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Been using APT for a few months now but is SPG that much better or anything else out there

Wirral man

By Wirral man
in Getting Started With Imaging

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Wirral man

Wirral man

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Hi all as above I have been using APT for a few months and personally I think it's a great piece of software now that I can fully use it and get everything to work as it should,

However I have noticed that it can perform the auto meridan flip which for me would be a game changer so for the money is it a worthy upgrade from apt or is there anything else just as good which doesn't cost the earth thanks

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Atreta

Atreta

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I can't say for sgp, but apt does the meridian flip for me (with eqmod) . The first time i saw it doing it i got scared that it would hit the tripod and ran to turn off the mount ?. The second time i thought about waiting to see how it would behave and it did ok. 

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Atreta

Atreta

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14 minutes ago, tooth_dr said:

How does autoguiding work when an auto flip occurs? 

I don't remember because that was a while ago and been some time i don't image, but i guess the guiding didn't resume and IIRC  i had also to recenter the object. It would be interesting if phd2 could auto select a star and resume. 

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david_taurus83

david_taurus83

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30 minutes ago, tooth_dr said:

How does autoguiding work when an auto flip occurs? I usually just take a note of the meridian crossing time, set my alarm and head out an manually flip it. Auto would be great. 

It doesn't! At least for me! My mount keeps guiding past the meridian though I may have some setting in EQmod ticked/unticked. I just wait till APT says  I'm past the meridian, stop guiding and issue a Goto to the same target. It does the flip and switches sides. Use a previous image to Goto++ and continue.

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upahill

upahill

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16 hours ago, david_taurus83 said:

It doesn't! At least for me! My mount keeps guiding past the meridian though I may have some setting in EQmod ticked/unticked. I just wait till APT says  I'm past the meridian, stop guiding and issue a Goto to the same target. It does the flip and switches sides. Use a previous image to Goto++ and continue.

I had to change the setting in EQMod toolbox to "allow auto meridian flip" - after that APT was fine with it. Drove me nuts for weeks.

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emyliano2000

emyliano2000

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22 minutes ago, spillage said:

Ivo has released an new beta. This will allow an auto meridian flip and then platesolve, then resume guiding with phd2. Not had a chance to try myself but it looks good.

Tried it last night. It works great.

I looked up when would the flip be and I added a goto++ command to the session around 10min after the meridian flip and watched it doing it. It solved it to the same location as before the flip and the guiding resumed very nicely.

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Wirral man

Wirral man

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5 hours ago, emyliano2000 said:

Tried it last night. It works great.

I looked up when would the flip be and I added a goto++ command to the session around 10min after the meridian flip and watched it doing it. It solved it to the same location as before the flip and the guiding resumed very nicely.

Dave when you say you added the goto command does it not do it automatically?

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tooth_dr

tooth_dr

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6 minutes ago, emyliano2000 said:

Unfortunately it doesn't do it. You have to work out the number of exposures until 5min or something around that after the flip, add a goto++ command and then add the exposures for the rest of the session.

 

Emil, Whats an example of a command to do this?

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emyliano2000

emyliano2000

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First of all in the guiding settings window tick the control guiding box.20181001_185225.thumb.jpg.e0b2fe2b947a8ec92a69c05701ba75d1.jpg

After that when you set the exposures in the camera window you have the script and command tab.20181001_185434.thumb.jpg.b70af85b1fe19c27fd20facc2053daf7.jpg

Click on it and it will open a different window for scripts and commands.20181001_185451.thumb.jpg.dc8591acffcc4072da8d726acec4e0ed.jpg

In that window you can choose the goto++ command and enter the number of seconds for the exposure needed to platesolve and the coordinates that you used for the exposures before the flip.

I entered a command 5 min after the flip then after the rest of the exposures for the session I entered the guide control command to stop the guiding and a park command to park the mount.

I woke up this morning with plenty of exposures and the telescope nicely parked. ?

A word of advice though. Being a beta version, I think it's  not fully tested and it might come with a few problems. I had some problems with my ccd gain settings and I swtiched to dslr which worked flawlessly. 

 

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emyliano2000

emyliano2000

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I just had a word with Ivo and apparently the meridian flip will be fully automated without the need of entering any commands to make it flip ?

He's such a great guy. 

The new beta will fix the gain settings problems that I was having too. ?

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Wirral man

Wirral man

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7 hours ago, emyliano2000 said:

I just had a word with Ivo and apparently the meridian flip will be fully automated without the need of entering any commands to make it flip ?

He's such a great guy. 

The new beta will fix the gain settings problems that I was having too. ?

I'm really glad I started this post  as I was about to yet spend more money on this hobby ie getting sgp.

So as for commands you wont need to enter the goto++ in the script and command box then? It will automatically perform the task on any given objects?

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emyliano2000

emyliano2000

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54 minutes ago, Wirral man said:

I'm really glad I started this post  as I was about to yet spend more money on this hobby ie getting sgp.

So as for commands you wont need to enter the goto++ in the script and command box then? It will automatically perform the task on any given objects?

As far as I understand, yes, it will automatically flip when a flip is in order.

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