SharpCap Forums

Hi Robin,

As you know I am using sharpcap with a warpastron WD-20 that is driven by onestep software.

It works find when I use the goto catalog , it find correctly the objetct and center in view. But if now from there I want to use the "click to center in view" in order to reposition the view differently, then the mount slew around but never center what I want.

By example last time I goto C30 (NGC7331) then using the click to center in view I wanted to select a star in between C30 and Stephan quintet in order to have both C30 and the quintet in the picture, but I was never able to center the point I selected and C30 finish to be in the bottom of the picture. If I insist trying to recenter , it finishes by have the selected objset totaly outside the field of view.

With the AM5 it worked nicely but with the Warpastron WD-20 if totaly position at a wrong place .

I also observe that in such a case the plate solving does not recenter the initial object.

The goto center perfectly but other action does not seems to work including the plate solve to recenter. It is annoying.

Kind regards
Olivier

Hi Olivier,

some ASCOM mounts use a pointing model to try to give accurate pointing of the mount across the whole sky even with possible errors like polar alignment not being correct or having 'cone error' present. I wonder if your mount is doing (or trying to do) something like this?

In the case of mounts that are using a pointing model, SharpCap sending a 'sync' command to the mount after plate solving may not have the usual effect of resetting the mount co-ordinates to the sync co-ordinates, which then means that GOTO movements nearby become highly accurate.

The workaround for this is to change the plate solving settings in SharpCap - change the 'After solving...' action from 'Sync mount and Recenter target' to 'Offset the mount position to recenter the target'. Once you have done that, see if plate solving works better and recenters the target.

If that does help plate solving, it should then be possible to do a 'Click to center in view', followed by a plate solve and recenter to correctly get the target you want into the middle of the view.

hope this helps,

Robin

Hi Robin,

Thank you for your explanation
It seems my setting are already set as you suggest by default. If I have some clear sky the next week end, I will try to play with that settings to see if it changes something



Kind regards
Olivier

I have set "sync mount and recenter target" and now it is working correctly when I do recenter

Hi,

good to hear that you have it working now. The only potential problem that I can think of with the 'offset' option is that in older versions of SharpCap (more than a couple of months old), it worked once after moving to a target but then would repeat the same offset amount each time if used repeatedly (it would think the new co-ordinates after offset were really the target). This should now be resolved in up-to-date versions.

cheers,

Robin

admin wrote: Mon Dec 16, 2024 1:50 pm Hi,

good to hear that you have it working now. The only potential problem that I can think of with the 'offset' option is that in older versions of SharpCap (more than a couple of months old), it worked once after moving to a target but then would repeat the same offset amount each time if used repeatedly (it would think the new co-ordinates after offset were really the target). This should now be resolved in up-to-date versions.

cheers,

Robin

Hi Robin,

I am using the last version of SC pro. But I will check that next time I can.

Kind regards
Olivier