Saving Pinpoint data

Although I have filled in all the Pinpoint data including plate scale and location of the A2 directory, this is not all saved. Every time I try to solve an image it fails telling me to (yet again) fill in the plate scale etc. I fill it in, it solves, but the second try wants the same data all over again. Have I missed something else?

TIA

Lawrence Harris

What method (series of steps) are you using to solve?

With an image from the find and focus facility I right-click and select plate solve. The resulting scale always says 0 even though I have filled it in on a previous run and also on the Pinpoint tab (in profile). Image 1x1 is 0.67 and 4x4 is 4x0.67.

FWIW I am now going through the instructions indoors again on this cloudy/windy/wet night. [I’ll get there…!]
Lawrence

I guess I don’t really understand what you mean so I will just say some stuff in hopes it covers your needs.

I assume you mean “Frame and Focus” here… at least that is what I am basing my answer on.

Not sure what this means. We don’t have a Pinpoint tab anywhere. If you are referring to the Plate Solve tab, this also has no field in which to enter your scale so you have me at a loss here. The only place to store scale is in the Control Panel Camera tab.

Right clicking on a FF image to plate solve will auto populate location hints from the telescope (the pink box) and the orange arrow is populated based on the scale value stored in the camera tab:

As a side note, a faster way to do this is to just click the “Solve and Sync” button located in the “Scope Centering” module or in the Plate Solve tab in the Control Panel. This will take a solve frame (like a Frame and Focus" frame) and solve it all with one click.

I did post a full reply to this with picture but it has not appeared:

Hello Ken

I was writing my missive away from the observatory telescope control laptop and (therefore) working from memory. I am sorry to have used the wrong term - yes, I meant ‘frame and focus’.

Again, my memory was wrong. I had filled in PP data and camera data - see the picture. You can see how the settings don’t transfer for me - hence my query. I need to follow your instructions in real-time - at the scope - so I have made notes to do this.

Thanks again for your patience. Currently it is pouring outside so its ‘study the notes’ time!

Added today: I have a picture showing the correctly filled in Plate solve screen (see your above) and the empty Plate solve screen that is supposed to be populated - see my picture.

Lawrence

Lawrence,
The “right click plate solve” functionality is not really made for images coming from Frame and Focus. If you want to solve an image from your camera the best method is to use the “Solve and Sync” or “Blind Sync” functionality. However this will also sync your mount and maybe this is not what you’re after.

The “Right Click Plate Solve” is generally geared towards opening previously captured images and solving them. For those images the scale should be in the FITs header so it doesn’t get populated from your camera data as these could be (and likely are) completely different scales, angles, etc. Since the Frame and Focus images are never saved to FITs the “Right Click Plate Solve” can’t get a hold of the scale and angle data from them thus you get a request to enter that data.

We can take a look at propagating that data from a frame and focus such that right click solves work but currently it’s not designed to do so.

Thanks,
Jared

OK. I follow that. That seems fine and I understand. I had misunderstood the process of F&F. I come from Maxim DL and got used to a different process but I can change that! Its easy enough for me to F&F. I usually position the telescope near a target first and then solve an image to identify the exact location. The comet was off screen so I wanted to solve and then move to centre. I’ll re-read the notes because usually the first image is a test image for location and therefore not part of a new sequence - if you see my problem. I hope I have explained it properly!

Lawrence

What you probably want to do in this scenario is the following:

  1. Slew close to the object.
  2. Issue a “Solve and Sync” to update your mount position.
  3. If the image is in frame right click and use “Center Here” to automatically center the object.
  4. If the images is out of frame then reslew to the target.

If you happen to know the actual RA/Dec of your target then you’re better off using the Auto Center functionality as it will iteratively center for you. This can be difficult with comets as they like to move.

Thanks,
Jared

On 28/03/2015 9:58 PM, Ken wrote: