Target acquisition and plate solving

[Rmdigby]

For those of you that use BYE, what do you use for target acquisition and final target plate solving?

Thanks

[dkerber]

If I do at all, it's either Voyager or SGP, depending on the situation. I like SGP, but its AF routine isn't as robust in poor seeing as Voyager's is.  However, often I don't plate solve and center; I'll just slew there from CPWI and shoot enough short frames in BYE with manual position adjustments to get the composition I want, then (sometimes) start guiding and then shooting. For objects that don't need long exposures like M42 or M31, I typically don't guide.

 

[admin]

There is built-in plate solving in BYE Premium 3.2.1 and later using ASTAP.

[Tbear]

On 1/24/2021 at 11:39 PM, admin said:

There is built-in plate solving in BYE Premium 3.2.1 and later using ASTAP.

What pixel setting do you recommend? Seems like I've tried to plate solve a few times but the image didn't really center? It looks like it defaults at 50 pixels but I don't have a feel for how much off center that would actually look like? If the iterations is set to  one and the first plate solve doesn't meet the setting of 50, will it try again? or should the iteration be set to 2 or higher?

[admin]

Each setup is different, and each mount have different accuracy when slewing.

Use a number of pixels that gets you as centred as possible.  Keep in mind that we always end cropping during post-processing, so I tend not to overthink the centering too much, get me there reasonably centred, and I'm good. It does not hurt to increase the iteration, imaging sequence will continue after the last iteration, it won't stop... and this is by design.

[Tbear]

1 hour ago, admin said:

  It does hurt to increase the iteration, imaging sequence will continue after the last iteration, it won't stop... and this is by design.

Thanks, but your last sentence confused me a bit. Did you mean to say it doesn't hurt to increase the iteration? Not sure what you mean by it does hurt...?

[admin]

Sorry, typo... it should have said "It does not hurt to...."