Hi - my name is Colin McGill - I'm a relatively experienced imager. My main scope is located at a remote observatory in Spain, and I'm used to using The Sky X, but I want to set up a more mobile rig for use here in Surrey so I can try imaging on the South Downs where the light pollution is ~ 10 times better than my back garden.

I'm using an HEQ5, a Canon DSLR 450d with a Wiliams Optics Star 71 (2015 version), and have set up Kstars/Ekos/Indi v 2.7.3 on a Raspberry Pi 3 (thank you James for your excellent tutorial).

Firstly, I am very impressed - after the clouds cleared last night I managed to get Capture and Slew working, focus my scope and used Ekos to take a few automated runs.

However, I have a few questions, about how to use Ekos:

1) I generally focus manually with a Bahtinov mask - however, when I frame the star (Capella), I could barely see the spikes with a 5 second exposure. This has been more than enough using The Sky, so I don't think its the focus length, but something about the stretch I was applying (I used Autostretch, but tried others). In the end, I gave up and simply used the HDR values, though this took a while. Is there a recommended way to focus with a mask?

2) I didn't sync at all, which left my pointing~ 2 degs away from the correct spot. Of course, platesolve sorted this out (though I sometimes needed multiple moves to get to the right location). Again, is there a recommended way to e.g. Sync to one star first, then use platesolve, or to automatically Sync then move to the right location?

3) I managed to create a scheduled imaging session - track, align and capture. That worked well, but I had two problems: a) I could not find a way to reset the job (I double clicked but when I reran the job, I was just told it was completed). Secondly, I set up a series of different exposure times as a sequence file. This worked well from the Camera tab, but when I used it as part of a scheduled run, Ekos only took the first set of images (I had 4 sets of 2 images each of different exposure lengths). Am I doing something wrong?

Thank you again,

Colin

P.S. Apologies if this is posted twice - I can't see it in the forums.

Not sure about that one, I'm pretty sure when I used to use my Bahtinov mask that it worked with my imaging setup too, but now you have me wondering

When I use platesolve, I tend to do the solve & sync option so that the scope has accurate settings and kstars updates to show the actual scope position, then I'll click slew to object once more if it's further out that I'd like and do another plate solve. There is an option to plate solve and slew to target which I believe will slew, solve, slew, solve several times until it's within a given margin of error from the target. I've not tried that though.

I've not tried using the scheduled session, but I have noticed when I abort or pause a existing job then remove it and add new, the old will seem to continue before the newly added job even if it's the only job in the list. This doesn't happen all the time though. It may be worth trying to do a session that is just exposures during the day to establish if there's a set of steps needed to cause it to act oddly, it could be a bug.

1. You can turn off Autostretch in KStars Configuration --> Advanced --> FITS Viewer. See if without autostretch, it would be any better.
2. Usually just slew to target and then select "Slew to Target" under solver action, then simply click "Capture and Solver"
3. To reset job status, double click it as suggested by the tooltip when you hover over a job. Please post your Sequence File and Scheduler List file to investigate what would be wrong.

Thank you very much, Gary. See my reply below for how I got on!

Colin

Thank you very much, Jasem

1. I tried turning off Autostretch - this worked well - I can now see the three lines clearly for the Bahtinov mask and managed to focus v quickly and achieved a lower HFR than just by watching the metric.

2. It is definitely working - I think I've just been spoiled by getting used to Tpoint - I'd forgotten just how bad the pointing used to be - "Slew to Target" works very well now that I've configured the appropriate settings on the solver.

3. I'll try this over the weekend and see if I can get it to work in the simulator - if not, I'll post my files.

I imaged again last night, and with the autostretch off, managed to get the telescope out and imaging within 30 minutes. From when I turned on my Pi and mount, it took me just 10 minutes to get focussed, polar aligned and imaging, all run from my iPad Mini connected to the Pi hotspot. Ekos again worked well and I got a couple of hours worth of data using the scheduler before the clouds came in. Practice makes perfect!

Thank you again,

Colin