Astro tortilla and APT

[geordie85]

So I've finally got myself eqmod for my Neq6 and will be attempting to plate solve for the first time tonight. 

I spent most of yesterday downloading all the appropriate software (I think) and have managed to get stellarium and eqmod talking to each other fine. I also bought APT and was wondering if anyone has a simple to understand step by step guide to plate solving using these programmes. 

Thanks

[Thalestris24]

Hi

Presumably you have ascom installed? I would suggest making sure eqmod/stellarium/APT are all working as expected first. The light vortex tutorial is quite good for setting up Astrotortilla. Once everything is up and running it should be a simple matter of slewing to a target in Stellarium and doing a solve and reslew in AT. Of course, you need good focus and PA first! 

Louise

 

[alacant]

Hi. APT comes with plate solving built in. Choose your camera, focal length and click your way through the (very easy) setup. In APT it's Gear > Point Craft > Settings. HTH

[geordie85]

2 hours ago, Thalestris24 said:

Hi

Presumably you have ascom installed? I would suggest making sure eqmod/stellarium/APT are all working as expected first. The light vortex tutorial is quite good for setting up Astrotortilla. Once everything is up and running it should be a simple matter of slewing to a target in Stellarium and doing a solve and reslew in AT. Of course, you need good focus and PA first! 

Louise

 

Thanks. I use a polemaster and bahtinov mask for PA and focus so they shouldn't be an issue.

Yes I'm have ASCOM installed. I know stellarium and eqmod are working fine, haven't tested APT yet as it was an indoor setup just to make sure they were working properly 

[geordie85]

I'm having trouble getting my camera to connect to APT. 

When I click connect all I get is an option for ascom camera, qsi and sbig. If I select ascom camera the only options I get is camera v2 simulator and simulator. I've tried un-installing and re-installing both ascom 6.2 and APT. 

I'm trying re-installing the core software now

Any ideas anyone?

[geordie85]

Downloading the new core drivers has worked but I'm still having trouble with solving.

It takes ages then keeps saying field 1 cannot solve or something along those lines.

Tonight is turning out to be a complete failure, been at it for over 3 hours now and I'm just running into problem after problem. APT won't even cool my CCD.

What a wasted night with no imaging. 

[Davey-T]

There's a lot of it about tonight, I've just spent / wasted a couple of hours trying to get autofocus to work, a couple of weeks ago I spent / wasted a few clear nights getting plate solving to work.

I'm sure one night it will all work 

Dave

PS: My  plate solving wouldn't work due a slight disagreement over the time

[Thalestris24]

11 minutes ago, geordie85 said:

Downloading the new core drivers has worked but I'm still having trouble with solving.

It takes ages then keeps saying field 1 cannot solve or something along those lines.

Tonight is turning out to be a complete failure, been at it for over 3 hours now and I'm just running into problem after problem. APT won't even cool my CCD.

What a wasted night with no imaging. 

Hi

Sorry for your woes... If APT is losing the connection to your camera I'd suspect the usb. I often have trouble with my laptop where movement of the usb connector loses the connection. I've mostly fixed it using some card to wedge the usb connector tight but sometimes I think it still moves. What equipment do you have? AT not solving can be caused by a number of things. Keeping the search radius down helps speed things up. Make sure your fov is correct. If you can get a sub solved offline i.e. via astrometry.net then that will confirm the size in degrees. Maybe you can post a screen grab of your AT settings?

Louise

[geordie85]

Apt is not loosing connection. I turned my CCD off and back on again and that fixed the cooling but plate solving is still failing.

I've followed light vortex tutorial to a tee including the possible fixes at the bottom. I'll continue to try. Even if I don't get any imaging done tonight at least I'll hopefully have the problem solved for next time. 

[John78]

6 hours ago, geordie85 said:

Tonight is turning out to be a complete failure, been at it for over 3 hours now and I'm just running into problem after problem. APT won't even cool my CCD.

What a wasted night with no imaging. 

In the same situation, APT + AT first attempt but I was using a Canon, I failed at getting in focus hurdle, I've already chopped the end off my tube once to get a M4/3 camera to focus but evidently a Canon needs even more chopping so I'll do that today.

So disappointed to not even press the plate solve button, means another likely night of faffing tonight before actually imaging

[alacant]

Hi. Suggestion: Remove the AT variable and use the solving in APT? USB: have a few spare leads. They're a pain. HTH

Method for APT

set the focal length of your telescope in Tools

Focus on a bright star

take a 15 second snap anywhere at ISO800

gear > Point Craft > Blind

Wait. It takes about a minute. 

Sync

That's it.

 

 

[geordie85]

Thanks for all the advice and tips. After playing round with the scale min/ max settings and sigma I think I may have sorted it but it was 4am by this time so I'll have to test it out again tonight if the clouds stay away.

I'll report back tonight 

[geordie85]

Well clouds are rolling on now and yet another failed night.

I even tried the plate solve in APT but it kept saying it doesn't have a path for ASPS even though it does.

Seriously considering just going back to the handset as I never wasted a nights imaging because of it

[brrttpaul]

I had a very similar problem with astrotortilla (min max etc) it would go through everything then come back failed solve etc, I still dont know if its working as its total cloud cover now, this for me is the biggest problem with astronomy , by the time you learn one thing you have forgotten the other lol because so few nights are clear. 

[alacant]

6 hours ago, geordie85 said:

the plate solve in APT

Hi. Really sorry about that. It must be something simple. APT has 2 possibilities for plate solving. I'll post a screenshot. Everything is the w10 default settings. I changed nothing. Are you sure you have chosen the correct camera and set the imaging focal length in Tools? Make sure the mount is connected to APT: 'Connect Scope'. HTH

[John78]

 

1 hour ago, brrttpaul said:

I had a very similar problem with astrotortilla (min max etc) it would go through everything then come back failed solve etc, I still dont know if its working as its total cloud cover now, this for me is the biggest problem with astronomy , by the time you learn one thing you have forgotten the other lol because so few nights are clear. 

So I tried for around 2 hrs trying to get astrotortilla to solve last night, absolute failure - I upload a frame to astrometry.net and it solves it in 5 seconds.  What I notice is the frame that appears in APT after AT has requested it looks really rubbish quality, noisy and the wrong scale and it seems to switch the camera into a jpg mode rather than raw??  The frame doesn't appear in the APT folder either, I'll check the memory card this morning see if I can upload what I'm meaning.

 

I switched to the APT tools, I downloaded both things, and APM and all the maps requested for my FOV which was nearly a gigabyte all told, pressed the blind button and it solved it a few seconds and synced, slewed to M31 and it was rock and roll.  Then cloudfest returned.

 

Try again Sunday by the looks of the weather forecast.

 

 

[brrttpaul]

im not sure about the jpeg mode, im using maxim so AT takes a 10 sec sub then tries to do its thing but fails, why it fails I have no idea but its something i want to try and crack, been watching youtube vids and everythings set up right as far as I can see.

[John78]

1 hour ago, brrttpaul said:

im not sure about the jpeg mode, im using maxim so AT takes a 10 sec sub then tries to do its thing but fails, why it fails I have no idea but its something i want to try and crack, been watching youtube vids and everythings set up right as far as I can see.

So I've looked at the jpegs now and if anything they are slightly better than the raw files - I think APT is just displaying them zoomed in the jpg snapshot for some reason.  Astrometry.net can solve both raw and jpg no problem so I'm sure my issue with AT is to do with either image scale/settings or it doesn't have the right maps downloaded.... Not sure there's so few options on AT to change

[geordie85]

4 hours ago, alacant said:

Hi. Really sorry about that. It must be something simple. APT has 2 possibilities for plate solving. I'll post a screenshot. Everything is the w10 default settings. I changed nothing. Are you sure you have chosen the correct camera and set the imaging focal length in Tools? Make sure the mount is connected to APT: 'Connect Scope'. HTH

Yep I have everything connected and set up correctly.

I'm still thinking it may be my settings in AT. 

I'm scale min/ max I have it set to 0.1/ 3. Is this correct for a star 71?  When installing I selected narrowest FOV at 1.4-2 and widest to 2.83-3. Is this correct? As I said 8m using a WO star 71 with an atik 383l. 

I also accidentally deleted the custom settings tab, tried inputting it the same as what I found online (apart from the sigma value) but feel I may have done this wrong. When I tried un-installing and re-installing AT the settings remain the same. Do I have to delete/ un-install cygwin and the log files as well to get the settings back to default?

[Thalestris24]

Hi

The scope you have has a fov of 2.49 x 1.85 deg so maybe try 2.3 for scale min and 2.5 for scale max. You can select 0.1 for scale refinement. Once it solves it will insert exact values which you can save. A typical custom options line might be: 
--sigma 50 --no-plots -N none -r --objs 50 -c 0.02

You can vary the sigma value according to noise level and number of stars (increase sigma to reduce number of stars detected). You want to get maybe 100-200 stars detected. Too few or too many can cause solve problems. You want to keep the exposure times low e.g. 2-5secs (unless you're doing narrowband!).

Hth

Louise

ps if you have a jpeg sub taken with your camera/scope combo, you can ask AT to solve it during the day using the GoTo Image in tools

Here is a fov calculator: http://www.12dstring.me.uk/fovcalc.php

[John78]

2 hours ago, Thalestris24 said:

Hi

The scope you have has a fov of 2.49 x 1.85 deg so maybe try 2.3 for scale min and 2.5 for scale max. You can select 0.1 for scale refinement. Once it solves it will insert exact values which you can save. A typical custom options line might be: 
--sigma 50 --no-plots -N none -r --objs 50 -c 0.02

You can vary the sigma value according to noise level and number of stars (increase sigma to reduce number of stars detected). You want to get maybe 100-200 stars detected. Too few or too many can cause solve problems. You want to keep the exposure times low e.g. 2-5secs (unless you're doing narrowband!).

Hth

Louise

ps if you have a jpeg sub taken with your camera/scope combo, you can ask AT to solve it during the day using the GoTo Image in tools

Here is a fov calculator: http://www.12dstring.me.uk/fovcalc.php

Ahh, penny drops - the default downloaded files are bonkers (in my haste I just pressed next) - I'm sure that's why it no worky, I've just un-installed/re-installed and am downloading appropriate files for my 130PDS/1000D - its a bit poor there's no options in AT to tell you what files you have or to fetch new ones, hey ho - its free

[Thalestris24]

Hi

Just to clarify, with AT you use your setup fov to determine which index files you need to download, hence the smaller and larger values to make sure you get all the ones you require. You can, if you want, download all of them - that covers you for all possible scope/camera combinations. This is separate from using the fov to calculate scale min/max values that are used for actual solving. In some respects, the best way to ascertain scale values is to solve a sub via astrometry.net - that will give you an exact value to enter. You can then check that's ok by solving the sub using the goto image tool.

Of course, there is a user guide that you can download and read...

Also, the Astrotortilla install allows you to just download index files should you need/want to.

Louise

[geordie85]

Thanks Thalestris24 that's very helpful indeed. I'll give it a shot after work and hopefully everything will go accordingly 

[Thalestris24]

Oh, forgot to mention - you can use the ascom simulator in order to test the goto image tool anytime without having to connect your mount etc.

Louise

[John78]

Lousie,

Thanks, super helpful - I'm still trying to solve my image offline (its been going at it for about 20 minutes now!), its not a great image as collimation sucks after tube chopping yesterday....

 

If I solve it on Astrometry this is the result...

http://nova.astrometry.net/status/1232299

http://nova.astrometry.net/user_images/1273398#annotated

Can you give me any advice on how to interpret those results into AT settings?? 

 

If I solve it using platesolve2 its done in a few seconds, so my image is solvable locally quickly im sure.