Hello all,
last night I had a starnge behaviour: I run a single job in the scheduler, which worked well untill 23:50. The end of the job should have been around 00:50. It seems that a alignment due to image delta was run at 23:50, which couldnt be solved (the light frame just before was ok, I had some clouds in the sky). The session was stopped, but the mount wasnt moved to park position, even after regular ending time of the job. I had to restart Kstars to park the mount.

Two questions:
- what happend during the alignment process?
- why wasn't it possible to park the mount without restart?

I attach the analyze- and the log file. The alignment issue was around 23:50

Thank you for helping.

File Attachment:

File Name: log_16-07-29.zip
File Size: 2,188 KB

File Attachment:

File Name: ekos-2024-03-02T16-07-48.analyze.zip
File Size: 85 KB


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Hello all,
it seems that the twilight is according to a sun dip of 18°. I found in the setting to set dusk and dawn offsets. Is it possible to set the sun dip to lets say 15°? For me that would be a nice feature in the summer where we have times with no twilight in EKOS. I always start my session at a sun dip of 15°...

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Its all in seperate windows. Have alook at John's youtube video:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2HY2TTOdcs

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I just tried using simulators. I installed GSC and can get a picture with stars when using the capture tab. Also the guiding / guiding calibration works. So I tried the alignment tab (all settings are default). Picture was taken, but when starting plate solving Kstars suddenly crashes. I started with ekosdebugger, I attach the log.

I'm using Opensuse 15.5 with latest updates.

Thanks for helping.

File Attachment:

File Name: kstars_logs_2024-02-11T16-27-38.zip
File Size: 7 KB


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JuergenN replied to the topic 'Phd2 Dithering does not work' in the forum. 2 months ago

When I used Phd2 for guiding long time ago I stumbled also over this behaviour. If I remember correctly you first have to start PHD2 then Kstars (or maybe the other way round). And you have to look in the "guiding" tab that guiding is "connected", sometimes you have to klick on the "connect" button.

Now I use the build-in guider and I'm happy with it.

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Thank you for your quick reply. I made my horizon roughly 1° bigger than it actually is. So for long focus length no problem. But I use focal length down to 180mm (sometime 50mm, but thats rare), so I have with my QHY268C 7.5° x 5° FOV. So I would have to cut off nearly 4°, for 1500mm FL I would need only 0.5° (+ offset due to disturbed air and so on near the "horizon")

It would be on the wish list to have this feature: start of capturing depending on focal length :-)

But doesnt matter you guys do all a very good job :-)

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Hi all,
as I wrote before I'm testing the scheduler. In principle it workes but I encountered another question:

I had created an artificial horizon for my balcony observatory. Today I tried with simulators to see, if the full FOV of the camera is up the horizon when starting the sequence. The picture shows the situation for the first light. As one can see, part of the picture is still below the artificial horizon. Target was the star Mirach.



My question is, how can I set things that the first picture is taken only if the whole area of the sensor is out of the horizon? I tried some settings, e.g. "setting altitude cutoff" but nothing helped.

Any hinds/help appriceated

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Hi John,
thanks for your reply. It makes the scheduler clearer to me. As I wrote I just starting scheduler and stumble over things I never thought about ;-). Normally I think forcing the temperature will be only a problem, if I set T to lets say -20°C and take pictures in the summer at 25°C. And I do it like you, I watch the first few lights to be save.

And if I understood it right, then I can set the temperature manually despite setting the "force T" option.

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If I understood correctly the intension of "forcing T" was that the first capture should start AFTER reaching the intended temperature. I never used it, because often the first captures are not the best due to GPG learning.

What I'm wondering is, why the temperature was not set (still a 0 in the temperature field) and the cooler was not even turned from OFF to ON...

What will happen, if for some reason the temperature will not be reached and you dont recognize it? Then one can forget the whole session, because the cooler is OFF and sensor temperature is probably 20°C or more...

The question is, is it a feature or a "bug"?

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Seems that it was my fault, I changed the force T button without reloading the sequence... Now the sequence is ok. I will test next time.

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Hi John,
thank you for your reply. I just tried that and I became the same esq file... There is a line

<Temperature force='false'>-10</Temperature>

and the "force='false' was set no matter if I click the button or not. I also tried to push the button "Cooler ON" and save the esq but same outcome.

When I started my sequence yesterday, as I wrote everything worked fine, but the cooler stayed in OFF position. Also the -10°C was not set. So I had to set both -10°C and Cooler ON manually.

I attach the esq files.

BTW it would be nice to have .esq and .esl in the list of allowed files :-)

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JuergenN replied to the topic 'Guiding calibration with scheduler' in the forum. 2 months ago

Thank you for your reply and clarification, Hy. I always reuse calibration if possible but I change my rig depending on the target, so I have to recalibrate sometimes. But now its clear to do that before starting the scheduler.

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Hi all,
I'm testing the scheduler for the first time. Startup was quite good, focusing, alignment and guiding are ok. But the camera temperature was planned to set to -10°C but I have to do it manually. The first light was taken with 0°C. What went wrong? I attache the log (starting the session was 20:00), esq and esl file. Thanks for helping.

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