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INDI Library v2.0.6 is Released (02 Feb 2024)

Bi-monthly release with minor bug fixes and improvements

Imaging during partly cloudy nights

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I've had the exact same issue. I thought when guiding lost the stars, it would stop capture and attempt to restart guiding. If it failed a certain amount of times, it would abort the job and behave according to the scheduler's instructions for restarting the job.

The way it works now, I never get an aborted job... so what's the point of schedule instructions? So when it finally starts capturing again, I'm not on the object any longer because of drift. The realignment step is very important to my process.

Thanks,

Ron
2 years 6 months ago #75357

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As soon as guiding itself aborts, it behaves exactly as you describe. Here we had the case that guiding continued, i.e. there where stars still visible enough that it could guide, but with significant deviations.
2 years 6 months ago #75359

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I recently had the problem where it clouds over and guiding locks onto a hot pixel. I haven't been able to get darks working properly yet - this is something I need to do. So what then happens is guiding fights tracking and the target drifts away. When the clouds pass and stars re-appear, guiding clamps onto a real star and everything continues except the target is no longer framed. Looking at the comment from @Hy above it seems the SEP profile = 1-Guide-Default has a star filtering parameter Min Size set to 0 px. I think I might try setting this to 2 (as per the medium stars profile). Since the default profile seems to work well for me and has several different parameters to the medium stars profile, I think this would be better than changing profiles.

I see there is an option "Restart Alignment on Guiding Calibration Failure" under Ekos -> Scheduler. Is this the option referred to (or is there another option I can't find)? Would guiding do a calibration after failing (I have the "Store and reuse guide calibration when possible" option set? 
 
2 years 6 months ago #75363

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Wolfgang,

That is not how mine works... it never aborts the job. I had a couple of hours of failed guiding with aborted capture, but the sequence never aborted... so no re-alignment.

Ron
2 years 6 months ago #75376

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Hm, that's strange. Could you please post the log of such an example?
2 years 6 months ago #75378

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Wolfgang,

I posted the log earlier in the thread. As was discussed earlier, it might have found a hot pixel... but I was using darks. It's been difficult over the last few weeks to test because of lack of clear skies.

I'm currently traveling, but will try again once I get a clear night.

Ron
2 years 6 months ago #75380

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Hi John,
when guiding fails, the restart of guiding normally re-uses the calibration, no matter whether "Store and reuse guide calibration..." is selected. With this option selected, the calibration is stored and will be reused the next time KStars is started.

The option you might search is one above the "Restart Alignment on Guiding Calibration Failure" - its "Force re-alignment before starting each job.
2 years 6 months ago #75389

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Hi Ron,
in your case guiding didn't abort, it continued guiding. The problem you mention is that it didn't select a real star and used a hot pixel instead. But this cannot be distinguished from KStars perspective. Technically, its guiding and therefore there is no need to restart the job - from a technical perspective.
2 years 6 months ago #75390

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Wolfgang,

I'm sure you're correct. I guess the darks didn't work. Perhaps I'll try selecting only using "mid-sized stars" for guiding.

Ron
2 years 6 months ago #75391

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Thanks Wolfgang.
2 years 6 months ago #75398

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Guess I was bitten by that, too, last night.  Clouds at 1am, that went away again around 3am.  Capture never aborted, but somehow the FOV had drifted half a degree, so the remaining 3h of (good quality) data were off-target :(
 
2 years 6 months ago #75413

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Hi Peter,
sounds like a regular alignment would have helped. Did you use the scheduler together with the "Force re-alignment..." option?
Cheers
Wolfgang
2 years 6 months ago #75416

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