Collimation Circles

Could we have moveable Collimation circles? The circles could be moved to hover over stars and enlarged to match the size of the star.

This would be a great help with collimation.

Second that!

Not taking away from the request, but just a note for folks with windows in their architecture (PC/VNC). There are two good transparent collimation overlay apps that allow you to move, resize, and color collimation circles. They're available as freeware on the web. Google & download "Mire de Collimation", and/or "Al's Collimation Aid". Actually I have both and find both useful. Just launch, move, and resize the transparent interface right over the camera interface GUI (e.g. fits viewer, or whatever). Adjust the GUI, then collimate as usual.

dmsummers wrote: Not taking away from the request, but just a note for folks with windows in their architecture (PC/VNC). There are two good transparent collimation overlay apps that allow you to move, resize, and color collimation circles. They're available as freeware on the web. Google & download "Mire de Collimation", and/or "Al's Collimation Aid". Actually I have both and find both useful. Just launch, move, and resize the transparent interface right over the camera interface GUI (e.g. fits viewer, or whatever). Adjust the GUI, then collimate as usual.

A couple years ago I had found something like that, but couldn't find it lately. Thanks!

While this will work in the interim... it would nice to be able to use it on my tablet while standing next to my scope. Mire de Collimation is a Windows based app. Still do-able, just not as convenient.

Ok, I got Al's Collimation Aid working and it looks good. Al's Collimation Aid
But now I think I'll try my hand at writing a Linux version. Should be simple enough.

Just remember you really want to center the star you are collimating on each time you make an adjustment to the mirror tilt. So I am still looking for a routine that would track the star being used for collimation and recenter it after making an adjustment. if you keep the adjustments small it would never have to leave the field of view.

CapnRon wrote: Just remember you really want to center the star you are collimating on each time you make an adjustment to the mirror tilt. So I am still looking for a routine that would track the star being used for collimation and recenter it after making an adjustment. if you keep the adjustments small it would never have to leave the field of view.

Yes, that would be nice!

Currently I'm playing around with Python and have the lines and circles, but having trouble making the canvas transparent (which works in Windows from what I found, but not in Linux).
I might have to try wxPython with seems to be more graphical in nature.

At this stage, moving the window around over the star should be do-able. But it would have to be in the app, which might be more aware of the star being used as a collimation target.

Hi,

I've been playing with wx and python some time ago and used this to get transparency, maybe useful for you ?Br,
/Markku

Just an idea: have Kstars analyze the out of focus image.

Fit a circle around and inside the out of focus star image. Kstars can then display the value of the difference in center point of the two circles and draw a vector to show the direction.

Cheers! Bart

Although slightly overkill compared to the OP question, I am currently pushing some tests to the INDI CCD simulator.

The first objective of this preliminary work is to introduce point-spread function rendering of stars generated by GSC. The second objective of the activity is to adjust the rendering to produce aberrations, such as the three ones presented in this thread: defocus, elongation due to distance to the optical center and elongation due to optical elements or sensor flatness. The third objective is to provide test and validation support for flatness and collimation analysis in the Focus Module of Ekos.

I must say I have no idea when I can get this all done, given the number of things in my to-do list

Incidentally, the excellent Dr Baudat was on TAIC very recently to talk about his progress on his amazing collimation tool.

-Eric

TallFurryMan wrote: Incidentally, the excellent Dr Baudat was on TAIC very recently to talk about his progress on his amazing collimation tool.

-Eric

I watched this talk after seeing your post. Here's the video for anyone interested in it. It's quite technical, but basically they model every type of arbitration feed it into a computer model for that scope, then can compute it in real time to an output window, as you adjust your collimation it shows the effects in realtime. They plan to take it one step further at some point to tell you which collimation screws to adjust. This would be incredible. But honestly looks quite complex and better suited for a standalone application.

For the simple fix collimation circles would be nice, but they they won't solve all collimation problems. I wish more developers would develop their software cross platform, and take INDI into account. It's grown so much in the last 3 years.

I'd like to add my 2nd to the comments from Andrew and Eric. I watched the video. I've been professionally involved in Adaptive Optics since 2001, and I've seen a lot of talks on AO over the years (some good, some not so good). I can say that the presentation is very good and well worth the hour to view. This product seems pretty impressive (at least as demonstrated). I think for kstars/ekos users, folks probably should prefer SkyGuide (only guided collimation and real-time quantitative WFE analysis) versus SkyGuard (which includes focus control). FYI, the tool does require windows. Nice that they offer a 60day trial, and the price is reasonable. I'd be very interested to compare SkyGuide's output to CCD Inspector's output. Does anyone in the forum use SkyGuide, or do I need to be the first?!