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INDI Library v2.0.6 is Released (02 Feb 2024)

Bi-monthly release with minor bug fixes and improvements

Problem with polar alignment in southern hemisphere?

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I too am having the same problem and arrived at the same solution - do the exact opposite of what the tool is telling me!
To your questions;
1. aligned with finder scope (upper left hand of primary, only roughly aligned) - ZWO290MM mini camera mounted upside down in the refractor (to orient the image in teh right way visually)
2. My mount rotates in the specified direction - always west ( I can try east if that helps) (that is weights rise to the east, OTA sinks into the west)
3. No matter what I did with the mount Ekos always reports "mount is oriented to the top left of the celestial pole" (or similar language) - that strikes me as odd
4. Please NO! ;-)

When I was trying to diagnose the problem I thought it was strange that the tool indicated the the celestial pole was not visible in the FOV but when I looked at where the mount had solved to in the kstars planetarium it looked it a). it WAS in the FOV and b). the orientation of the sensor as indicated didn't seem to match what I saw in the eyepiece (inverted)

So I am thinking a bug in the WCS/solver when close to the pole and/or the FOV crossing the meridian?
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3 years 11 months ago #52301

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Hello xthestreams

I noticed that astrometry.net has difficulties once the center of the image is close to CP. That's natural. Let's assume we have a resolution in declination of 1 arcsec/pixel. In RA direction the resolution is the same at the equator but the closer to the CP the resolution increases unbounded e.g. 10 degree/pixel. The pixel "on" the CP has no defined resolution.

I suggest to separate this aspect, do the alignment at dec = 80 deg and repeat it several times. Of course, the idea is only to see if the results are reproducible, but surely not use them to correct the alignment.

Kind regards, bye, wildi
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3 years 11 months ago #52326

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Great idea, will try when Melbourne isn’t cloudy at night, expect a reply in 2021 ;-)

In all seriousnessFriday should be good for testing, if there are other ideas I’ll add them to my list.

Now to figure out why you Mac k stars crashes/loses connectivity to my RPi sleeps
3 years 11 months ago #52392

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There is a calculation done in KStars for the direction in which the pink arrow should point and this sometimes gives the wrong result. It is unclear why. As a workaround Jasem has implemented a checkbox that allows you to reverse the direction of the arrow in case the polar alignment is affected by the calculation. Unfortunately, this workaround is not available yet in the stable release of KStars. Until such is the case, you’ll simply need to remember to make sure that the END of the pink arrow is over the star that you’ll be using to improve the polar alignment rather than the START.


HTH, Wouter
The following user(s) said Thank You: Craig, Paul Muller
3 years 11 months ago #52395

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Thanks Wouter - just to add for anyone who is having this problem, if you are WAY off on your initial alignment you may not be able to see the little red "cross hair" that is mentioned in the instructions (the fact that there is also a purple set of cross hairs may even add to your confusion given the bug - as it did for me).

If this is the case, then you should use the purple cross hairs as a proxy for the red one you will se as you get closer to PA, what you need to do is;
1). do your three alignment photos as per the standard alignment process
2). when the results are computed you will see a PA error in degree/minutes/seconds - the SCALAR for this is accurate, the VECTOR is not (ie: the size of the error is correct, it's just telling you the wrong direction) - you will need to do the opposite of what is said on the instructions with regards to the pink line.
3). To help you guide, I recommend you position the cursor with the pink target finder/cross hairs somewhere on the screen as though there is an imaginary line that continues from the end of the pink line all the way down as far as you can go on your screen - for this reason it's usually best to double click somewhere on teh results screen to move the end of the pink line to create as much space as possible to create your "virtual line" (it will make more sense with screen shots i am sure - PM me if you need help).
IGNORE ANY INSTRUCTIONS ABOUT SELECTING A BRIGHT STAR, you will use your pink target icon to make your own virtual star
4). once you've done this (moved the pink line) click next and start refreshing as per the instructions - now move your mouse pointer over the results screens (where you can see the star field) and place BUT DO NOT CLICK) so that the pointer/target icon is floating on an imaginary vector that joins the tip of the pink line in one continuous line to wherever you place the pointer/target icon - this becomes your "virtual star"
5). now adjust your RA and DEC to get the tip of the pink line to move towards your "target" virtual star - remember we are doing this just so we can get the scope closer to the SCP/NCP so that we can see the little red target that Wouter mentions.
6). then follow Wouters inductions as above, the hardest part will be remembering to do the exact opposite and then of course to line up your star with the very end of the TINY little pink line, but it is possible to get within a few arc seconds with a little practice.
7). wait for the fix/workaround :-)
The following user(s) said Thank You: Jasem Mutlaq, Craig
Last edit: 3 years 11 months ago by Paul Muller.
3 years 11 months ago #52396

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SO the great news is that I found the new feature for "flipping" but it's only on the RPi user interface at the moment as far as I can see - is that correct?

You want to know something really strange - on my Mac I need to "flip" (which I can't so I use the procedure above) and on the RPi I don't.

Was going to offer to test again tonight but I've got clear skies for a few hours and I am thinking I'll capture some data to keep me company during the cloudy nights this week.
3 years 9 months ago #55548

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Here's a strange one - when I am using the RPi version of teh client (ie: VNC from teh RPi) it's fine - no "flip" required. When I align from my Mac - the problem occurs.

Go figure...
3 years 9 months ago #55638

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What version of KStars do you use on the RPi and what version on the Mac? I think Preference -> About KStars on the RPi and KStars -> About KStars on the Mac would probably be a good place to look for this.
3 years 9 months ago #55649

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Mac 3.4.3
Stellarmate 3.4.3

I'll check again tonight and let y'all know whether there's still a difference. I only updated the Mac client two weeks ago and can't recall if I've PA'd since then
3 years 9 months ago #55697

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I see this thread has been quiet for some time. I presume the problem was resolved for most people?
I have started experiencing this problem with the latest stable release of KStars from "deb ppa.launchpadcontent.net/mutlaqja/ppa/ubuntu/ jammy main"
I have been using KStars / Ekos on Ubuntu for a while.
The last time I used it successfully was mid October, 2022. I am not sure which release I had at the time, buy I used the polar alignment successfully multiple times with my refractor and with my RC6.
More recently, I finally got back to trying to do some astro-photography and made these changes before doing the polar alignment setup:
I added a replaced my ASI 120mm mini guide camera with a ASI274mm mini guide camera which is in an off axis guider.
I added a focus motor on my Pegasus PPBA .
I did an "apt-get dist-upgrade". Since that, I see that I am now on Version 3.6.2 Stable (Build 2022-11-30T18:14:22Z).

Unfortunately, I am not sure which version I upgraded from. However, I can confirm that I didn't have the optical trains feature - as I was initially confused about the changes I need to make for my new guide setup. It would have been within the last 7-8 months, since that is when I set up this computer.

If I go through the normal polar alignment setup. I seem to hone in on the azimuth, but double the altitude error. I eventually tried to look at the revised error to hone in without looking at the arrow overlays on the photo and this seemed to work. I see others on this group tried the same process with a similar outcome. I cannot see the toggle to reverse the vector. Was this feature removed, or am I looking in the wrong place?
1 year 2 months ago #89835

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Peter,

I gave up using the Polar alignment routines a couple of years ago and solely rely on PHD2 drift alignment.

The software stopped issuing the rotate commands.

Paul
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1 year 2 months ago #89873

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