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

Bi-monthly release with minor bug fixes and improvements

Re:New Polar Alignment Scheme and Features

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@Rick: The refresh should be done in the same mount position as the last capture. That is, the mount is only moved twice.
It captures the first image, it slews in RA, it captures the 2nd image, it slews a 2nd time in RA, it captures the third image.
At this point the refresh/correction procedure is done, with no further mount movements, except of course, for adjusting the alt and az knobs
to correct the mount's polar alignment.

I agree that I believe you can't change your star selection after you click refresh, probably best to select the star when it asks before it even changes to that screen.

Hy
The following user(s) said Thank You: Rick Wayne
2 years 9 months ago #72094
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Huh! Wonder why it's whacked for me, then. Something about the CEM70? Well, it's not really an issue. I use the PAA as a backup and quantitative assessment of my iPolar solution now anyway.

However, I was just reading up on the no-polaris alignment and was gobsmacked. That is quite the feature, my friend. Can't wait to try it out -- it literally opens new horizons for me, i.e. in my tree-cave back yard I may be able to move around until I have a patch of sky that includes a target, rather than just using the tiny slice from which I can see Polaris.
2 years 9 months ago #72163
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I tried aligning from way back under the trees, no northern visibility at all. Lined up the tripod by aligning the center post with a leg on a heading of 000° using my trusty 50-year-old Boy Scout compass (magnetic declination is negligible here). Slewed to visible sky at about 130° az and 35° altitude. Ran the PAA, the azimuth was so far off the triangle didn't even fit in the camera frame. Wound up running it for three or four cycles overall, PAA said 40", PHD Guiding Assistant said 2'. I'll take that!

Star still wasn't tracking the triangle, however. No matter, since the helpful circle guided me to the correct adjustments quite easily, so long as I didn't go too fast. Racking the azimuth more or less followed the hypotenuse, but not quite. Altitude was of course about perpendicular to that. Mount was pretty close to level by the bubble in the base. Does sensor orientation matter? My camera was at some completely random rotation since I was mostly just playing around.

Chris and Hy, this is the nuts. Terrific work, and it will make a big difference to my imaging. Even when I don't have good targets in my available slice of sky in the back yard, I can use that time to debug hardware and workflow instead of infringing on valuable remote-site dark-sky time. Bravo!
The following user(s) said Thank You: Eric
2 years 9 months ago #72236
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Duplicated
Last edit: 2 years 8 months ago by kobu.
2 years 8 months ago #73827
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Let me first say thank you for such a great piece of software and specially for this new polar alignment method, a life saver for all of us that don’t have direct view to Polaris.

I’ve successfully used the method to get under 1’ error, having tried at different sky locations (I have a clear view NE-East-South).

After doing the polar alignment I use PHD2 for guiding so I usually run Guiding Assistant to confirm the PA error. The problem is that there is a huge misalignment between both, yesterday for example I finished Ekos PA under 1’ but when I run PHD2 guiding assistant it reported 42’, and I think PHD2 was right as the drift was evident. After that I run the drift alignment in PHD2 and I was able to get under 3’ of error which was good enough for imaging. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to measure back the PA error in Ekos as it refused to plate solve giving a timeout (never happened before)

What could be causing this deviation? My only guess is that there is some error in the configuration. Camera and focal length setting were set equally in both, however my guide scope has theoretical FL of 120mm, but when I did plate solving in Ekos for the first time it reported 128mm based on the FoV calculation, so I set it like that since the beginning. Seems strange to me that there is a 7% variation between the manufacturer theoretical FL and the real one, maybe this is the error?

Any suggestions? This is driving me nuts, it takes me forever to do PHD2 drift alignment, min 1h, so it would be amazing if I could use Ekos and have PA done in 10min.

Thanks!
2 years 8 months ago #73839
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Looks like other users are reporting the same here: indilib.org/forum/ekos/10056-inconsisten...ignment-results.html

I will close this topic and we'll continue there.
2 years 8 months ago #73855
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