I've just realized that actually, my Scheduler focuses twice every single time!



It says "Guiding in progress ", and "Capture in progress" but if you look closely the guide stops and runs focus again!




What am I missing?

Could it be relevant to this? indilib.org/forum/wish-list/13563-config...scheduler.html#94044

That's how I use it too.


The thing is that it repeats the procedure. As soon as it starts guiding, restarts the same focus procedure (with offset etc). I can't recall that I've messes around with any setting :-/

I can see that due to that RMS goes wild after both focus, despite that I have set a settling time.

It can certainly happen that during focusing, while the guiding is not active, the RA or DEC (or both) drift away from the lock position for any number of reasons. What I do, so that the first capture after focus is not potentially ruined by this is to use the capture limit feature. If you set this the capture will not start until the guider has tamed the drift.

Make sure you save that as part of your sequence (.esq) file.

So let me break down the procedure to be sure that I got it right:


Press Play button:

1. Observatory Startup Procedure (UnPark, UnCap).

2. Read data from 1st Seq (Propeller_Ha1)
2a. Slew and track the FITS file
2b. Focus
2c. Plate Solve target
2d. Start guide
2e. Start capture


Every single seq file has the same parameters. So, step 3 should be :

3. Read data from 2nd Seq (Propeller_Ha2).

4. Read data from 1st Seq (Propeller_Ha2)
4a. Slew and track the FITS file
4b. Focus
.....



But instead in my case goes a little bit further:

2f. Pause guiding (The log still reports that capture is in progress!)
2g. Focus (the same way as 2b, filter change, offsets, etc)

What I can't see?

I think you are asking why guiding stops between scheduler jobs, and why it is focusing between scheduler jobs. Is that correct?
I assume you are not talking about a mosaic (because in a mosaic, you'd definitely need to restart guiding as the positions of the jobs are different).

Here's the way to look at it.
The "Steps" checkboxes are things that are done at the start of a scheduler job. (Not if a scheduler job repeats, but at it's start.)
If you want to have multiple repetitions of the same target without stopping guiding or without focusing in between, you should just
place all that inside a single scheduler job, put whatever you want in the capture sequence, and, if you want to repeat the job,
use the "Repeat for N runs" or "Repeat until Terminated" job completion conditions.

It's probably a good idea to check twilight (to make sure you don't image during daytime), and some reasonable min altitude as well.

Hy

Not exactly but close. I'm trying to understand why the focus runs twice between the sequences. Cause as far as I can understand, even if I had a different filter on every seq it would have exactly the same outcome.

No, no about mosaic, just a single target.

I would love to refine my scheduler approach of course.

I'm just trying to capture a single filter data right now to close some targets.

So the case scenario as you can see is: Capture for 5 hours Ha data from the target and finally at the end of the night, capture flat/darks flats. Then shut down. But of course, on those 5 hours, I want to recheck the focus to be perfect, recheck the alignment, and of course a trouble-free MF.

That's why I've split it into 5 identical seqs (just rename)

If you want to capture Ha for 5 hours, then instead of making 5 scheduler jobs, just make a single
scheduler job with a capture sequence that last, e.g. 1 hour (let's say 15 Ha exposures 4 minutes each).
Set the scheduler job's completion condition to "Repeat for 5 runs".

If you want to make sure that your alignment stays good, then use the scheduler option
"Verify captured image position every N frames"
along with your tolerance, e.g.
"Reset pipeline if verified image delta exceeds 0.75 arcminutes"



and if you want to regularly focus, use the capture sequence focus limit options
(making sure you edit your capture sequence, and add the option with the check button).

I believe that it has to do something with the filter change.
Despite the fact that after focusing on L the algorithm applies the offset to the correct filter, as soon as the filter changes, that triggers the focus procedure again.

The Autofocus if HFR is > 0.000 checks every single capture ?

Regarding alignment checks, "reset pipeline" sounds pretty scary. Instead of resetting the whole pipeline it seems to me like simply realigning back to the requested tolerance would be be more useful. Let's say the random walk produced by dithering happens to have walked me 5' off target. That's not a huge cause for alarm, but I would like to realign back to 15"-30" and continue.

This also seems like something that could be computed asynchronously: one capture finishes, the next one starts; stellarsolver runs on the most recent capture and returns the field center which can then be used to make a decision about whether realignment is required or not. If it is required, maybe do it in place of the next dither. Or realign, then dither, and resume the sequence.