I mentioned this sometime ago, but it’s reared it’s head again.
One of my setups is with my 10” RC with an OAG,
I have just upgraded to Chroma 2” 3nm NB filters, i’ve already grabbed my LRGB in this instance of M51, I now want to grab some Ha to compliment it, however having been nicely in focus with my Pegasus UPB and focuser, it’s struggles to find a focus point, even though Chromas are supposed to be parfocal.
All of my focus steps have been calculated properly for my Lum, I’ve extended the focus duration for the Ha to 100secs, but it struggled to find focus and then racked my featherlite focuser so far out that it took my OAG so far out of focus that the guider could not settle, settings are set to settle at 1.5 arcsecs until I have sorted the problem out.
The issue is that the focus dialogue box will not let you cancel until the guider has settled, the guider won’t settle as it is so far racked out of focus, eventually I have to resort to ending the process and then reopening SGP. Surely by pressing the cancel button it should act as a kill function and shouldn’t have to wait to cancel the focusing until the guider has settled.
I agree with your request for a kill on the cancel button press. However, I would suggest that you use focus offsets for narrowband filters at that focal length. The way I have done that is to focus with the Lum filter, then move to the NB filter and find the best point of focus manually using the HFR stat. Put the offset values into the focus settings and set it to use the Lum filter for the NB filter. Hey presto, efficient focus for NB filters.
Thanks Gav, Yes that what I ended up changing last night, but then the seeing went bad with the 3nm that I couldn’t see anything, so called it a night.
I just wish that the cancel button did what I think it needs to do and that is kill the focusing so you can make an adjustment without the guider needing to settle.
Had an interesting chat with my mate this evening, I checked my Chroma 3nm 2" filters and they appear to be as near as dammit parfocal, the only one slightly different appears to be the SII at 20 units out of 961 out.
He therefore suggested to use just the Lum for focusing and trust it for the other filters, what do you reckon?
The only query I have is under the filter focus setup, do I just add the figure -20 into the SII field or how should I account for the difference?
The other query my mate suggested was that he uses The Sky and Maxim DL and Focus Max and within that he has the option to slew to focus on a much brighter star and then revert back to his target automatically, which is useful for very faint areas with low mag stars, have I missed something or is there an option for that it SGP.
YES - probably my main frustration with SGP. Can’t STOP IT. If I goof and need to stop it won’t. Platesolve2 takes (seems like 30-60 seconds) to stop. When I try to force a stop I lock it up and rebooting it and all my apps is a 5 minute process.
Alas I have switched to Kstars/ekos. “IT STOPS!” it will also continue working while solving! Meaning you can move on to other things while it’s plate solving.
prism had problems with my dome. However NexDome is alpha testing a driver that is offical soon and I will go back to try Prism again to see if it works better with the (really well done firmware/driver).
I also need to test kstars/ekos on my PC with linux. But with the new nexdome code being developed it will take a bit of time once completed to get a indi driver for the new firmware. I’m kinda in limbo at this point. I’ve been using the ASIair which is great fun, a bit BASIC - but it’s growing. They just added auto focus/focuser control and polar alignment is days away. But I don’t suspect it will ever control my dome.
Biggest problem I have with SGP is lack of dark theme (which I can live without) but mostly - this issue where once started and if there is a sequence setup mistake - there is no abort/stopping most actions. It sits and seems to go out to lunch until a full reboot = (
AND - when I do a framing wizard and save it… it’s messed up includes data from a previous framing setup. (I’ve posted about it a while back). It’s likely something I’m doing wrong but as careful as I am - it still happens. Maybe it’s not suppose to be used to off line frame and compose 10-15 targets for future use? I use it to compose and frame, save the seq as the target name and then select and pick another target, frame, compose and save that as the target name. I might do this for 10 targets. When I load one to actually use - they often include one or all of the framing subs I did in the group and target location could be any one of those 10-15 targets I did in the group. I suppose if I boot up and do one… shut down. The one may be fine?
thanks Jared. Sometimes I pre focus. Pre slew/center. I then run the squence and it wants to flew, center, plate solve, center and focus. (and I’m already past that and it wastes time). Hopefully we can abort and continue?
Thanks, it is good to know. I am approaching retirement and the thought of going INDI has re-awakened my dormant engineering skills. Not driven by need but just the challenge.
It just goes to show that all applications have their strengths and weaknesses. Those weaknesses are often system related to interactions with devices.
Not sure what you are doing and what the problem is. Are you trying to pre-plan mosaics and then return to them at some other time?