Astroart Forum

The previous script was quite simple: every N# exposures the telescope was recentered on the minor planet. An improved script would calculate automatically when to recenter the telescope, knowing the object speed and the field of view of the camera. The following script does that, after the user has...

Hi François,
yes, this can be easily added. Please write me by PM or email to receive the prerelease.

Hi, there are some arduino projects, but then you will need to use scripts to program the behaviour, reading the temperature via the virtual serial port. If you need to take a long sequence and just need to autofocus every 90 minutes, you could build a sequence like: seqrep.png autofocus will be lau...

Yes, full frame autofocus works best with a longer exposure time, 4 .. 8 seconds are common. It's not possible to Log a series of autofocusing sessions, but it will be implemented later, as a sort of "global Log" where the user will be able to select which events (camera, telescope, focuser, etc.) a...

The linearity of a CCD camera is a common issue which is often addressed in literature. For example with the internet search: ccd linearity test astronomy you will find several papers about the matter. So, if a given CCD receives 2X light does it really outputs 2X adu ? (after having corrected the d...

Hi, did you set the special position 99999 to launch autofocus in the Sequencer?

Thanks again for discovering the problem about binary stars position angles.

The Script Window can be opened from the menu: Plugin/Camera control 7.0/
There are several demo scripts to learn quickly the language. The french manual is not available though.

The position angle is the trigonometric one, so measured from RA West (so it's not compatible for binary stars). To convert you need to subtract 90. Thanks for letting me know, in SP3 both angles will be shown. Meanwhile here's the script to calculate the correct P.A. for binary stars: ra1 = Image.S...

To be safe on the centroid you must choose an Aperture which contains pixels only of one star. For this reason in that example I used an Aperture of 3 for the faint star and an Aperture of 5 for the bright one. The Aperture can be changed in the Preferences. The centroids are calculated with weighte...

Hello, once the image is platesolved (or astrometrically calibrated) the separation and position angle can be shown by the Stars Window. Select the two stars, then right click for the context menu: double-star.png other calculations could be done by a script, here is a simple example for calculating...

It depends on the catalog: if the star was extremely saturated on the original plate or image then the accuracy on the position cannot be good. This is why some catalogs do not contain bright stars at all. For astrometry I wouldn't use any reference star brighter than 9.0 mag (by the way, in the Ast...

Hello, the star must be collected, so in the Aperture Photometry window (the Zoom window) just press ENTER with the keyboard to collect the star. Actually you could collect the star directly on the image (left click), without using the zoom window. In this case configure the Aperture/Gap/Background ...