Hello fellow astronomers,

Currently when there are only calibration frames in the sequence the Scheduler is about to execute, Scheduler bypasses all preliminary steps and proceeds to capturing directly.
There are a few reports of unexpected bypasses in the forum, sometimes related to a blatant bug we've not found yet, sometimes related to sequence progress compared to storage.

My opinion on that bypass feature is that we shouldn't need it. It is possible to just untick all steps and run the calibration frames bypassing preliminary configuration.
Additionally and personally, when capturing the Moon, I use the automated exposure calibration based on an ADU value to adjust my frames before capturing (instead of doing a video).
I'd like to be able to run the observation from the Scheduler without being forced to add a light frame to my sequence as a hack.
We could also imagine an extension to the calibration workflow to better support that type of exposure time automation.

So I propose to just remove the bypass. Of course, it will hide the actual bug some of you encounter, which is at the same time a good and a bad thing.
What is your own opinion?

If someone wants to test the resulting behavior, I pushed a patch at phabricator.kde.org/D19998.

Hi Eric,
'Preliminary steps' are unpark, focus, calibrate, cool camera and guide?
When taking a flat, focus of course should be skipped and calibration as well. But you say that you can untick those parameters in the configuration. I thought that those parameters were session level parameters (valid for all sequences ) and not sequence level parameters that you can customize for each sequence.

Hi fenriques,
nope, these parameters are job specific. Only startup and shutdown parameters at the bottom of the tab are general ones.

Wolfgang