Brian Morgan replied to the topic 'QtSettingCircles' in the forum. 7 years ago

We have had weeks of crummy weather in the Northeast US. Finally, yesterday we got a break, although the night sky was highly variable: one minute it was clear, and the next minute thin, obstructing clouds.

I got a chance to test out my software. It is effective but its accuracy depends on the resolution of your setting circles. I decided to provide two methods of operation: the first is the traditional approach of using the setting circles on your polar axis to dial in the right ascension of a calibration star, and then slewing to the desired object by matching the readout to the object's right ascension; the only problem with that method is that you need to re-calibrate for each new target. The second method uses the setting circles on the polar axis to dial in the hour angle of the calibration star which needs to be performed just once for the entire night.

I learned a few important lessons along the way. I plan on making the repo public after I author an informative markdown file. I am attaching photos of M57 and M27 that I took last night with my ASI120MC through an $80 70mm Celestron achromat at f/5.7 pick-backed on my Unitron Model 142. These are 30-second exposures, stacked with Registax 6; I had to throw out a lot of images due to corruption by clouds passing by. M27 has a lot of noise because there were so few good images.

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