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Old 21-10-2009, 01:39 PM
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Bassnut (Fred)
Narrowfield rules!

Bassnut is offline
 
Join Date: Nov 2006
Location: Torquay
Posts: 5,065
I havent tried Maxpoint. I didnt attempt this on the G11, but on the PME its fine. I havent measured the result, but slewed to stars end up smack in the middle, always, everywhere, with a 100 or so mapped points. Focal length makes a big difference to how sucessful points are plate solved. At 1500mm, 100%, 2250mm, 70% (I found). At long FLs the catalog used gets more important apparently, I use GSC1.1, but others swear by other ones. Exposures get longer to find more dim stars if there arnt many in a narrow FOV.

A really nice bonus is the polar align report at the end of a run. With 40 points at 1 sec exposures (in auto) polar align is actually faster and more accurate than drift align !. I got polar align within single digit arcseconds fairly quickly.

The important thing is the repeatability of mount pointing rather than accuracy, maping is less usefull if the mount doesnt point in the same place each time, even if its way out (thats what the maping models). Maping doesnt improve repeatability.

Having said that, the ultimate, is software that plate solves after every slew, reslews to the correct spot and then plate solves again to check. I think some apps actually continously correct and improve the map during normal use.

Im doing all this because I want to slew to an object, compose/pick a guide star for the OAGer in The Sky and rotate to it automatically with the FOV indicator, so I dont have to search for a star. This requires high accuracy.

Tpoint needs other software, so factor that cost in. All these apps have 1-2 month free tryouts BTW, so you can see if it works 1st.
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