Using local astrometry.net as only solver

[Brice]

So Epoch unknown or J2000 for doing the trick ?

[topboxman]

If EQMOD only offers two EPCOH settings: Unknown or J2000, then it makes no difference for SGP. If SGP receives “Unknown EPOCH”, it will ignore it and use J2000. To be safe, I would set it to J2000.

Also, I believe you want to set ANSVR EPOCH to J2000 as well.

I am curious. Does EQMOD offer JNow EPOCH setting? If the mount’s hand controller send J2000 coordinates to the mount, then it makes sense to select J2000 EPOCH setting in EQMOD.

Peter

[Bhwolf]

@topboxman

For latest SGP release, I believe you need to set ANSVR to J2000 and SGP will convert to JNow if EQMOD returns EPOCH of JNow.

When 2.4.0 or 2.4.1 was released, it specifically suggested to always set ANSVR to J2000 but I do not see this statement anymore in the sticky thread.

I haven’t been able to test anything in weeks, but IIRC and would welcome to be proven wrong, SGP will expect everything to be J2000, with one exception: the mount. I’m very much in favor of the direction SGP is going for handling epoch, but at this stage it might create problems for users who take JNOW coords from CDC of SkySafari. Not sure if there are any foolproof ways to deal with it? Likely not unless all software is unified.

Epoch is like the astronomers’ Y2K.

[topboxman]

If you use Stellarium, there is a cool ASCOM mount utility that allows you to control your mount via Stellarium called “Stellarium Scope” and it has “J2000” and “JNow” EPOCH setting.

Welsh Dragon Computing

Peter