I was hoping plate solving would be free in SGP but its looking like I may have to purchase pinpoint?
was just hoping someone could either confirm this for me or not.
the main way I think I will want to platesolve and center my FoV/Frame would be to slew to my object, do my framing manually by manually slewing my scope, take an image, then keep that image so I can plate solve to that same spot the next night of shooting. is this possible with SGP?
right now ive just been doing a bunch of reading in the manual, and working on capturing my darks while I learn this software. I still dont even know if SGP has simple slew commands or if ill still have to use Stellarium scope to do my simple slews.
Planewave’s PS2 is free and comes with SGP. it’s really fast. as a backup you can use astrometry.net online, or install astrotortilla and then use the ANSVR package to run a local astrometry server that SGP can fall back to if PS2 fails.
It is not necessary to install astrotortilla to use ansvr. Although ansvr and astrotortilla both use the same plate solving engine, astrometry,net, astrotortilla and ansvr are different software packages and have no relation to each other other than that they happen to both be based on astrometry.net.
Do you have the Framing and Mosaic Wizard , if not well worth the $10 . You could probably eliminate a few steps when trying to Frame a shot and get there a lot quicker in the process. PS2 is the way to go.
I definitely plan to purchase the frame wizard if I decide on SGP over a certain “nebula a city” program that I prob shouldn’t be mentioning on the SGP forum but I AM wanting to make sure I get the program that will suit me best.
I havnt checked if my trial of SGP has the framing wizard as part of it or not, I guess I should! And thanks for the suggestion and Info on PS2 ! Good to know I can frame, and target/focus tag areas without buying $150 plate solve software!!!
Off subject but hoping to not start a new topic, is it possible to set a static capture rotation for a camera? My QHY10 ALWAYS downloads in portrait orientation, I know u can rotate individual images but u can understand how that would get annoying as hell.
It’s perfectly fine to mention Nebulosity here. Craig has long been a pillar of this community and deserves nothing but the best. If you decide Nebulosity is best for you, we are just happy you found something to suit your needs and get deeper into the hobby. We compete with nobody…
This depends on your needs. SGPro moves a lot closer to true automation, but does not come with any image processing software. PixInsight is a very nice companion to SGPro.
It does. The SGPro trial has full, unrestricted access to the main application and all of its addons (Mosaic and framing wizard, Notification wizard)
The MFW is actually $39.
Not currently. SGPro takes data from cameras and writes it to files unaltered (except with DSLRs). The QHY10 is, for unknown reasons, the ONLY camera that returns data in a portrait orientation. Several other folks gave complained about this as well… this should be taken up with QHY.
Thanks for the informative reply Ken, and thanks for have such a great and open outlook on other software devs. I use Pixinsight for processing so hopefully there’s a batch rotation process in there that I havnt found yet!
you don’t need to batch rotate - in order to stack you have to register. as long as your registration reference has the orientation that you want, the registered frames will be rotated to match. so if you rotated just the reference frame and wrote it to disk, all the other frames would end up with the same orientation.
but it kind of doesn’t matter since no matter what orientation the images are during stacking, you can always rotate the stacked result to the angle you want.
but if you still want to rotate a batch of images, you can use ImageContainer to automate the rotation.
I’m on the fence buying pixinsite. How did you inititallly learn it. I played with the demo and was lost because I don’t have a PHD in science or math. Is it worth it for an uneducated noob?
I don’t have a rotator and SGB and Platesolve2 works great. I’m usually solved in under 5 seconds per shot acquisition and solve. (sometimes takes 3 tries to center).
my question on this is I have my target set to slew to and center. I often have to stop/pause. And re-run the sequence. It tries to slew and center again even though I was already on target. Is this a issue? or just let it do it’s thing?
It puzzled me because one time it did a major re-slew, but appears there was a meridian swap taking place.
EXCELLENT I will check them out. The author is very helpful on their forum. I did end up buying it and already glad I did. My first pixinsight image. don’t know if I can do it again 9x5min subs no calibration frames.
but I AM wanting to make sure I get the program that will suit me best.
Is it worth it for an uneducated noob?
9x5min subs no calibration frames.