Plate Solving with Pinpoint LE, CCD Commander, EQMOD

[daz]

I'm just hoping that helen or Euan can write us a guide on how to setup CCDC with maxim etc

If you look on the CCD Commander website, it clearly states that you need V6Pro or later. It will not work with the student or non-pro version.

You can download a trial version (45 days) to play with

Setting up CCDC to talk to Maxim is as simple as just selecting Maxim from a couple of the config options.

[ribuck]

Euan,

I've downloaded the CCD Commander trial and i'm just looking through documentation and it warns that using Maxim/Pinpoint LE can be very flaky at best.

What do you use for your plate solve, do you use the full version of pinpoint or do you use the plate solving functions from within the Sky software or does the maxim/pinpoint LE work fine ?

Rich.

[Robfal]

I use Maxim/pinpoint Le and find it to be pretty good. There has been the odd time when it has failed to find a solution but that is probably mainly due to poor seeing and a very small sensor (atiK 16Ic) I've not had any problems with crashing etc which is suggested as possible (Flakey!!)

I would recommend that route as all others would require considerable additional cost.

CCD Commander, by the way, also gets a big thumbs up from me. Euans theory of not aligning but plate soving generaly seems to work (again the small sensor and rubbish seeing are probably the cause of the odd fail)

Rob

[ribuck]

Hi rob,

Well i tried a manual plate solve in maxim using the gsc1.1 and it worked fine, just waiting a clear night to try out ccd commander trial and a few test action scripts.

Rich.

[ribuck]

Hi all,

I got about 40 mins of clear sky last night so thought i'd give ccd commander a whir, and all i can say is WOW.

it took literally 10-15 mins for the initial setup then everything just worked bar a minor problem problem with automatic focusing.

I created a little action script as a test run, where it slewed to m42, then focused then plate solved then slewed to m42 again to get it dead centre, but the bit that really amazed me was the way it configured itself for autoguiding and worked perfectly

it choose it's own guide star and was guiding in less than 20 seconds which i was amazed by, as normally you have to do all the calibration carry on which can sometimes take upwards of 10-15 mins before you're guiding, but not with ccd commander.

It then took the image of M42 and then slewed to my light box to take the flats........it was near flawless minus a minor focus issues which may have just been down to the way i had it setup.

People, i cannot praise this product enough to do it justice, as it seem's to have solved 2 years of imaging pain overnight.

I'll be ordering the trail upgrade license that's for sure :)

Rich.

[Robfal]

Rich,

Glad you were impressed with CCD Commander. It's not pretty but just works. A couple of times with poor seeing it failed to plate solve however that was with an Atik 16ic so there is a pretty limited field of view. Just got a 314L+ which is more sensitive and has a larger FOV.

Also getting a usb based relay interface which should allow me to switch on my EL panel to do flats automatically from within CCDC

Rob

[Euan]

Sorry for the no replies I've been off SGL since before xmas, back now though unfortunately for you lot

Good news is I'm just about to upgrade the 77ED the bad news is I've just fired up the obs PC after a month off and it's deed

Chris, I worded that really badly, what I meant was I started with fresh alignment data with every session, relying on fresh plate solves than building up a pointing model over time, I don't know if this is any different to standard procedure?

Rich, glad to see you are up and running with CCDC, it's a fantastic little program. You can email Matt who writes it and he is really helpful, he added a script execution feature for me that was the last piece of the puzzle for my setup and works great. I've just seen someone else get into it and loves it, it's an essential wee program for hassle free imaging.

[ribuck]

Hi Euan,

I spoke to soon, i thought everything was ok but my plate solving is failing most of the time and it's driving me nuts, but that's a maxim issues not a ccd commander issue.

I've triple checked the image scale, but no matter what i do, maxim wont plate solve and i dont understand why, as installed the gsc 1.1 and pointed maxim at the correct path and chose the gsc 1.1 corrected option, yet maxim just goes in an endles loop.

apparently this is a known bug and i'm just waiting for themaxim dl yahoo group to tell me the location of an alleged dll file that fixes the issue.

I'm also downloading theUSNO-A2.0 catalog to give that a try.

Rich.

[Euan]

Can you not even plate solve with existing images in Maxim standalone?

Check you are not using too many stars as this will make the search longer and may seem to go on forever if it's quite far off where the FITs header in the file says it is

[ribuck]

Hi euan,

I just tried with an existing image of M42 taken a few days ago and it worked perfectly.

So i really cant figure it out, it makes no sense at all

Rich

[Euan]

It could be that whatever position the mount started in that night was just well off

Did you start from parked or pointed at north?

[ribuck]

Hi euan,

I unparked the scope and tryed a plate solve and it failed, then slewed to dubhe and tried again, still with no luck.

I'm not sure if that the automatic plate solves have failed becuase i have tested with bright stars in the fov

before each solve i got ccd commander to focus, and tried several different sub lenghts from 10s to 60s at both 1x1 and 2x2

I also made sure i removed all the alignment points from eqmod to make sure that it wasn't throwing off the plate solve as well as doing a polar alignment in eqmod just to check and it was spot on.

So i'm more confused than ever.

[Robfal]

This sounds like a syncing problem (I've had similar) as Euan suggests

Plate solve will fail if you out by 2 degrees ( I think).

Try aligning to a bright star and synching the mount in 'The Sky' to ensure it's pointing in the right direction. Then try a plate solve. Are you using EQMOD because I've found that getting too many align points confuses it and so it might have thrown a wobbly.

Rob

[blinky]

I usually find that I have to have the goto pretty accurate to start with. My method is to goto a star then manually unlock and move so thats it's pretty close to center then run the plate solve and sync, subsequent plate solve/syncs will then work.

[ribuck]

Hi Rob,

I tried removing all of the alignment points in eqmod so that it wouldn't confuse it, as i thought the point of plate solving is that it can solve anywhere in the sky.

I'm downloading the USNO-A2.0 catalog at the moment, and i'll try that and if that fails I'll try creating a new set of alignment points in eqmod with fewer alignment stars maybe 3 in each direction (N,E,S,W etc)and see if that helps.

Rich.

[ribuck]

Hi all,

I redid my alignment point for eqmod and pointing is pretty much spot on and puts objects near dead center. I then tried another plate solve and still no luck.

I might just give up on plate solving as eqmod puts the target very close to the center of the ccd, and FocusMax seems to be able to acquire a focus star without moving the object position, so i can still use ccd commander.

Rich.

[ribuck]

Hazar, I found the souce of the problem and I hope it helps others.

It looks like it was indeed a sync issue. From lots of testing i have found 2 things which really affected me and stopped plate solving working :-

1) "Dont sync on a star after a meridian flip". I found that if I synced on a star after a meridian flip, it really messed up my mounts reported position and threw it out by an extra 2 degrees. This caused plate solving to fail every time.

2) "Don't add too many Sync points". Through lots of personal testing i found that for me adding more that 16 sync points started to upset the plate solving and became very flaky resulting in a 1-in-5 work ratio.

i redid my sync points ensuring no meridian Flip and only 3 or 4 stars sync in each direction (N,S,E,W) which solved my problem. Plate solving now works very well for me.

I'm not saying that this method will work for everyone, but it fixed things for me, so it's worth a try if you are having similar problems.

Thanks for everyones help

Rich.

[Grinde]

Hazar, I found the souce of the problem and I hope it helps others.

It looks like it was indeed a sync issue. From lots of testing i have found 2 things which really affected me and stopped plate solving working :-

1) "Dont sync on a star after a meridian flip". I found that if I synced on a star after a meridian flip, it really messed up my mounts reported position and threw it out by an extra 2 degrees. This caused plate solving to fail every time.

2) "Don't add too many Sync points". Through lots of personal testing i found that for me adding more that 16 sync points started to upset the plate solving and became very flaky resulting in a 1-in-5 work ratio.

i redid my sync points ensuring no meridian Flip and only 3 or 4 stars sync in each direction (N,S,E,W) which solved my problem. Plate solving now works very well for me.

I'm not saying that this method will work for everyone, but it fixed things for me, so it's worth a try if you are having similar problems.

Thanks for everyones help

Rich.

Thanks for letting us know, I've just downloaded all programs needed, but waiting for this eternal cloud cover to clear up. I just had my first light night with my new gear, but didn't have time for trying the CCDC + EQMod + SkyX + FocusMax combo, so it was manual focus & then a series of HaLRGB for about an hour, then the clouds came back, but I'm very very happy with my first ccd result, so it's gonna be great to try out the CCD Commander route, glad it worked out for you!

Best Regards

Jonas

[ribuck]

Hi Jonas,

Good Luck with your new setup. Hopefully everything will be smooth sailing for you without the issues i faced.

I know a few others had the same issues as me so wanted to post the fix that worked for me.

Rich.