Hooray stellerium finally fixed

[Cornelius Varley]

Stellarium will control your telescope. Run Stellarium and then press F2 to go to the configuration window. Select plugins, then telescope control and then configure. You can then configure Stellarium to control your telescope on startup. Restart Stellarium and plug the control cables into your computer and mount.

Peter

[Nexus 6]

Peter

Thanks for that info. I will try it out over the weekend

Alan

[robhal9000]

Can I ask which is better to use,regarding scope control,Stallarium or or the sortware I got with my Celestron cpc 925 in fact can I control my scope via Stellarium?

yes, I controlled my CPC 925 just last night using stellarium. As long as you have a serial port on your PC or u need a USB serial adaptor. Once you have the coms port set up (i use COM 3). just configure in the stellarium menu After you have activated the plugin.

If you need a USB Serial cable I use this one with Windows 7. The comments about it on Amazon are very useful

USB to RS232 - USB Converter Cable: Amazon.co.uk: Electronics & Photo

After setup shut down stellarium and connect your scope to the PC, switch on and do your alignment. Restart Stellarium, start the scope in the menu, select your target and hit control + 1. Your scope should slew majestically onto the target.

In future always start stellarium after you have setup your scope alignment and you should have no trouble.

I tried it first setup in the house. You can do a quick planetary alignment on Mars to the west (ish) about 50 degrees up just select 'solar system align' and 'mars' set your scope to roughly that position and hit 'enter' then 'align'. Then start stellarium, start the scope in stellarium and click on the Castor or Pollux (close to mars so the scope won't move much, make sure it has clearance) hit ctrl+1 your scope should move.

I have never used Nexremote for any scope. It may have more commands re slew speeds, etc.

Some planetarium/astronomy software uses the ASCOM platform to communication with your PC. Stellarium has it's own build in driver for the Nexstar software in your handset. Links below:

ASCOM - Standards for Astronomy

Astroplanner an observation and planning program uses it own scope control as well.

AstroPlanner

Good Nexstar Resource:

http://www.nexstarsite.com/index.html

PDF About the updated Nexstar Software from above site

http://www.nexstarsite.com/download/manuals/NexStarHandControlVersion4UsersGuide.pdf

[Daggerstab]

Hello to all.

Stellarium 0.10.4 was a bug fix version and it has been released for quite some time now. Unfortunately, the project admin didn't make an announcement, so the release is a bit slow to spread.

Meanwhile, Stellarium's developers are working on version 0.10.5. It addresses severe graphics bugs that appeared on some systems. Most probably it is going to be released next week.

You can download a test build here:

https://launchpad.net/stellarium/+download

(Don't pay attention to the 0.10.4 stuff, stellarium-r6054-win32.exe is a test build for 0.10.5 and the changes are listed in the installer.)

I'd like some feedback before the next release, especially from people who have had problems with 0.10.3 and 0.10.4.

Whenever you change versions or re-install stellarium - allways delete the config file before installing the new version. For some reason windows hangs on to it - whichever way you uninstall the current version - and it allways conflicts with the new one. Just one of those daft windows foibles I guess.

Actually, it's a case of "Stellarium doesn't clean after itself". I'll see what I can do.

[xyz]

Hmmmm. v 0.10.2 works, .3 and .4 do not. The latest, .4 crashes.

[Brett]

xyz have you tried the test build a couple of posts up ? It works fine for me.

[xyz]

Brett, no I haven't. I'm very, very wary of sites I do not know - I would be reluctant to download a .exe from that site. I'll wait for . v .5 to come out.

Thanks,

Richard