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I agree Peter - $1200 is a lot, especially if you dont need it.
But in fairness the $1200 is for lot more than just Tpoint !
My version of TheSky and Tpoint came free with two of my Mounts !
So from my perspective there was no outlay
Tpoint was a stand alone program back then too, but it fully integrated into TheSky if that was how you wanted to use it or I believe it could be used stand alone but not sure how.
Now it is designed and sold as an addon - I am sure for financial reasons.
BTW I just looked up the cost of Tpoint on SB website - it is $249US as an online download but you still need the TheSky to make it work.
Anyone who is doing anything at moderate to high level will need some sort of planetarium package that is similar in capability to this - star databases, NEO trajectory support, PEC support, rotator and guidecamera positioning and field of view indicators, ascom compliancy, measurement and analysis etc etc - so I guess what you start off buying in the first place depends on your analysis of where you see yourself going in the future and what your needs are.
I started off with TheSky even before I bought my good mount.
Knowing that its an addon may be a reason to sway your decision toward the TheSky or maybe the other way around !
The full suite obviously includes all sorts of extra things - if you need them all then its what you pay I guess - its not a cheap or a free exercise thats for sure - but its a well supported sophisticated platform.
What is the cost of going on a weekend or week long astro imaging trip and finding out all your subs are substandard due to issues that the software would have fixed or identified so you could fix it ?
Or wasting many hours over many nights drift aligning or trying to sort out the mount or pointing issues.
Or the lost opportunities of deciding not to setup at all because the weather forecast says it might be cloudy or it might rain and SkippySky says the seeing is going to be crap but its ends up sub arc second - you make the decision knowing that its going to take you an hour or more to drift align and choose not to do it and then find the sky is great and it never rains ! havng a tool that allows you to do everything earlier in the evening and more accurately means you have more options.
Ive often wondered what the real cost of our hobby is when we divide the costs by the amount of useful astro time
Then using that approach we suddenly get a number that in some ways represents a return on our investment !
Having these tools makes that a much better number
Or wanting to track the ISS or NEO and your mount and software not being able to do it becasue you cannot even get the latest ephemeris orbit into your planetarium package let alone control the mount with anything but sidereal or lunar tracking rates - so there is some benefits in having the right software - if that is the sort of thing you want to do or at least try and have a go at.
I just see it as part of the toolbox you need to get the job done - that includes the car we travel in, the car fridge, the camping gear, the laptop and the computer and other software licences to do our processing and the cold weather clothing we need to handle freezing cold nights at 3.00am, the table, chair and everything else that collectively is needed to do the hobby from start to finish - and there is bucket load of stuff !
The costs of doing this include the meals for the trip, accomodation, fuel and other wear tear costs, entry fees and site fees etc - we're happy to pay for this because its part of the job.
I wasted countless hours drift aligning and in the early days messed it up so badly that at 1.00am in the morning I was worse than when i started, tired and making silly mistakes and at the point of giving up for the night ! - until I started using Tpoint - then I was setup before atmospheric twilight and I could kick back and relax and not stress.
In my case once I had drift aligned I then had to disturb the entire telescope system rebalancing by removing the visual system and adding the camera system - so PA was slightly affected anyway and I never really knew how good my PA was after doing this (i guess I could have checked with the camera but never bothered) - so for me it solved a lot more problems than maybe for others.
The other option that this thread sort of started off with is the Plate Solve and Goto approach and for that you dont have to reinvent the wheel you can use PlateSolve2 and Astrotortilla I think they are still free, but have no personal experience using them.
I thing pretty much all telescopes around the world above 3m use Tpoint and plenty of satellites and other space based systems for antennae - but they use the Tpoint software librarys which are then integrated into their own custom control systems by full time programmers
SB provides its own version of Tpoint which is what we buy because it integrates into their planetarium suite of programs and addons.
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