astrotortilla or sgpro

[brrttpaul]

Hi guys had my first go with SGPRO last night, on my old computer I used to use astrotortilla to plate solve now I am using SGPRO I was looking at the platesolving and wondering what the best option for me is with it as there are a few on the list (elbrus astonomy pinpoint etc) . How do I go about getting the catalouge and installing it to sgpro? and which would be the best for me

[swag72]

I have 2 separate PC's running SGP - On one I have Pinpoint which I had to buy as there were not so many options around for plate solving then. On the second PC I loaded it up with the free PlateSolve2 catalogues. All free, this is really easy to do. Having used Pinpoint and Platesolve2 I wouldn't hesitate in recommending it.

You can download the catalogues from

APM catalogue http://planewave.com/downloads/all/?did=105 and UCAC catalogue http://planewave.com/downloads/all/?did=107 then make sure that you know where they are on your PC. In the Platesolve tab under settings you just need to point Platesolve2 to them both and that should be that  

[graemlourens]

Hi Paul.

Huge +1 for SGP and Platesolve2. It is extremely fast and reliable, most of the times its solving in less than 1-2 seconds, which is a huge advantage when you're trying to center within few pixels (and SGP will be re-slewing and solving frequently).

Here's the setup procedure described from SGP (simple to follow and setup): http://mainsequencesoftware.com/Content/SGPHelp/SequenceGeneratorPro.html?SettingupPlateSolve2.html

Kind regards, Graem

[daz]

+1 for SGP

I also have ANSVR as a stand-by (the local astrometry.net server) for those blind solve cases!

Kayron has a great tutorial for determining the index's needed for it - http://www.lightvortexastronomy.com/tutorial-setting-up-and-using-astrotortilla-for-plate-solving.html

 

[brrttpaul]

thx very much guys thats been a great help much appreciated

[cardconvict]

+1 for Sgpro stunning bit of kit once you get used to all it's features.

[brrttpaul]

Im starting to find my way around it now , it is good. I have downloaded the catalogues for plate solving but I have gone wrong somewhere ( I will look tomorrow now as I am trying a few things) it all seems to work but dosnt find the catalogue, Must be something simple I directed it to where i downloaded it.

[graemlourens]

I remember having similar issues, and what i ended up doing is placing the catalogues in the default place where platesolve2 expects them to be by default (when you define catalog, wherever it goes there in the explorer...). I don't know why it didn't work, but thats how i got it to work in the end....

Kind regards, Graem

[brrttpaul]

I put mine in my documents  because I,m not used to Win 10 and can never find anything so maybe i will put them in default  and try that way

[graemlourens]

6 minutes ago, brrttpaul said:

I put mine in my documents  because I,m not used to Win 10 and can never find anything so maybe i will put them in default  and try that way

I did exactly the same (But on Win7) and it didn't want to work. I was guessing at the time that it has got something to do with rights, but as i didn't really care much where it was, i took the easy path

Kind regards, Graem

[brrttpaul]

ok for some strange reason im going wrong, I download the catalouge i unzip it and save it, I then go to sgpro and put the directory where it is in, I try to plate solve it goes through its thing and then I get failed to solve cant find catalouge (or something like that)

[brrttpaul]

Got it working yayyy, Ok so in astrotortilla It used to take a photo of say M27 and it would solve it then it would recentre and take another photo with M27 centered, how does that work with this? what I mean is it just says solved confidence 300? if im off with my scope slightly at the target how do i get it to centre on the target?

[Shelster1973]

Sorry to jump in on this one...but have been thinking of moving from AT to use the plate solve in SGP and my main questino about it is will SGP issue slew commands to the mount in teh same way as AT does?  ie if the 1st solve is off then it works out distance, syncs mount to where it actually pointing, slews mount, takes anouther image and then repeats until within a set error? or do you solve, SGP syncs mount, you issue slew command via stallarium (in my case) then resove and sync in SGP?

[iapa]

On 26/05/2017 at 14:03, brrttpaul said:

Got it working yayyy, Ok so in astrotortilla It used to take a photo of say M27 and it would solve it then it would recentre and take another photo with M27 centered, how does that work with this? what I mean is it just says solved confidence 300? if im off with my scope slightly at the target how do i get it to centre on the target?

4 hours ago, Shelster1973 said:

Sorry to jump in on this one...but have been thinking of moving from AT to use the plate solve in SGP and my main questino about it is will SGP issue slew commands to the mount in teh same way as AT does?  ie if the 1st solve is off then it works out distance, syncs mount to where it actually pointing, slews mount, takes anouther image and then repeats until within a set error? or do you solve, SGP syncs mount, you issue slew command via stallarium (in my case) then resove and sync in SGP?

When you set up your sequence, you can specify the target co-ordinates and SGPro will slew and plate solve on that point.

What I tend to do is to set up the

• user and equipment profile.
• Create a NEW sequence,
• assign the equipment profile to that
• mosaic / framing tool and enter target name, that will search for the target and grab an image, frame that view to get what I want, and when you save you can choose to over write the target coordinates in the sequence.

 

[iapa]

Here's a short QTime .MOV file I created showing setup of plate solving in SGPro - no audio

I'll try to do one for using plate solving later

SGPro PlatSolve setup.mov

[iapa]

quick and dirty for setting up to slew to target and plate solve.

When you run your sequence it will slew to target, plate solving as it does so.

 

SGPro platesolve - using.mov

[brrttpaul]

On 5/31/2017 at 08:48, Shelster1973 said:

Sorry to jump in on this one...but have been thinking of moving from AT to use the plate solve in SGP and my main questino about it is will SGP issue slew commands to the mount in teh same way as AT does?  ie if the 1st solve is off then it works out distance, syncs mount to where it actually pointing, slews mount, takes anouther image and then repeats until within a set error? or do you solve, SGP syncs mount, you issue slew command via stallarium (in my case) then resove and sync in SGP?

what I have found which may be of help to you as I was doing the same thing with AT, say I slew my scope to vega,  for example and take a single shot in sgpro  if vega is off centre but still in the frame I put my cursor on it and right click the mouse and you see "center here" it will then take another pic slew and confirm vega is centre, which is very similar to AT, but the target must be in the frame for this to work.

[iapa]

1 hour ago, brrttpaul said:

what I have found which may be of help to you as I was doing the same thing with AT, say I slew my scope to vega,  for example and take a single shot in sgpro  if vega is off centre but still in the frame I put my cursor on it and right click the mouse and you see "center here" it will then take another pic slew and confirm vega is centre, which is very similar to AT, but the target must be in the frame for this to work.

Another school day - I'd not found that in SGPro yet.

[brrttpaul]

take a single shot and right click on the sub with your mouse, I only found it by accident lol

[iapa]

1 hour ago, brrttpaul said:

take a single shot and right click on the sub with your mouse, I only found it by accident lol

ta

that's what I do to get my target coords from prior image - but I was only looking for the plate solve option

must read what is on the screen