Astrotortilla can't access APT. Any ideas?

[Brent]

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So taking the example of M31, would the exact process be as follows?

1. Slew to M31 (this can be done by either an external program, such as CdC, or within APT itself by selecting M31 from the 'Objects' menu and pressing 'GoTo'). After which, the mount should be close-ish to the target.

2. Then, in the 'Center FOV at position' box click 'Objects' and select M31, which populates the RA and Dec fields, then click the 'GoTo ++' button.

The mount & camera should then do the picture taking, solving, and slewing all itself until it gets on target.

Is that basically it?

And if so, why can't you just press the 'GoTo ++' button first time?

Thanks,

Ciarán.

Sorry, I think I've caused some confusion with you and possibly Louise.

You can do it exactly as you state, just doing the FOV 'GoTo ++' and getting straight on with the solving.

I can't do that because my mount has seriously bad backlash and won't return the guide star to the exact start position when I calibrate PHD, so plate solving first would be a waste of time.

So, I have to calibrate before I plate solve and because I'm using PHD 1, I want to calibrate near my target. Therefore I slew with 'GoTo', PHD calibrate, then 'GoTo++' to plate solve.

Hope that resolves the confusion and apologies for causing it!

[Thalestris24]

Hi

PHD2 doesn't mind how close you are to where you calibrated - within reason, at least. I use Astrotortilla to platesolve and select a guide star and start guiding after I've centred on the target. Works for me

Shame PointCraft can't pick up the target location from Stellarium like AT does. Actually I'm not sure if it gets it directly from Stellarium or indirectly via Ascom.

Louise

[Xiga]

So i finally got around to testing out guiding & platesolving for the first time a few nights back. As it turns out, from my teeny tiny wee light-polluted back yard, i can actually see Polaris and a bit of the night sky   so i was actually able to setup, polar align, and get testing!

First things first, i fired up EQMOD and used the Polar Alignment mod. First try failed, as the mount put the Polaris circle in the wrong place (i cross-checked with an app called PolarFinder). Once i realised i had to choose Synta (i.e Skywatcher) for my HEQ5Pro from the dropdown menu, it worked a treat! It takes out the manual work of entering in the date, time, and location info into the handset, plus the actual turning of the mount in RA to the correct HA position, so it's safe to say i will be doing it this way every time i plan on imaging. 

Next up was Platesolving. As has already been talked about earlier in the thread, for whatever reason AT simply won't connect to my camera in APT, so i decided to give Pointcraft a go instead. 

So in APT i went to Pointcraft and in the Centre FOV section i simply clicked on Objects and selected M31 from the list (as it was just visible from my location) and hit the GoTo++ button and off it went to do it's thing. Sure enough it got pretty close first time, took a picture, which it solved in about 40 seconds, then did another small slew followed by a second picture, which again solved in 40 seconds, and then it told me Success and sure enough, there was M31 smack bang right in the middle of the frame! I was so excited at this point, as tbh i wasn't really expecting it to work lol. 

So going forward i now plan using Pointcraft for all my Platesolving, and i don't think i'll miss AT at all. A big bonus is having the built-in databse of objects (not overly extensive, but more than adequate for most i'd say, including myself) as this means i don't actually need to run a separate stellarium program (i was planning on using CdC but until i find a good reason i may just leave it for now). So instead of telling CdC to go find M31, you just tell APT to instead. Easy! (and probably quicker too)

Finally, i had to give guiding a go. I was using PHD (will try PHD2 next time) and i thought i had my setting set right, so i was surprised to see calibration fail a few times. My (old) QHY5 is not the most sensitive, and i also had to finetune the focus, plus by this stage the moon was up and with all the terrible light pollution i was really struggling to get a lock on any star. So i decided to slew away from M31 (as the moon was just too close) and go for M81 instead, as it was pretty much the only thing i could find which was visible from my location. Again, Pointcraft did it's thing perfectly and the PHD screen looked a bit better this time. But still no calibration. Argghh! In the end i finally found the problem, i just needed to up the RA & Dec guide speeds in EQMOD from x0.1 to x0.5, then it calibrated in 12 steps and i was guiding, yay!!! 

At this stage i was so ecstatic i immediately tried taking a 5 min sub just to see what would come out (in my haste i stupidly forgot to actually focus properly! lol. I just eyeballed it in Liveview, really wished i had tested the Focus Aid tool in APT). 

Was pleasantly surprised that it came out decent (i.e not horrible star trails all over the place). So now i've given everything a test run, i'm itching to have a proper go at this imaging malarkey!

FWIW i've attached the sub below (just for a laugh!). First one is unprocessed (obviously well over the limit skyglow wise, the 2nd has just had a bit of v.simple processing for levels & curves so i could actually see something):

[Brent]

Excellent news, Xiga.

Sounds like you had the same euphoria moment with PointCraft as I had!

It just works, and for any more obscure object that's not in it's database you can just fire up CdC or Stellarium and copy the RA and Dec across manually, it takes all of 20 seconds to do.

[Brent]

Hi

PHD2 doesn't mind how close you are to where you calibrated - within reason, at least. I use Astrotortilla to platesolve and select a guide star and start guiding after I've centred on the target. Works for me

Shame PointCraft can't pick up the target location from Stellarium like AT does. Actually I'm not sure if it gets it directly from Stellarium or indirectly via Ascom.

Louise

Hi Louise,

After sorting out some flex in my finder guider > SPC900 connection with a piece of PVC pipe (!), I tried PHD2 again and had much better results. I'm amazed that from North, through East and to South and over multiple nights (setting up from scratch each night), I didn't have to re-calibrate at all over 3 nights of imaging/testing! A flat Dec line every night!

It got to the point that I was so confident in it that I plate solved straight to my target and started guiding! I don't think I'll be going back to PHD1 now.

[Xiga]

I'm simply amazed by what's possible with Astro software. The data in the test shots from above is, to put it frankly, god awful! Two 5 min shots taken from the middle of a city, with streetlights just out of shot, and no LP filter. I wouldn't have thought it was possible to capture anything at all. Had another quick go at processing it, just for kicks (plus i figure it's a good learning experience) and came up with the one below.

Can't wait to get some clear skies out at my local astro society's regular dark sky location and get some proper data to work with now!

[Brent]

@Thalestris24

Louise, don't know if you've seen it yet, but the latest version of APT (3.0) which Ivo released in early December now includes blind solving via ASPS and you can point it to use AT's indexes instead of downloading them again. It means you can now totally stop using AT and Stellarium/CDC.

[Thalestris24]

23 minutes ago, Brent said:

@Thalestris24

Louise, don't know if you've seen it yet, but the latest version of APT (3.0) which Ivo released in early December now includes blind solving via ASPS and you can point it to use AT's indexes instead of downloading them again. It means you can now totally stop using AT and Stellarium/CDC.

Hi

Thanks - yeah, I know, I have it! I'm still using AT though, as it does the job for me. Might try the APT version one day... But weather up here dreadful for months now

Louise