trouble to watch it on a monitor from the telescope. You thought right about it.
Something that would be cool but not required would be something i think i saw in other feature of sharpcap, PA feature maybe, where in addition to coordinates there's an arrow pointing the direction. That would allow a better no-brainer simple view.
To dobsonian users it's a game changer and in addition to that can be used as a plan B to find an object when goto connection fails, as it happened to me yesterday.
I will use it always with my non go-to dobs therefore soon i will explore it deeper.

[admin]

Hi,

yes, an arrow might be possible because the plate solving gives you the orientation of the field of view relative to the RA/Dec directions. I will make a note of that idea.

cheers,

Robin

[Tiago Ferreira]

Another thing it came to my mind, people might use different display resolutions, zoom, etc.which may lead to different tastes around font size.
One way to turn around that is to keep the large size as is but create a drop down arrow so we could shrink or extend the push-to box.
That way we could use it smaller in the screen with just the essentials like the 3 last lines or even just the last 2: distance to target and move telescope and when needed we could expand to access the catalogue search, etc.
Yesterday i did it live so i found myself only interested in look at the distance and move telescope. And from the top horizontal bar i could see the platesolve progress because it takes 2 or 3 seconds to update i think.

[PeterAB]

Hi Robin,

I had a chance to try the push-to prototype.

I used my 8" SCT on a manual tracking EQ mount for visual with a piggy back Sky-Watcher Evoguide 50ED and asi294cm connected to SharpCap. My visual field of view was 0.8 degrees. Image is much larger at 4.5x3 degrees.

Sky conditions were not great for observing, but, still useful for testing equipment. Moon was near full, there were some clouds and wildfire smoke.

Push-to worked. It was fairly easy to get and object in my eyepiece view. Plate solving worked okay with one second high gain exposures.

There are few new features that would help me. This is from my perspective using a manual tracking EQ mount.

In the "required movement" display, it would be helpful to have the required movements labeled as east-west and north-south in addition to the +/- sign. That will save me the trouble of translating the sign into a direction.

An added function would be useful me. When using my manual mounts, I like to have Stellarium connected to SharpCap. I accomplish this by using the ASCOM telescope simulator for .net. I select and object in Stellarium and do a "goto". SharpCap will use this location as a starting point for plate solving. SharpCap also causes the actual telescope pointing location to be displayed in Stellarium after a plate solve and sync. The telescope simulator is being used as a way exchange locations between ASCOM compatible programs.

It would be useful to have SharpCap get the push-to object location from the telescope driver. The location first obtained from the telescope driver would be the target location. Sending the actual telescope position back to the telescope via a sync allow the manual telescope movements to be displayed on Stellarium. The combination of these two actions would automate what I now do manually by clicking on the plate solve and sync.

I have used the ASCOM telescope simulator to connect multiple programs in this fashion. I have found it to be very robust. Once installed, it just works. I understand that documenting how to setup and use this feature may be the hardest part of this request.

I am confused about an aspect related to use with Alt-Az mounts. How are the RA-Dec coordinated translated to terrestrial Alt-Az directions. Does SharpCap know the observation location and time? I'm thinking that information would be needed to correctly calculate Alt-Az movements. I'm I missing something with my thinking on this?

The push-to feature will be handy. It will work as a electronic finder as I tested it above. It will also be nice for use with imaging setups on light weight or less complex non-goto mounts. I use my light weight mounts when traveling and doing electronically assisted observing.

Thanks,

Peter