TPOINT & AutomapperII

[Benny L]

Has anyone had any experience with this? To be quite frank i have spent most of tonight trying to get it to work and all i have succeeded in doing is closing the program and doing some imaging instead lol.

Also does anyone know what the ownload link to the USNO A2 catalogue is? I tried downloading it from here: ftp.nofs.navy.mil

but it keeps timing out:sadeyes:

cheers for now,

Ben

[Bassnut]

Ive been useing this over the last few days . I asume you mean the free AAGTpoint mapper?, if not, download it, its the standard and works very well. The best catalog is GSC11 (guide star catalog, also free and downloadable, warning, its huge).

The star catalog is what Tpoint uses to plate solve (calculate where the scope is actually pointing by comparing star positions from it with a scope image, GSC11 is the standard, and also used by other programs like focusmax aquirestar)

Tpoint LE wont work, you need Tpoint full (although some plate solve programs use CCDsoft and Tpoint LE apparently).

I suppose your useing the Sky also?

I found The sky, Maxim DL, Tpoint and AAGTpoint mapper together work soo smoothly, its amazing to watch the map being built, slewing all over the sky. With just a 40 point map, and the polar align report at the end, polar aligning this way is quicker and more accurate than drift align!.

Setting up is very important (image scale, FL,exposures etc) for plate solving to work, and your scope should be reasonably well polar aligned and synced 1st.

Its all painfull to get going at 1st, but well worth the effort IMO.

What mount are you using?.

[Benny L]

Hi Fred,

Thankyou very much for that wealth of information :)

I am currently running the full versions of thesky6, ccdsoft and tpoint. I downloaded Automapper II last night to see if i could save myself the trouble of doing it by hand lol

The mount I am using is a Losmandy Titan with Gemini L4 control software. It is reasonably close to the pole but I' imagine it needs some refining.

I'll download the GSC11 catalogue and AAGTpoint Automapper and give it another crack tonight and let everyone know how it went.

Thanks again, Fred :)

Ben

[Bassnut]

OK, well the Titan is well up to mapping ,its a dream slewing to something, and its right there, smack in the middle, and you can easily get polar align within a few arcsecs (its a laugh, recommended adjustments get down to a 10th of the distance between knob bumps).

And yes, manually mapping would be very tedious indeed, especially with 100s of points, AAGTpoint mapper makes it a pleasure, and fast.

[rogerg]

My problems with what you're trying Ben has always been that my plate solves don't work frequently enough due to lack of stars. I have all but the biggest database installed and still due to the tiny FOV I have about 80% of "randomly" positioned plate solves like the type automapper does fail due to lack of stars. I singled this out as the problem by doing manual plate solves on the same locations and on other locations. Works fine if saggitarius is in the right spot :)

I ended up leaving it, and TPoint alone and going back to single point sync'ing. Hopefully one day I'll have a larger chip which will give me more stars in the plate solves.

Not sure if you've ruled out the problem being that your plate solves are failing for such a reason, as distinct from automapper not working?

Roger.

[Benny L]

Hi Roger,

Plate Solving is all new territory to me, and according to the stuff i have read, due to the longer focal length of my instrument Meade 14" LX200R (3556mm) I would need the USNO A2.0 Catalogue.

There's not many stars in my fov even with the STL sitting on the back :S

I'll give it a few more go's then if it doesn't work then I'll just do it manually. Either way i'll end up losing all my hair :P

[rogerg]

ahhh... in that case I would strongly advise putting automapper to the side and working on plate solves - just getting used to what works and what doesn't, etc. Then put automapper back in the equation.

I've got a 6.3 reducer on my scope which takes it down to F/7.5 in reality, focal length of 2180mm .. and it's hard at that focal length. I expect you'll end up buying a focal reducer, but then I guess you have such a large chip you might need to stay at F/10 to get full coverage? Hmm, tricky maybe?

I can't remember the database names of ones I have off the top of my head now, been a little while... if I have it at home I might be able to send you it on a CD.

People kept telling me I should be able to plate solve with my setup 100% the time if I have the right database. Wrong. Fact is, with my FOV (and perhaps yours) there are often only 3-10 stars brighter than mag 18ish ... it's not reasonable to expect that to plate solve. Of course some times there's 60 stars, but all depends on where you're looking in the sky.

There's a few settings hidden away in CCDSoft and TheSky6 that might need tweaking too, to ensure that all the stars you do have in your databases are being made available for plate solves. I can't remember them right now but might be able to find them for you if you continue to have problems.

[jase]

Give the GSC11 catalogue a go, but if you're having troubles recognising enough stars go with USNOA-A2.0. I just checked the FTP site - ftp://ftp.nofs.navy.mil/usnoa/ its working fine. Its a 6GB download. The key is to tweak the plate solve parameters. You don't need to solve all the stars in the field to obtain a high level of accuracy, just enough to obtain recognition. You can still try solve them all if you wish, but it will slow the process down, especially if you're building a large map.

Need more catalogues? Here you go -http://tdc-www.harvard.edu/catalogs/

Seriously though, if you can't get the solution working with GSC11 or USNOA-A2.0, your configuration is wrong. Try manually plate solving an image you've already taken to test it out. Obviously needs to be in FITS format given the RA and DEC coords are in the header to at least retrieve the right info in the catalogue. If your initial pointing is way out, you many need to manually sync the scope to get it started. Get use to parking/homing the scope once you've finished using it.

A thread for reference info - http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/showthread.php?t=28118

[Benny L]

Thanks for all your help guys!! :D I'll give it a run with the GSC11 catalogue and have a really good look at the settings I have, while I download the USNO A2.0 catalogue.

Looking through the settings in the sky I just had the stock catalogues active.. the GSC11 catalogue which I installed with a trial version of pinpoint wasn't even there

*shrug* My dad always told me that astrophotography teaches you patience lol i think he's right :P

[Bassnut]

Thats a very good point. I started with a reducer and 1500 FL and it solved every time, then I took the reducer out for 2250 FL, and got a 30% failure rate. I improved it though, by going from 10 to 20 sec exposures (on an ST10), but yes, FOV makes a big difference.

[Benny L]

HUZZAH!!!!!! :D I've just come in from doing a 300 point mapping run with only two errors, which were solved on the second pass.

It was pretty hard going, considering the dome is turned by 'armstrong rotation' :P

So Happy right now!! thanks for all your help guys, very much appreciated :D

For those who might be interested the details are as follows:

OTA: Meade 14" LX200R
CCD: SBIG STL-11000M
Software: thesky6, ccdsoft, tpoint, pinpoint, AAGTpoint Mapper, GSC11 Catalogue.
Exposure: 10sec @ f10, binned 2x2, Luminance Filter

[Bassnut]

Excellent Ben , top work :thumbsup:, . Did you look at the Polar align error report?.

If its close your set, but if you need to adjust youll have to do another run :P. 20-40 points is all thats required for polar align, but sheesh, since youve gone the full bottle already, perhaps thatl do, the map will compensate, and with guiding if your out a little bit you might not notice anyway.

Did you image at prime?, if so, then at that FL, your big chip cam FOV saved yr ass ;).

[Benny L]

Hi Fred,

My dad aligned the mount by sight when we first put it in the dome, i did a short mapping run of 40 points to get a polar report and was surprised to see that the mount was 7 arc-minutes west and 20 arc-minutes down of the pole.

that was without drift alignment or anything :S lol so i went ahead an did a full run to see if it could be done. I'll be messing around with polar alignment tonight, seeing as the mount is permanently fixed then i may as well get it as close and as accurate as possible.

I did image at prime focus, without using smaller sub-frames though. I was hoping like hell that it would work, if it didn't i have just finished downloading the USNO catalogue and would have tried again tonight.

Unfortunately i cooked my download quota for the rest of the month :P