MaxPoint

[bluescope]

Hi

Does anyone have or have experience with MaxPoint ?

[jase (Jason)]

How can I help you Steve?

[Tandum (Robin)]

I've had a go at it. I found it works best with a wide FOV. When I have the camera in my DOB it fails to recognise a lot of images, but when the camera is in my 80mm or the 4.5" reflector, it performs a lot better.

I also notice that it does not pass guide pulses to the scope from phd. Those ASCOM required methods for pulse guiding don't exist in the driver.

Guiding appears to work if you are using MaxIm dl to guide but not with phd so there is a software furfy in there some place. This means you need to guide via a seperate interface.

EQMOD on the otherhand does most of what maxpoint does plus it passes guide pulses and it's free. However it also has problems, but that's another story/

[jase (Jason)]

Originally Posted by Tandum

I found it works best with a wide FOV. When I have the camera in my DOB it fails to recognise a lot of images, but when the camera is in my 80mm or the 4.5" reflector, it performs a lot better.

What catalogue did you use? For a narrow FoV, you'll need something better than the GSC1.1.

[Tandum (Robin)]

You are probably right there, I used gsc1.1. It took me some time to find one in the right format for pinpoint to use. I recently down loaded tycho2 but I do not know if it is in the right format for pinpoint.

I might add that they give no indication that an external database is required for star resolution, which it is. Nor do they tell us what format is required.

[jase (Jason)]

I use pinpoint 5.x too. Give USNO-A2.0 a go - ftp://ftp.nofs.navy.mil/usnoa/
526,280,881 stars all with reasonably accurate astrometric data. Its 6Gb in size. I'm yet to find a field I'm unable to solve with it. Actually USNO-A2.0 has been superseded by UCAC2, but its not as dense as USNO-A2.0. Indeed Tycho-2 is the most accurate at present containing 2.5 million bright stars, but you need a large FoV.

[Tandum (Robin)]

Realistically, why do you need tpoint, maxpoint or any of the others. If I'm looking for an object the synscan in my mount gets me close and then I navigate by the stars in the eye piece to find it.

[g__day (Matthew)]

Remote control pointing and tracking for one springs to mind. Imaging really faint DSOs - its nice to get really close early on.

I have no trouble with MAXPoint in the imaging train, from PHD, MaximDL or the Sky6.

[bluescope]

Originally Posted by Tandum

Realistically, why do you need tpoint, maxpoint or any of the others. If I'm looking for an object the synscan in my mount gets me close and then I navigate by the stars in the eye piece to find it.

When you live where I live you can't always see stars to navigate with and besides that my st2000xcm is fitted into eyepiece when I'm imaging .... once it's focused I don't remove it to find a target and then refit, refocus etc.



p.s. Thanks g__day

[bluescope]

Thanks all for input !

[Tandum (Robin)]

Originally Posted by bluescope

When you live where I live you can't always see stars to navigate with and besides that my st2000xcm is fitted into eyepiece when I'm imaging .... once it's focused I don't remove it to find a target and then refit, refocus etc.



p.s. Thanks g__day

I look over Brisbane to the north and the Gold Coast to the south so pollution is pretty bad but there are lots of stars in the eyepiece I've been using a parafocal ring and keep focus set for the camera. It's been working pretty well for me. Dialed in M104 tonight and it came up dead center with synscan anyway

I should add that I use maxpoint as an interfacce into ASCOM from TheSky software. TheSky doesn't like the drivers for my mount at all.