PushTo direction

[just Klaas]

Hello all.

After a month(!) of clouds/rain, I was able to haul the dob outside and check whether I was now able to perform the push-to routine.
Last time, regular plate solving performed flawlessly, however no "Move Telescope (Alt/Az)" directions were given.
Unfortunately, the same issues occured. To be sure, I reinstalled SC completely.

Target of choice was M15. After setting the correct altitude (using a digital inclinometer and stellarium), and "eyeballing" the azimuth, I was able to get M15 nearly centered on my screen. I only rotated the dob (az) while checking the "distance to target" readout until the value shown was sufficiently small. Of course, this works OK. See screenshot:

However, I would love to understand *why* I do not get any Alt/Az directions at all.

Under sharpcap settings/plate solve, I punched in the focal length of the telescope (1500 mm). But is there anything other information I must enter in SC in order to get the push to function showing the Alt/Az directions?

thanks in advance for any help....

Klaas.

[admin]

Hi Klaas,

unfortunately your image didn't show up, but I think I can guess why you are not getting Alt/Az readouts...

To calculate the Alt/Az, SharpCap needs to know your latitude and longitude as well as the time. The time is easy... Latitude and Longitude need to either come from an ASCOM mount driver (unlikely with PushTO), or they need to be setup in the 'Polar Alignment' tab of the SharpCap settings. One of the things on my todo list is to move that setting to a different tab, as it's not clear that it affects other parts of SharpCap too.

cheers,

Robin

[Gfischer]

6E129528-62EA-4DBE-873B-BB72C79DF2E2.png (534.65 KiB) Viewed 12847 times

Robin,
My setup gets location from virtual mount. Telescope.net
George

[admin]

Hi George,

yes, that will work too. For those not using the virtual mount, setting the location in the Polar alignment settings is the right thing to do.

cheers,

Robin

[Gfischer]

Robin
When using the virtual mount the mount is virtually moved to the solved position so next solve run starts there. Would that be the same if you enter position in polar solve?
If so I might change to that, I don’t use a planetarium program

George

[just Klaas]

Yes!

Filling in my location in the polar alignment tab in settings was the trick to use the push-to aid and display push to right/left and up/down, despite a stiff wind trying to blow my dob on the ground...

I was not aware, that the location needed to be entered in the polar align tab...
May be a suggestion: would it be more logical to type the location in a more general tab, so it can be used in both push-to and polar alignment?

Thanks a lot Robin! (feel a bit stupid now...).

[Gfischer]

Hi robin,
I loaded latest sc and downloaded file for .25 platesolve. Installation went flawlessly. Tried the .25 option and it worked perfect. I timed the time for a blind solve and it solved in 22 sec. I experimented with different gain and exposure settings and the best overall was 100% gain for 3 sec.
Asi183mc, 12” f/5 dob ,1500mm fl

George

[admin]

Hi George,

thanks for the feedback - all sounds good! Your field-of-view is going to be about 0.5x0.33 degrees with that setup, so a problem for the default 0.5 index, but comfortable for the 0.25 index.

cheers,

Robin

[Gfischer]

Robin,
I noticed a small thing I wanted to ask you about with push to. The notice ribbon always says using 100 stars for solve. I’ve never seen it show anything else. Is this because I have over 100 available stars but only 100 are used?
George

[admin]

Hi George,

yes, that's right - SharpSolve requests 100 stars for solving, so it gets the 100 brightest stars unless there are less than 100 found. Probably not the most useful thing to show - I will see if I can make it something like 'using 100 of 483 stars'.

cheers,

Robin