A Lost night

[technofetishism (Nick)]

Now tonights been a rather frustrating night, 3.5 hours out under a clear sky (average seeing, but better than nothing) and less than a handful of objects viewed due to various issues. However a new routine worked out.

Synscan's polar routine, EQAlign and drift aligning with PHD are all out the window now. AstroTortilla's polar alignment tool is now the one I'll use from here on out. Got myself a sub arcminute alignment after not too much time. (A sheer fraction of the time spent fighting with EQAlign.)

Now the big issue i had tonight that caused so much lost time was AstroPlanner freezing/locking up/crashing on me more times than i can count. Eventually leaving ASCOM in an unusable state unless i rebooted. (at which point clouds were coming in so decided to call it a night.

Has anyone had much experience with Astroplanner crashing heaps often and ways to stop it?

[louie_the_fly (Stew)]

Gidday Nick, where are you observing from? Good to hear you at least got a few objects in. What is the polar alignment tool you referred to?
I've not used astroplanner but I was going to have a look at it today now that my RA drive is fixed and ready to go. If it's like some of the software I use for work sometimes problems can be caused by conflicts with other software. Try closing some applications that are running in the background that you don't nesecarily need (thru task manager in windows). Good luck with it.