SharpCap Forums

Hi,

I think I found two issues in this feature in further testing:

1) A difference between Astap and Astrotortilla/ANSVR/ASPS about whether the image starts with y=0 at the bottom or the top - this meant that the vertical movements were correct with Astap and inverted with the other solving engines.

2) The offset between J2000 and JNOW not being handled properly in one place, leading to the target being offset by a constant amount even with Astap.

I think I have a fix to both of these now - will be testing those fixes this evening if we have any clear sky

cheers,

Robin

Hi Robin,

this is a great feature!

I use SharpCap for stellar occultations (with a QHY 174M-GPS), and one difficult task is to identify the desired star in the first place.
Platesolving and especially this new feature with the crosshair helps tremendously.

There are some features that would be helpful for occultation astronomy:
- Platesolving an image without an automatic Sync (would be desired for high precision mounts such as 10micron, as a Sync might mess up the pointing model)
- Annotations of objects directly in the image (esp. names of stars)
- Interface to a Planetarium application (e.g. Cartes du Ciel), to show there the field of view (i.e. sending the coordinates of the center of the image plus the angle; CdC has an API allowing this).

Thanks for the great work on SC!
Stefan

Interesting proposant Stephan.
I can answer on the last point. I use Stellarium connected to my telescope. So I select a target with Stellarium, it slew on the target. And then I use SharpCap and click on platesolve (big dot on the quarter left low of the four arrows utility). And astrometry is done with the correction of alignment (sync). Very easy and quite fast.
Dominique

Hi Stefan,

you can turn off the sync after plate solving - it's in the plate solving page of the settings. The options are

* Sync and re-goto
* Perform an offset goto
* Do nothing

The annotations thing is something that is already on my list of potential new features.

Do you have a web reference for the CdC API to send FOV/Coordinates? Not something I am familiar with (I never really got on with CdC)

cheers,

Robin

Hi,

I could test it with the beta 7703 on W10-64, it worked very well - thanks, Robin.
I use SC with CDC over ASCOM with no problems.

The annotations thing is something that is already on my list of potential new features.

This would be a very good feature. Especially for stellar occultations this can be a problem, as Stefan wrote. In CDC I use the UCAC4 catalog.

Cheers, Christian

Hi Robin,

admin wrote: ↑Fri Apr 30, 2021 2:08 pm you can turn off the sync after plate solving - it's in the plate solving page of the settings. The options are

* Sync and re-goto
* Perform an offset goto
* Do nothing

The annotations thing is something that is already on my list of potential new features.

Do you have a web reference for the CdC API to send FOV/Coordinates? Not something I am familiar with (I never really got on with CdC)

Thanks, I must have overlooked the "Do nothing"...

On the API: I am no expert here, but as far as I have understood CdC can act as a server and uses for this a TCP/IP connection (AFAIK also other planetarium SW such as Stellarium can be set up in that way). The respective commands can be found here: https://www.ap-i.net/skychart/en/docume ... r_commands
There are commands for setting both RA ("SETRA") and DEC ("SETDEC") of the image center as well as for drawing a rectangle (size, rotation angle) representing the FoV of the camera ("SETRECTANGLE").
But as said, I am no expert, so I am not sure if these are the correct commands.

For me CdC is the planetarium SW of desire for stellar occultations, as one can very easily use any star catalogue (GAIA etc.).

Thanks and CS,
Stefan

Hi Stefan,

thanks for the link - I had not found that page, but it does look promising - I will put this on the possible future features list.

cheers,

Robin