Is there any software that analyses your image capature capabilites over all of sky?

[g__day (Matthew)]

Just wondering - has anyone heard or used any image processing software that can analyse all your imaging data and give you a map of where your equipment shoots better or worse over the whole night sky?

I presume pointing and tracking errors in my rig are mostly random - and more or less unavoidable - until I wondered but are they? Is there any software folk know of that can inspect all your images and where in the night sky you were pointing - score them and then present you a map of is your system consistent or does it have much better and worse zones of the sky to shoot at (indicating I would suspect a gear problem)?

Just trying to tune and eck out everything I can from my gear - and wondering is there anything that can take my thousands of images and look to see if some part of the night sky give me much better or worse areas to image in?

Many thanks,

Matthew

[g__day (Matthew)]

Slight divergence from this - as I am expecting the answer will be mostly no - though you could export select PixInsight data to a text file then run that through a specific ChatGPT script to get the answers.

I stumbled across this video - which has really excellent insights on how to best image galaxies!

Galaxy Studio: Producing World Class Galaxy Images

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XBon7x6kio

[Dennis]

T-Point and ProTrack in The Sky X Pro slews your mount/scope to many points in the celestial sphere (number of points is user defined, from say 20 to 200+), takes a say, 10 sec exposure, plate solves that image and then compares the results to where the mount “thinks” it is pointing versus actual pointing.

When you apply those corrections to the mount, pointing accuracy and tracking accuracy are much improved over the uncalibrated mount.

Wit my C11 at 2800mm, I have been able to image at 60 secs unguided with no evidence of star training and a couple of experimental 180 sec exposures looked just as good.

This is for the SB MX+ Mount.

Dennis.

[g__day (Matthew)]

I have both Tpoint and the SkyX - Professional edition - the challenge being Software Bisque never made Protrack available for anything other then their own mounts - as far as I am aware. So they may well build a pointing model - but they don't share the tracking model to correct an not SB mount! I would guess that this would a trivial matter for them to enable - but by maintaining it's exclusivity for SB controlled mounts using their MKS x000 controllers - they gain a feature to allow them to put a great feature on only their mounts.

I am a bit surprised that no one else has said that's a great idea - tracking is just realtime pointing - and once you build an all of sky poining model - applying real time tracking from this model should be trivial as every X ticks apply a goto your current coordinates +/- a Dec and RA margin determined by your Tpoint supermodel - if for that part of the sky the supermodel has a correction to offer.

To be fair whilst this is likely straightforward to do - unless your mount had top tier gearing and electronics - it possibly wouldn't be precise enough for Protrack to work! If it is good enough to do it - (think brands like 10 Micron, AstroPhysics, or Planewave technologies) then it probably doesn't even need it!

I find my pointing is very reliable - and plate solving and centring - whether by The SkyX closed loop slews or APTs Goto++ - extremely reliable.

I would love it if Protrack where enabled for non SB mounts!

[Dennis]

I used to use T-Point on my Tak EM200 mount, and it significantly improved the pointing accuracy but as you say, no ProTrack on non-SB Mounts.

But you can display the actual Points from a T-Point Run.

I wonder if you can access the “as pointed” versus “actual” RA and DEC data values from these Points, to then put into a spreadsheet and chart the pointing accuracy of your mount for different parts of the sky?

Dennis.