When plate solving, using an existing image as the source for the target, shouldn't I expect the rotator to be used to align my FOV with the source image? That doesn't seem to happen. The plate solving works perfectly in terms of finding the target, but the rotator isn's being used to match the source image FOV. I'm still new at this, but that seems like it would be a highly desirable feature when revisiting a target to capture more data.
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I copied this from the focuser logging the other night:
2019-10-06T21:45:24 Capturing image...
2019-10-06T21:45:21 Focusing inward by 2516 steps...
2019-10-06T21:45:21 FITS received. HFR 0.4 @ 49678. Delta (27.5%)
2019-10-06T21:45:21 Image received.
2019-10-06T21:44:48 Capturing image...
2019-10-06T21:44:46 Focusing outward by 2516 steps...
2019-10-06T21:44:46 FITS received. HFR 1.91 @ 47162. Delta (178%)
2019-10-06T21:44:46 Image received.
2019-10-06T21:44:13 Capturing image...
2019-10-06T21:44:10 Focusing inward by 2438 steps...
2019-10-06T21:44:10 Found polynomial solution @ 17327
2019-10-06T21:44:10 FITS received. HFR 0.375 @ 49600. Delta (25%)
2019-10-06T21:44:09 Image received.
2019-10-06T21:43:36 Capturing image...
2019-10-06T21:43:36 Focusing outward by 49106 steps...
2019-10-06T21:43:36 FITS received. HFR 0.286 @ 494. Delta (16.1%)
2019-10-06T21:43:35 Image received.
2019-10-06T21:43:00 Capturing image...
2019-10-06T21:43:00 Focusing inward by 245 steps...
2019-10-06T21:43:00 FITS received. HFR 0.4 @ 49740. Delta (27.5%)
2019-10-06T21:42:59 Image received.
2019-10-06T21:42:26 Capturing image...
2019-10-06T21:42:23 Focusing outward by 185 steps...
2019-10-06T21:42:23 FITS received. HFR 0.25 @ 49555. Delta (12.5%)
2019-10-06T21:42:23 Image received.
2019-10-06T21:41:50 Capturing image...
2019-10-06T21:41:49 Focusing inward by 45 steps...
2019-10-06T21:41:49 FITS received. HFR 0.125 @ 49600. Delta (51.1%)
2019-10-06T21:41:49 Image received.
2019-10-06T21:41:15 Capturing image...
2019-10-06T21:41:14 Focusing inward by 375 steps...
2019-10-06T21:41:14 FITS received. HFR 0.636 @ 49975. Delta (18.2%)
2019-10-06T21:41:14 Image received.
2019-10-06T21:40:40 Capturing image...
2019-10-06T21:40:39 Focusing inward by 687 steps...
2019-10-06T21:40:39 FITS received. HFR 1.06 @ 50662. Delta (23.7%)
2019-10-06T21:40:39 Image received.
2019-10-06T21:40:06 Capturing image...
2019-10-06T21:40:05 Focusing outward by 500 steps...
2019-10-06T21:40:05 FITS received. HFR 0.818 @ 50162.
2019-10-06T21:40:05 Image received.
2019-10-06T21:39:31 Capturing image...
2019-10-06T21:39:26 Please wait until image capture is complete...
2019-10-06T21:03:50 Idle.
These two are obviously suspicious:
2019-10-06T21:43:36 Focusing outward by 49106 steps...
2019-10-06T21:43:36 FITS received. HFR 0.286 @ 494. Delta (16.1%)
Something went wrong to send the focuser to an absolute position of 494. That value does not reflect the previous inward focus move. The previous focus position was 49740. It looks like the 245 inward move was subtracted from that, giving 49,495 and then the number was truncated to 494.
-- Neil
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Not making any progress, in fact I went backwards! I had to abort my schedule when I noticed that the subs were being taken with a gain of 170, rather than 113. It seems like the gain in the camera tab is getting set to the gain value in the focuser tab (eve though it was initially set at 113). The only way I could work around this was to set both to 113. My first target focused ok (at which point I had to go to bed). But all subsequent targets failed. This morning I found the focus at 0! Perhaps at 113 the images were too thin? I guess I'll have to try increasing the exposure times for focus, or just give up on multiple targets in a single evening. I've lost too many nights imaging not to consider that.
The only time this has run to completion was when I first discovered that I was getting the wrong gain setting for the subs (all my subs were at a gain of 170). On that occasion, I assumed that I had incorrectly set the value in the camera tab,. Is it the intent that the focuser gain has to be the same as the focuser? That would seem odd; or am I doing something else wrong that's causing this? It doesn't like the sequence files contain a setting for gain. As far as I'm aware, the only places I am setting the gain are: the default value in the camera's indi Control Panel, (113) the value in the focuser tab (170, then dropped to 113) and the value in the camera tab (113 when I started, but ended up at 170 before I aborted).
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Thanks for the info. That makes a lot of sense. My next question was going to be, how to I stop the focuser from going so far off focus that it can't get back - but you've answered that for me! I've gone back ad forth on subframing - I had issues with "no stars detected" when I moved to my second target, so I decided to stop using that until I sort out the other issues. When it worked, it seemed like I was getting a better V shape. Btw, I love the Moonlite NiteCrawler; beautifully engineered piece of kit.
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I'm struggling to get consistent auto focus with my Moonlite NiteCrawler. One setting that has me confused is on the filters panel from the Focuser tab. There's a column in this grid "Flat Focus Position". Where do these values comes from? They have wildly differing values for my LRGB filters. Lowest value is 49 and highest is 48,000 (and a couple in the 38,000 range) . I typically find good focus in the 49,000 to 50,000 range. These values are not editable, so I assume that they are being derived from somewhere.
Focusing has failed for me every night I've tried to use it - in the morning I find everything aborted and the last images WAY out of focus (10,000 steps or more). Is there a good youtube video that covers setup?
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Changing the projection didn't seem to help; it just draws a different glitchy pattern. Interestingly, if I drag the "sky" around, it renders fine, but reverts to the screwy rendering when the drag action stops.
Removing the horizon did help! Thanks, that helps me a lot.
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Yes, it does seem that zooming in or out can sometimes redraw the window, but it seems to be a temporary fix. The only way I can clear the problem permanently, is to turn off the overlay option.
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Thanks for the reply! It sort of works. I can view the DSS image for any object in the sky, but in the mosaic editor, it seems like it will only load the image if the object is above the horizon. I'm not sure if that's what's going on, but it's definitely the case that I can't get the image for M 42 to load (which is below the horizon right now). I tried several times.
Additionally, once that "DSS colored" option is enabled, the planetarium UI gets hosed. I've attached a print screen of the Kstars window. If you disable the option, the UI is fine again.
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I've just made my first attempt at using the mosaic functionality. The one thing that was missing (at least for me) was an image view of the area of sky that I'm trying to layout the mosaic on. I'm sure this is a configuration issue, but I can't find much information on mosaics. I'm guessing there is an image catalog that I can add, but I can't find it.
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Hi Chris,
Just wondering if there has been any progress with the Mac OS X driver?
-- Neil
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Hi,
I tried using Sky Safari with Kstars/Indi and ran into three issues. This is running both Sky Safari and Kstars on the same Mac.
1) It took almost one minute to connect Sky Safari.
2) Once connected, i was able to slew the mount, but the time and location were not set on the mount (Celestron AVX).
3) Huge CPU usage by indi_skysafari (using 100% of 3 cores), which does not stop after disconnecting Sky Safari.
Has anyone else experienced any of these?
-- Neil
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