I have the opportunity to take images in the next couple of nights but don't have time to familiarize myself with all of EKOS's features. I intend to:
-use the focussing feature (canon dslr)
- dithering with my mount (and not using a guide scope)
- queing up a sequence of images
I'm familiar with all of this and my camera and celestron avx connects successfully.(latter using "quick align setting on my mount.
I will however, for the time being, be using the "all star" alignment method to polar align (comes natively with my mount and I'm familiar with it.
Will this mess up my dithering? In short, once I connect the mount to the software, will it continue to track as I have configured or will ekos interfere with it?
I don't think you'll have a problem. The celestron drivers for both ASCOM and INDI accept multiple control inputs and interface smoothly to the scope. I forget the exact procedure but once you're done your all star align, you should park the scope - do not turn off of course - hit ESC - and then put it in the PC control mode. Then connect with Ekos.
if you are dithering, then you are guiding, right? the guide control loop will fine tune the scope position for dithering.
There should be no problem.
The key step is to ensure your mount location (long/lat) and time, match the time and location used by Kstars and is reported by the INDI mount driver.
I have used the CGEMDX all star alignment as well as polemaster to align my mount with Ekos. Both work well with Ekos.
Thanks for the quick reply. My main concern was with dithering. I don't use a guide scope and thankfully elkos now supports dithering through the mount alone. So would dithering still be possible when I'm tracking through my mount software alone?
The dithering control is under the guiding options so I doubt you can dither without a guider. However, I don't think dithering is really necessary when you are only tracking with the mount because its not accurate enough to stay in one spot like when you guide, so in effect you get dithering anyway.