Hello guys,

Is there an option to enable dithering in ekos integrated guider? I can't find any button.

TY in advance

It's in the guider tab's option's menu, under the Guide sub-tab

Can you tell me how Threshold and Settle work and interact? Is Settle a time after reaching the threshold? Before checking the Threshold? Thanks!

@dx_ron: Good question! I just checked the source code, and:
- threshold is not used at all by the internal guider. It is passed on to PHD2, though.
- settle looks like a timer, once the dithering has reached the desired position, it pauses that many seconds.
Hy

Oh - that is interesting. Thanks! I just returned to internal after using PHD2 for a while (was tuning my CEM25P and needed numbers for backlash).

As long as I'm asking questions - can you build a darks library? I thought the looping "cover / uncover" had been fixed as of 3.5.1 (which Astroberry skipped, went from 3.5.0 to 3.5.2), but it seemed to happen tonight. I didn't bother to check it out very far, just unchecked the 'darks' button and went on my way. But if it is supposed to be fixed I will pay more attention to it tomorrow evening.

As I understand it (I've never used it, so can't say I'm an expert, but...) the basic darks mechanism isn't really something I'd recommend. It just takes one dark, and subtracts that image from the sub. So, even if there were no code issues, subtracting one dark would probably add more noise to the sub than it would fix. What one really needs to do is take enough dark images so that the dark "Master" that's subtracted has low shot noise. One could play games, e.g. find where Ekos puts its dark and substitute out that file for a good dark, etc etc, but anyway, I don't recommend using it until that's fixed.

That said, Jasem has said that improving the darks option is on his short-list, so the situation may be fixed in the next few months. I bet you can find a forum thread on that topic.

Hy

I think you need take multiple dark frames process it in regular SW like Pixinsight and then load it into Ekos?

Ty ^^

I've not noticed it trying to guide on a hot pixel (though it's hard to tell what all the multi-star has latched onto). I'll just continue to ignore it.

my two cents.
This link helped me a lot to understand how dithering works: nighttime-imaging.eu/docs/master/site/advanced/dithering/ and its parameter.
Have a look also to this post in particular www.indilib.org/forum/ekos/5781-settle-t...e-ignored.html#44002 and the whole thread, but that post did definitely clarified some concepts that were not totally clear to me.

m