SharpCap Forums

When I attempted to use the PTA, it "sort of" worked. Comparing what I was seeing with the help file for this feature, I am not getting the full features. I see data in the "Required Movement", which is the RA/Dec offset, The "Distance to Target", but the "Move Telescope (alt/az)" fields are blank. 

I had the ASCOM driver (OnStep) running and when I push the controller buttons the scope moves and the PTA values do change, but where are the Alt/Az offsets?

Is there something else I have to enable to see those values?

Attached is an example screenshot while using the camera simulator. It is doing the same thing.

Also, is there a way to minimize/hide the plate solving screens while PTA is running? All the flashing windows are rather annoying.

Hi,

SharpCap needs to know your latitude and longitude to be able to calculate an alt/az co-ordinate from RA/Dec. There are two ways it can get this

1) Connect SharpCap to an ASCOM mount (even if it is a simulated one) that has the lat/long set in its settings

2) Set your lat/long on the 'plate solving settings' page of the SharpCap settings

Once one of those is set up then you should see altitude and azimuth offsets being displayed in the push to assistant.

The plate solver popping up is trickier - for all the external plate solving tools (Astap, PlateSolve3, Astrotortilla, etc), SharpCap just runs the program with a set of command line parameters saying 'load this file and solve'. Some of the plate solving engines (notably PS3) pops up UI while it is doing this, others don't. I don't think there is any way to prevent the UI from popping up (at least I don't know of one and can't find any documentation online to suggest there is a 'remain hidden' command line parameter). You could try changing to SharpCap's built in plate solver, which doesn't show any UI, or Astrotortilla/ASPS/Ansvr, which I think also don't show anything (although they can be slower). I think Astap is also fairly subtle in just popping up a little 'working on it' progress box rather than a big window.

cheers,

Robin