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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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@Hy

so much work, such a clean code I barely understand at first glance.

Thank you!

This is pedantic, I know, sorry:



Until now I had no clear skies to test the polar alignment routine with my mount.
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3 years 1 month ago #66884
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So I did this last night. I had prepared for some time outside, with warm jacket, gloves etc. - but no need really. Ran the routine, moved the star along the lines (with only 5' PAE they were indeed accurate this time :lol:), then re-ran it for a test: 12" and 13" remaining error. Wow. Almost a pity I'm on a permanent pier and won't use that often....

I checked the guiding afterwards. At the default setting DEC had a min move of 50ms, something like .4". With that I only had a DEC guide pulse every few minutes. I've then reduced it to 30ms to better match the 0.2" of GPG. I left it running for a while, and actually experienced the best guiding I've seen so far, going down below 0.3" total RMS. That was at 2100mm focal length :woohoo:
Too bad I wasn't prepared for imaging. I wanted to test my new Baader FFC and had no guide scope, as I had used parts of the extension tubes of it. So that guiding had been with the main cam/telescope and the FFC (at 2.3 x).

And, needless to say, now that things are so nicely set up for the coming New Moon, we again get weather alerts for massive rain/snow storms.
3 years 1 month ago #66891
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This sounds like a very nice feature ! Many thanks !!!
Currently, due to weather conditions, I am limited to simulation. I am struggling to set up my simulator with deliberate erros. I tried various settings within the "Simulator Config", i.e. PAE, EQ PE, but I only get some misalignemt for "normal" alignment. With the PAA I always get a perfect PA. Can someone hint me in the right direction, please ?
3 years 1 month ago #66910
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@Dirk

This works for me:

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3 years 1 month ago #66921
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Hi all,

I hope you don't mind if I post some more 'stupid/insane challenges'. My observatory unfortunately is in clouds and ice and snow and the road is closed, but last time I was up there I took my old mount with me, a Vixen GP-DX with Synscan EQ5 upgrade. I wanted to play around with it a bit, to set it up as camera lens unit with my ASI183MC. So I have it standing in my office here at sea level.

This afternoon clouds vanished partially. But due to some cabling limitation, I couldn't bring the mount outside. Instead, I had it look through a window:

I pre-aligned the mount looking up the orientation of my appartements wall in openstreetmap and then checked what I can see from there. It's facing SSE and the window opening was just high enough that I could get an approximate 60 degrees arch at declination -20. Yes, aligning to the NCP with reference stars south of the celestial equator...
I did it manually, not using the mount control, to have better control over where I'm pointing. I did one shot close to meridian, one as far east as possible, and a final one between the two. PAE was some 3 degrees, and easy to correct. The star moved perfectly along the guide lines.

Next I reset the mount to home position, made sure the camera is really pointing to the NCP, then checked what I can see there through the window. I wanted to try Thors Helmet area, but that was already too high. So I aimed in Canis Major where the DSS image showed some nebulosity. Well, I didn't really see it in the image. That was too much of a challenge maybe. It's not perfectly in focus either. But this is a 120s exposure, unguided. Only at 135mm FL, but the PA definitely worked really well even under this more than extreme conditions.

Hy, this is absolutely amazing work of yours! If you're able to see stars, your routine will do PA :woohoo:

3 years 1 month ago #67023
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Hy,

Today I installed the latest nightly build of KStars and ran the new polar alignment tool from La Serena, Chile. I let the star I chose follow the two lines to end up on the other side of the triangle. Then I ran the polar alignment routine again. It said that the alignment error was 35". I call that a success!

Thank you so very much for implementing this!!!


Wouter
3 years 1 month ago #67096
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Thanks Wouter.

I'd love to add to the Unit Test, some data from South America. Could you please email me a pointer to your log--assuming you had align debugging turned on. If you didn't, could you please generate a log for me?

Also, glad to hear you're back in Chile working on "real telescopes"!

Thanks,
Hy
3 years 1 month ago #67097
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Hy,

I did not enable debug logging but would love to generate the logs for you. Would you like to have data both for a polar alignment error of, say, 1° and a very small one or would a very small one suffice?

Wouter
3 years 1 month ago #67111
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A few different things would be great, e.g. introduce an error then and remeasure. If you can, pointed near pole and away.
3 years 1 month ago #67119
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OK I'll look into that as soon as the clouds allow. Unfortunately the weather is quite unpredictable here this close to the Pacific coast.
3 years 1 month ago #67130
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Hello Hy,
first of all, Thank you for the great improvement in polar alignment. After months of clouds, I finally managed to test it yesterday, My usual observing position does not provide any view to the north, so the new polar alignment helps a lot.

What I noticed is, that (at least with my IOptron CEM 25P) the "Start" button does not become clickable, while the mount ist "tracking". I had disable tracking, before I could start the polar alignment routine, which makes sense. It might be useful to either mention this in the explanations ... .


Regards

Dirk
3 years 1 month ago #67342
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Dirk, Thanks for testing!

I'm actually surprised by your feedback. This isn't an issue for my Atlas Pro mount (I just retested), and I also verified the simulator has no such issue. I haven't received any other feedback like this either, and I'd expect that others would have run into this, given that for off-pole polar-alignment, folks would have to slew to the start position, and that will start up tracking.

I do know that the start button is disabled while the scope is slewing (e.g. to the start-of-polar-alignment part of the sky), Start will be disabled for the duration of the slew, but it should be enabled once the slew is done. Perhaps Ekos somehow missed the end-of-slew message from your mount? That kind of thing has been seen in various other Ekos/mount issues over the years. (Of course, it would be good to get that kind of thing fixed, but it wouldn't be part of the polar-alignment code.)

Could you please re-verify that polar alignment won't work for you while tracking, and if so, send a log with mount and align debugging enabled. It might have been that the very act of turning on/off tracking got ekos and your mount back in sync, and it was not the tracking itself.

Thanks,
Hy
3 years 1 month ago #67345
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