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Looking for beta testers of new Polar Alignment utility.


themos

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Tried it with Canon DSLR (S setting, meaning Small) and a 480/80 refractor (about 4 arcsec/pixel). Took a few iterations to get to 0.3 arcmin error.  It was quite repeatable.

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Edited by themos
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Will it be possible to use a local astrometry install via the solve-field command?

I imagine that a few user inputs would be required to keep it quick, the downsampling level, scale high and scale low values.

It should solve very quickly indeed if you use --dec 85 --radius 5 since you know it is going to be looking near polaris.

My solves only take a few seconds when I run them like this.

This would offer a complete standalone solution to all platforms, obviously astrotortilla is windows only at the moment.

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Hello D4N, Version 1.0.3 does this for Windows and Linux. If you're on a Mac, you can have a look at the code and see if you can adapt it, it would look much like the Linux case. 

Or you could just issue the solves from the command line and let PPA find the .wcs files and continue normally.

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Well I had some good progress but messed it all up by installing Yosemite. It seems to have killed my Python and homebrew installs :(

Gonna take a while to fix that.

I think the install location would be the same as Linux if I built astrometry from scratch but I used homebrew so it goes into Cellar.

I added an else after the windows os elif and put my install location there.

Once I get Python working again I should be able to test it properly.

TSED70Q, iOptron Smart EQ pro, ASI-120MM, Finepix S5 pro.

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Ok after fixing all the damage Yosemite did to my programs I have got it working in both nova and local modes in OS X 10.10.

I added the following code after line 311:

    else:        # OSX local        #        exe = '/usr/local/Cellar/astrometry.net/0.44/bin/solve-field '        if not self.havescale:            # first rough estimate of scale            options = opt1 + "--crpix-center -b /usr/local/Cellar/astrometry.net/0.44/etc/astrometry4100.cfg "            cmd = exe + options + filename             print '___________________________________________________________'            print cmd             os.system(cmd)            self.update_scale(hint)            print ("estimated scale: %.3f" % self.scale)            print '___________________________________________________________'        else:            # fine tune with finer indices            print "known scale ", self.scale, " used: ", self.help_scale.get()            options = opt1 + "-b /usr/local/Cellar/astrometry.net/0.44/etc/astrometry4200.cfg "            if self.help_scale.get() == 1:                up_lim = self.scale*1.1                lo_lim = self.scale*0.9                options = options + "-u app -L "+("%.2f" % lo_lim)+" -H "+ ("%.2f" % up_lim) + " "            cmd = exe + options + filename             print cmd             os.system(cmd)            self.update_scale(hint)

Local solves of the test files take about 6 seconds, this is similar to what I get solving my images so I am happy with that :)

When I get some clear skies I will try this out for real.

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As it looked as if I was going to get some clear sky for a few hours I was ready to use this in real-life mode.  Seeing that you had done a couple of updates I downloaded v1.03.

When I ran it a command window flashed/disappeared too quickly for me to get the message - though I think it may have been looking for astrotortilla.

I then tried v1.02 as well and put my api key in as expected and it would not connect to astrometry.net.  So I went back tot the original which did not connect either.

It was all my fault as I had the api key stored in an email I sent from work to my home email which capitalised the first character, doh.

After fixing that v1.02 worked but still no luck with v1.03.

Does v1.03 need a config setting to be made for local solving?

In the end I did get it setup and was getting the error down until the next capture I did had no visible stars - the clouds had come across and stopped me from finishing - but good practise and all seemed to be working as advertised so hope to get it finished on next cloud free night.

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Ok I got out tonight and gave this a whirl for real.

The good news is it works and successive iterations were able to reduce my PA error.  I noticed my dec error was practically nothing while guiding :)

Local and Nova solves worked fine.

There was a glitch though, it doesn't refresh the folder contents after an image has been taken.  So I take my H & V shots and adjust the mount then take an I shot, it can't see the I shot.  I have to close it down and restart it, then load everything in again.  The same happens if I take just the V shot and open it up, when I come to take the H shot it won't be found until I have shut down the app.

Barring that little glitch it worked really well... just a shame my subs all look white with this pesky moon.

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Stevie,

There's a few places in the code where I haven't put enough error recovery in. If the window disappears too quickly, I select Anaconda Command Prompt from the Start menu, I then change to the directory where PPA is installed, something like

cd C:\Users\Administrator\Documents\PhotoPolarAlign

and issue

PPA.py

Any error messages are then shown in that window.  There is a known bug when running under Windows XP. I look for environment variable LOCALAPPDATA (it's ok on Windows 7), in order to find where the AstroTortilla settings are. That variable is not there under Windows XP, so the program gives up. I will fix that.  Another known bug is I don't handle pathnames with spaces in it correctly. That will also be fixed.

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I have also hit the refresh bug :confused:  I just restart PPA.  the downside is that it retransmits the picture to Astrometry.net.

Meanwhile I have had another test  with V1.02 with disappointing results.  I started another thread to see if the problem lay elsewhere

http://stargazerslounge.com/topic/231308-understanding-my-guide-results

but the recommendation is to try drift alignment. 

I need to make sure that I am using PPA correctly as I never get that nice target in my alignment subs.

Should the mount be tracking  when I am taking each frame?

Has anything changed in the alignment algorithm between v1.02 and v1.03

TIA

Andy

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With the refresh issue, does it go away if, in the file-select dialog,  you select the parent folder and then go back to the folder where the image file is?

Also, if you have solved an image file (meaning  there is a newer .wcs file there, no matter how it got there), the Solved label should show green and you don't need to solve it again. 

The mount can be tracking or not while you take the image. At the Celestial Pole, it doesn't make much difference. Just make sure you have good focus and lots of nice round stars!

No, there is no difference to how we calculate the polar axis position between 1.0.2 and 1.0.3

Send me any images you fed to PPA, if you can.

Themos

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With the refresh issue, does it go away if, in the file-select dialog,  you select the parent folder and then go back to the folder where the image file is?

Also, if you have solved an image file (meaning  there is a newer .wcs file there, no matter how it got there), the Solved label should show green and you don't need to solve it again. 

Send me any images you fed to PPA, if you can.

It never comes back to say it is solved :(  no wcs file is saved.  I only know it has been solved by checking my submissions on astrometry.net.

When I reload previously solved images the solved label does turn green.

I have lots so I will filter through them and send you a dropbox link.

Andy

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Changing directory didn't help me, not sure why it's not updating. Possibly because it's a shared directory and tkinter or even the OS isn't handling that properly. I am unable to recreate the problem with files created directly by the OS (even in my capture directory) it only seems to happen when the camera creates the file.

What OS are you on Andy?

You can press ctrl C in the terminal window to abort a solve.

The wcs file detection is working fine on my install so I only need to solve once for each file. It also works fine if I solve the file using my astrometry install and solve-field from terminal.

TSED70Q, iOptron Smart EQ pro, ASI-120MM, Finepix S5 pro.

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Also, be aware that the nova.astrometry.net server goes "funny" sometimes and Dustin has to restart it. That's happened twice in the last week, I think.

I have learnt to start an astrometry session when I start PPA so I can monitor what is going.  Put it down to my trouble shooting skills that have earned my a nice income for the last 20 years.   After some 46 years in software development  I have this habit of trusting nothing.  :police:

Sad I know  but eventually I will have kit, software and process that works a treat :)

D4N   when I visited an Apple store because I wanted the fastest laptop on earth but said I was going to run windows 8 they thought I was going to be a hard sell. So I still do not yet have a MacBook Pro.  Since then I have found that going from 1 min subs to 5 min subs saves a lot of processing  with which windows and my ultra book seems to cope.   Current scope computer is Windows Vista 32 on a 7 year old HP NW9440 laptop.   As a backup I have an I7 windows desktop  running windows 7 but my main image processing is on a windows 8.1 computer with loads of memory and storage.

{You can press ctrl C in the terminal window to abort a solve.}  but you can issue the equivalent kill -9 via task manager   (  Back in 1991 I rejected windows on my laptop as I could achieve more via the command line...... how time changes ones viewpoint :)  )

Andy

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Well in 1991 you could achieve more with pen & paper than windows, it was awful back then. ;)

Just interesting that you are having the same issue but on a different OS. I imagine there will be a better work around than restarting the app all the time, just need to find it.

TSED70Q, iOptron Smart EQ pro, ASI-120MM, Finepix S5 pro.

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Hello,

here's an issue that is not handled at all at the moment: parity.

All versions so far assume that the image is of correct parity, which is what happens when you use a camera+lens combination. If you use a reflecting telescope, things get complicated. The software will probably send you the wrong way, away from CP instead of towards it.

To avoid this issue, you can prepare the images you submit so that they have the correct parity. Image editing software can be used to do this. You might have to "flip horizontal" or "flip vertical". Take a picture with the same optical train of a recognisable object and find out what flips you need to do to make the image have the same parity as naked-eye vision.

A future version might  be able to detect the parity of the images (the astrometry.net solver can do this) and correct for it. 

Themos

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Another tester here...works quite well I find. What I like about it is that there is no DEC slewing like AlignMaster so any potential backlash does not skew results. With some automation this could be made very fast indeed.

gallery_27141_3511_67035.jpg

Edited by StuartJPP
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