Access to CdC or...

[kaymann]

I agree that GOTO Catalog Target/Co-ordinates works flawlessly for me and so many others. However consider the following scenarios:

In all scenarios I am in the comfort of my home RDPing with a powerline NAC (Sooooooo much better/reliable/faster/etc. than WiFi)

1) Mount gets bumped/moved/etc. and and I need to re-polar align - Now my scope needs to be star aligned - plate solved and resync. Your Tools>Goto Catalog/Co-ordinates does not include alignment stars, so out to wherever to perform that step and then back to SharpCap.

2) Want to very quickly get to a planet and ensure I am synced so my tracking is as accurate as possible. Your Tools>Goto Catalog/Co-ordinates does not include planets, so out to wherever to perform those steps and then back to SharpCap.

3) Many Nebulas are missing from Tools>Goto Catalog/Co-ordinates requiring going out to wherever to perform those lookup steps, resync etc. and then back to SharpCap.

Now why do I want that to occur in SC:

• SC could be one stop software

• SC Takes care of naming the target (something I often forget resulting in stacks with the wrong name

• I like doing things the same way as much as possible so no steps are missed. Currently I go to the Tools>Goto Catalog/Co-ordinates and it is hit or miss as to whether the target will be found and then end up going to Cartes du Ciel to perform the above listed tasks

• SC does such a great job of reporting exactly what is happening and why, that occurs in the go to and sync and recenter process

Trying to do this, the question is could the Cartes du Ciel database be accessed much like ASTAP is by SC. Yes this would require CdC to be installed or even Stellarium (same database?).

Anyway, I will continue as is, obviously as SC is so tremendous regardless

[Jean-Francois]

Hello Kay,

1) For the alignment stars ... if you know the name of one alignment star, then you can search the star with the name.
Or do you mean that you wish to have the Meade/Skywatcher/Celestron alignment stars list in the Object Type list selection ?
I guess that you can create a list yourself, the same as for the Annotation Tool. Robin, can you confirm ?
I have a PDF with the list of the SynScan alignment stars.

2) The planets are already included ... in "Solar System":

GOTO_to_Taget_Solar-System.png (177.93 KiB) Viewed 4637 times

It works. I used it for Neptune and Uranus.


3) Can you give some examples ?

The "Search Name/Id" will search only in the selected Object Types.
So you need to select what you want and then the object.
Here for example "Deneb" ... you can think that only one Deneb exists ... but ...

GOTO_to_Taget_Search.png (145.35 KiB) Viewed 4637 times

"SC Takes care of naming the target (something I often forget resulting in stacks with the wrong name"
SharpCap does already this ... after a successful GOTO to Target. But sometimes the name could be too long or with a Greek symbol.

Do you use a recent version of SharpCap ?

Regards,
Jean-Francois

[admin]

Hi,

Jean-Francois is correct that you could add a custom object list for alignment stars (https://docs.sharpcap.co.uk/4.1/#Custom ... %20Objects) or search them by name. Planets are also included in recent versions of SharpCap (in 4.1 they are in the 'quick' dropdown list of targets to choose).

There's a separate suggestion somewhere on here to try to update the view rectangle in CdC with the plate solving info from SharpCap - not sure if/when it might happen, but this idea of linking the name of the target from CdC into SharpCap would kind of fit together with that into a 'better integration with CdC' idea.

One of my problems with the idea of CdC integration is that I personally find CdC a bit old fashioned and clunky to use, whereas Stellarium is in the other direction - a bit over showy. As a result, I tend not to use either of them for actual observing - if I need a planetarium application then I use SkyTechX which is a nice balance between the two in my opinion.

cheers,

Robin

[kaymann]

First, I have been running the weekly best of SC 4.1 for several months now...

Second in the catalog I have the select all checked and did a search for Sirius and then Jupiter and both searches came up blank...
So I obviously messed up somewhere and I could not be happier knowing I just need to figure out what I was doing wrong. My Astro PC is currently hiding from monsoon weather. but should be able to get back into figuring this out maybe tonight...

Also integration with CdC is my choice because it is so resource kind compared to Stellarium. I just installed Skytech X and was wondering if it allows custom horizons as does CdC and Stellarium?

[Jean-Francois]

Hello Robin,

Concerning the objects list and type in the "GOTO to Target" and "Annotation", can you please do a small modification ?

Some custom object lists have a very large number of different types. For example for the stars colour types in the PPM catalogue.
For star type "A" ... A, A0, A0e, A0Ia, A0ib, A0IIe, A0III, A0IIIe, A0IVe, A0mnp, A0p, A0V, A0Ve, A0Veshe, A0Vne, A0Vnne, A0Vpe, A0Vs and A0Vs+G:III.
Yes, that is only for the type "A"

I have a proposal ... that it would be possible to select the catalogue similar as in the "Deep Sky Annotation " tool.
It reduce the number of listed object types (but not disable all these types).

On the image below after some image processing ... the tool could have the additional "Catalogs" region.

Goto_Catalog_Target.jpg (444.83 KiB) Viewed 4597 times

Regards,
Jean-Francois

[admin]

Hi Jean-Francois,

yes, that's a good idea and I think I have a note I wrote down somewhere to investigate it. I'll get round to it...

cheers,

Robin

[kaymann]

I stand corrected the with a caveat...

When searching for planets and select all is checked only nebulas showed up as possibilities. When solar system was the only option checked, the planets showed up in the search results and worked flawlessly.

As far as named stars go I do not know what I did wrong initially. Capella showed up in my search as expected and gave a good plate solve, sync and re-center.

So the only other thing is enriching the current DSO catalog...

So happy camper here!

[admin]

Hi,

glad you are finding that it mostly works for you. I wonder if you had some of the filters (altitude, time to meridian, etc) turned on initially that could have excluded capella from the search results.

I know that there are some gaps in the NGC/IC catalog that I plan to fix in the future. However, I don't intend to ship any larger catalogs with SharpCap by default as on a slow PC having 100000 or more targets to show may be too slow.

cheers,

Robin