Quote:
Originally Posted by WingnutR32
... the time is still yet to reach astronomical twilight.
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I suspect Sam has nailed it, Shah. ACP doesn't reach astronomical twilight until the sun is -12 below. In ACP this is a fixed value. In Scheduler it can be tweaked. Its the reverse for dawn as this triggers ACP to stop what its doing and start getting reading for dawn flats if configured to do so.
Waiting until -12 could be a problem if you want to shoot comets low in the western sky early in the evening.
You can change the value in ACP
Edit the file aacqform.asp in C:\Users\Public\Documents\ACP Web Data\Doc Root\ac and look for this code;
nearDusk = nearestDusk(-12); // Wait if not yet dusk
Change this value to something like -6 if you want ACP to kick into action earlier.
In all seriousness, given your screen capture indicates you want to shoot the DSO M67, I would recommend waiting until the sun hits -12 otherwise you'll experience a sky brightness washout especially with a U filter, though exposure time is only 5sec.
Plan your targets with ACP planner then upload those plans to ACP. If you're lazy (like me) when it comes to planning precise times as to when to shoot targets, ACP Scheduler takes the guess work out and will shoot the target only when certain conditions (constraints in ACP talk) are met. You just tell it what to shoot such as only do RGB when the moon is down and only shoot blue filtered data when the target is +70 in elevation, it will work out the rest. Very powerful and a sure way to ensure that every clear night your system is operating with a high clear sky to data acquired efficiency ratio.
I hope your ACP evaluation goes well. ACP is a rock solid platform for automation.
