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SGP, EQMOD and starting up procedures
I was wondering how best to use Sequence Generator Pro in combination with EQMod to begin an imaging session. It’s all setup on the night (no observatory) so focus and polar alignment need to be taken into account. With polar alignment I can’t see Sigma Octans (behind my house) so use the drift alignment tool in PHD2. Can always find a star in the north near the meridian and a relatively low lying star in the East so this has worked well.
My plan was to create one big sequence with pauses between the various steps.
1. Slew to a bright star for fine focusing (no auto guiding and blind plate solve)
2. Slew to a northern star near the Meridian (Plate Solve) and with PHD calibrated drift align
3. Slew to a star low in the east (Plate Solve) and with PHD calibrated again drift align
4. Slew to target and image with flats included at the end.
However the last time I tried this the alignment (initially) was way off. The bright star slewed to for focusing was not very close (same segment of the sky but way too lows as if some assumption was made that I was a lot further north). My location coordinates in EQMOD were correct as were my settings in SGP and the settings in EQMOD were along the lines suggested for a successful Merdiain flip in SGP (dialogue based, side of pier set to Pointing (ASCOM) and cleared and disabled sync points ). I tried parking and slewing a number of times (watching for cable drag and other such things) and waited for a very long time for a blind plate solve before giving up. Maybe settings on start up should be different in EQMOD or I should be more patient with the blind plate solve? In the end I parked the scope and switched to Carte du Ciels and slewed using this method. This got me almost bang on target immediately. I could then go back to SGP and run the sequence. Might have just been a quirk on the night but keen to find out how others start their portable setups. Do you use other programs for initial procedures or have a similar sequence planned all in SGP?
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