Request aperture and secobs in fits header. get from ascom if possible

Sequence Generator 2.5.X Features
1

Hi-

I see you have a place to enter the scope focal length - but there is also a button providing access to the ascom telescope setup. The ascom info is good because it has aperture and secobs - along with focal length. I would like aperture, secobs, and focal length in the fits header. Right now fl comes from the special entry in the telescope control panel - so it could be redundant or conflict with ascom values.

I propose getting aperture and secobs from ascom, and using the fl from the control panel unless it is zero - in which case you get fl from ascom. Then place aperture and secobs in the fitsheader.

Thanks,
Frank

2

Thanks for the suggestion. Unfortunately, ASCOM telescope data is not really compatible with the SGPro profile system. We will add secobs and aperture in the same manner that we added FOCALLEN. This is an unfortunate side effect of the “mount” driver keeping data about the telescope. Users dont want to change this data everytime they put a new telescope on the mount. Because of this we use our own internal system.

We will compromise (as you mentioned above) and default to ASCOM values if the profile / sequence has none.

3

Thanks for the response. I didn’t realize you couldn’t get it easily from the ascom connection - and I completely understand people might not want to get that info from the ascom “telescope”. So - if you do need to have a separate entry for focal length and other things - then there is less need for the specific values of aperture and secobs. I mentioned them because they were already there - along with focal length.

In general I like the fits header to be verbose and full of information that captures how the image was taken.

The main thing that really should be in the header is focal length - and you already do that. I guess the ideal thing would be for a user to provide his/her own set of fits header names and values that are added to the image - and that would be useful but it would probably take some work and not sure how many would use it. But many of us would, who aren’t strictly doing imaging with sgp.

Thanks,
Frank