Solar Mosaic Tool - Warning Message Ioptron

[rafaelschlegel]

Hello
The Solar Mosaic tool works really well and I consistently get good results with it.
I just have one problem with my Ioptron Mount and the Ioptron Commander. With every slew that is triggered by Sharpcap, I have to confirm the warning message ("WARNING! Watching the Sun or ......") from Ioptron Commander within a few seconds. Otherwise an error message comes from Sharpcap and the mosaic tool quits.
In the Ioptron Commander I have not found a way to disable the warning Message.
See Picture in Attachement.
Maybe someone has a solution for this problem.

Regards
Rafael

[admin]

Hi,

the workaround that immediately comes to mind is to deliberately mis-align the mount by a known distance. What I mean by that is that when you have the sun in view to begin with, set the RA of the mount to be offset by maybe 5 degrees (00:20:00 hours of RA). If you do the alignment in this configuration, SharpCap will work out that the RA needs to be corrected by that amount and make all the GOTO movements based on that correction and the iOptron software will happily think that you aren't near the sun.

Now, the question is... How to persuade the mount to change the recorded position by 5 degrees - an ASCOM Sync should do it if the ASCOM mount driver itself has no way to do it. Unfortunately SharpCap will only send 'Sync' as part of plate solving, and you can't do that in daytime. You can do it with a couple of lines in the SharpCap scripting console

Code: Select all

pos = SharpCap.Mounts.SelectedMount.Coordinates
SharpCap.Mounts.SelectedMount.SyncTo(pos.RightAscension + 0.333, pos.Declination)

That will change the RA by 1/3 hour, or 5 degrees. To put things back the same two lines, but with a '-' instead of a '+'. Do that when pointing at the sun ready before running the mosaic alignment and hopefully it will bypass the iOptron warnings.

If you do get a chance to try it and it does work, please let me know as I could build something like this into the mosaic tool.

cheers,

Robin

[rafaelschlegel]

Hello Robin

Thank you for the workaround.
I will test this in the next imaging session.
Maybe I could also change the time in the mount driver.
But an option to do this directly in Sharpcap would of course be even better.
I'll give feedback as soon as I've been able to test it.

Kind Regards
Rafael

[rafaelschlegel]

Hello Robin
I just tried your workaround and it is working great.
No more alerts from my mount.
I just recorded a 24 Panel Mosaic of the sun.
I only get this first warning before starting the mosaic run. But after that everything is running nice.

[rafaelschlegel]

You can find the 24 Panel Result here

https://www.astrobin.com/full/j7b3a3/0/?mod=&real=

Thank you for your great Software.

[turfpit]

Rafael

A great image and a good write-up on Astrobin showing all the individual panels.

Dave

[rafaelschlegel]

Thank you Dave

This works wonderfully with the Mosaic tool. All panels were recorded in just about 10 minutes.

[admin]

Hi Rafael,

that's an absolutely brilliant image - it's come out so well! Would you mind if we shared that on the SharpCap Facebook page?

Good to hear that the offset approach worked. I have made a note to implement that in code to make it easier (and I will also make sure the SharpCap alignment warning gets suppressed too).

cheers,

Robin

[rafaelschlegel]

Hello Robin

Thank you, I really appreciate that. You are welcome to share this on the Facebook page.

Regards Rafael

[turfpit]

Rafael

Your link to the image is buried in a thread entitled 'Solar Mosaic Tool - Warning Message Ioptron'. Because of this, many people on the forum will never see your image (which received a top pick nomination on Astrobin).

I suggest you repost the image in the Sharpcap Gallery sub forum (or Solar and Lunar Imaging), including the panel and processing info you posted to Astrobin, as this will help/encourage others in the group.

Dave