Artificial star for guide testing

[SteveBz]

Hi Guys,

I have a DIY guiding program, camera and guidescope which is not fully functioning at the moment.

At the moment, although it makes corrections I'm never sure whether it is moving in the right direction, sometimes I get runaways, like this. 

How can I make an artificial star for testing tracking and guiding?  Has anyone done this?

Ideas gratefully received,

Regards

Steve.

[Stub Mandrel]

That's a good question I have wondered about as well... and I have come up with a solution.

Give me an hour...

[Stub Mandrel]

OK I have a program that moves a single white pixel very slowly right to left across a black computer screen in Windows.

 

Give me a few hours to tidy things up!

[SteveBz]

Wow, cool. Would I put the screen in front of the guide-scope?

Steve.

[Stub Mandrel]

I'll put the file on my website and there's a link below.

Just click the exe file and it will show its name, then change to a black screen and ask you for the screen width in millimetres and the distance of the screen from your scope.

The star will appear as a single white pixel at middle left, just in from the edge. You press a key and it will move across the screen at approximately sidereal rate as seen from the scope. Depending on screen size and distance it should take half an hour to an hour to cross the screen.

To exit the program, press ALT-F4 (the screen will carry a message to remind you of this).

Let me know if it works for you!

The only weak point is that it obviously moves in 1-pixel jumps, not smoothly, but these should about 1-arc-second jumps.

If it moves too fast or slow, let me know, I haven't tried it with my mount so it may move at twice or half the speed it should!

http://www.stubmandrel.co.uk/astronomy/152-tracker-tester

[SteveBz]

8 minutes ago, Stub Mandrel said:

I'll put the file on my website and there's a link below.

Just click the exe file and it will show its name, then change to a black screen and ask you for the screen width in millimetres and the distance of the screen from your scope.

The star will appear as a single white pixel at middle left, just in from the edge. You press a key and it will move across the screen at approximately sidereal rate as seen from the scope. Depending on screen size and distance it should take half an hour to an hour to cross the screen.

To exit the program, press ALT-F4 (the screen will carry a message to remind you of this).

Let me know if it works for you!

The only weak point is that it obviously moves in 1-pixel jumps, not smoothly, but these should about 1-arc-second jumps.

If it moves too fast or slow, let me know, I haven't tried it with my mount so it may move at twice or half the speed it should!

http://www.stubmandrel.co.uk/astronomy/152-tracker-tester

Hi Stub,

Great idea. 

I run Linux so I have to run this in WINE (Windows In Nix Environments).  It works at the beginning.  I'm not sure how fast the pixel should be moving, so I don't know if that is working or not.  Alt-f4 doesn't work for me (that may be a WINE issue and because I think you've used "Always at front" as an option I can't bring up task manager to kill it.

Does it track at sidereal speed?

Regards

Steve

[Stub Mandrel]

OK, there's a new version on the same link, but you can now press <ESC> which stops it and closes the window.

It should be close enough to sidereal speed, depending on how accurately you position the laptop.

 

[Merlin66]

http://sweiller.free.fr/SGE/SGE-star-guiding-emulator.htm

the SGE has been around for a while and works very well.

well worth checking out.