Plate Solving Help

Sequence Generator Plate Solving
1

I am new to SGPro and plate solving and have a few questions that i don’t think have been completely answered on this forum.

With plate solving, does the telescope/mount have to be pointing close (very close) to the part of the sky i want to image? For example, if I input M45 to the frame and target panel, then sync and solve and M45 is out of the FOV of my scope, will platesolve2 (or any other plate solve routine) figure out where the scope is pointed and then slew to M45?

I ran into this problem last night when trying plate solve for the first time. My mount has good polar alignment but i did not calibrate the mount pointing. My assumption was that plate solving would figure this out for me.

Any insight would be appreciated. Thanks in advance…

Dave

2

Plate solve and sync should work as you describe, and it doesn’t matter
where the scope is first pointing in the sky. When you do a first plate
solve and sync, that tells your mount where it is pointed at. Then when
you run the sequence SGP will plate solve to your target coordinates. Note
that just “solve and sync” only tells the mount where it is pointed. There
needs to be coordinate information in the target settings, and you need to
have “Center on when target starts” enabled.