I’ve just installed SGPro and all has gone well although I haven’t had a clear night yet (well that’s tempted fate!). All my equipment/software talks to SG and seems to work first time out (including PS2).
PS2 successfully plate solves some of my existing images.
I’ve loaded some targets (from Astroplanner) into a sequence but before I press the ‘go’ button one dumb question if I may…
Do I have to put in RA/Dec ‘Hints’ and image ‘scale’ for each target before use? Or, does SG slew to target, take a pic and then auto solve based on the given RA/Dec of the target?
Essentially the right side of the Target Settings window only exists to help populate the left side.
If you’re getting target data from elsewhere (like Astroplanner) there is no reason to enter the hint and scale data on the right side. SGP will slew/center on the data on the left side of the Target Settings dialog.
Is there ever any reason to have different RA/Dec values in the left fields verses the right? If the answer is no, then why are there two fields? May I suggest reworking the UI to have only one RA/Dec set. The current two sets of fields is confusing. Perhaps the right fields could be display only and copy the values from the left. Not the best solution but it would reduce the confusion.
There is… they have very little to do with each other. The fields on the left are your target’s location. The fields on the right are nothing more than hints to a solver. The results of a successful solve would be moved over to the left, but consolidating these fields would be quite confusing. We don’t want people entering hints for a plate solve into the target’s location.
Ok, but as the original poster suggested, what is confusing about this is knowing whether or not you have to enter the target’s location as hints for the plate solve. I share the poster’s misunderstanding about this. From a internal SGP point of view I get that they are two different things but I don’t quite get your explanation. My expectation is that the target values are what should be used as hints for the plate solve. Can you offer an example of when I might use different values for the hints than the target values? That would help clarify the need for two sets of fields. If the target values are always used as hints that suggests the hints fields are redundant.
Also, I did suggest “Not the best solution” as to copying the fields. A better approach might be to revamp the layout to reduce the number of fields and clarify their purpose. It may be that this dialog is trying to do too much since the plate solve settings are only tangentially involved with the target settings.
