Astro photography tool

[Yoddha]

Hi Mark,

If you change the sensor height and width to correspond to the ROI size, the plate solving will work fine. You can save these settings as profile via Shift+Click on 1 or 2 buttons and load it back with these buttons.

[Drac0 (Mark)]

Thanks Ivo. So I just divide the x*y dimensions by the ROI reduction, say 4 for 1/4, and stick that in the settings on the tools tab. Great to know that works! Will test it out next clear night.

Originally Posted by Yoddha

Hi Mark,

If you change the sensor height and width to correspond to the ROI size, the plate solving will work fine. You can save these settings as profile via Shift+Click on 1 or 2 buttons and load it back with these buttons.

[Yoddha]

Hello,

Christmas and the New Year are coming, so it is time for presents! Here is an early one from us – a new version of APT Nope, we will not reveal any details…

Don’t wait, open the box now
https://www.astrophotography.app/news

Happy Holidays!

[PaulSthcoast (Paul)]

Ivo,

thanks for the early gift.

I will certainly update one of my versions.

A merry and safe Christmas to you and yours.


Paul.

[Drac0 (Mark)]

Thanks Ivo, been looking forward to this with a couple of features I'm quite interested in. Great stuff. Have a funtastic Xmas & New Year.

Mark

[Startrek (Martin)]

Thanks Ivo
Received my email too
Out of action with COVID at the moment , dodged it for 3 years but my luck finally ran out.
Still unwell and confined to bed on day 3 ( not just a runny nose for me and I’m fully vaxed ). I’ll be wearing a mask again out in shops and events etc…took it off only about 3 weeks ago ,silly me.

Cheers
Martin

[Yoddha]

Originally Posted by PaulSthcoast

Ivo,

thanks for the early gift.

I will certainly update one of my versions.

A merry and safe Christmas to you and yours.


Paul.

Many thanks Paul!

[Yoddha]

Originally Posted by Drac0

Thanks Ivo, been looking forward to this with a couple of features I'm quite interested in. Great stuff. Have a funtastic Xmas & New Year.

Mark

Many thanks Mark!

[Yoddha]

Originally Posted by Startrek

Thanks Ivo
Received my email too
Out of action with COVID at the moment , dodged it for 3 years but my luck finally ran out.
Still unwell and confined to bed on day 3 ( not just a runny nose for me and I’m fully vaxed ). I’ll be wearing a mask again out in shops and events etc…took it off only about 3 weeks ago ,silly me.

Cheers
Martin

Many thanks Martin!

Get well soon! I had passed through it two years ago, then vaccinated three times and last month had a second round... Luckily it was ways lighter than the first time.

Give you time to rest, recover and sleep, don't hurry to get back to the normal schedule!

[Drac0 (Mark)]

Liking the latest release. Getting into mosaics so being able to directly import from Telescopius is great. Data Craft is VERY useful - my old laptop is slow so most nights I've been there doing small transfers to a USB drive manually or waiting half an hour for it to complete at the end of a session. Now no problem at all with real-time & true mirror. Also discovering the ease of use & power of the inbuilt scripting commands, saving a lot of time & effort through an imaging session.

Well done to the team - looks like I'll be putting my hand into my pocket to upgrade in the new year.

Cheers,
Mark

[Yoddha]

Many thanks Mark!

[Yoddha]

The new version is available APT 4.20 comes with support for PlateSolve3 solver, many new cameras, a lot more improvements and fixes!

If you will be attending NEAF 2023, come to our booth! We will be glad to meet in live

The full list of novelties is available here:
https://www.astrophotography.app/news

[g__day (Matthew)]

Hey Ivo,

Just to let you know - the renew process was so painful I almost gave up - it recognised paypal and then insisted I use that path - but Paypal kept saying check your account - I responded to all the notifications and SMS and email verifications - but it still wouldn't let me thru to send a payment. It would send me back to your website - and your payment option would send me drectly to Paypal - whether I wanted to or not - and that would dump me in a check account loop where no actions were required but you couldn't escape it. Very frustrating!

In the end I tried an incognitio browser as a guest - there was no option on your website to select pay as a guest or via paypal. Once logged on as a guest it kept trying to get me to login to paypal as it recognised the email - even thought I selected process this as a guest. But I refused this and was eventually able to send payment.

I was finally able to pay you and renew my subscription - now it is downloading at 1.4kb/sec - so will take hours!!!

I just updated SharpCap, SGP and others (N.I.N.A.) - each downloaded blazing fast - wonder why I had such a trying and slow experience from APT - as it is normally very fast for me?

And it failed at 4.9mb of downlaod... Tying this again from another browser in normal mode - a bit faster but still 88kb/sec on a 100MB/40MB broadband link that just did a speedtest at 103 mbps. Something at the moment doesn't seem right somewhere...

Next update - it failed at 19MB of 99 - this is not a good look mate!

Next try - it failed at 10MB downloaded - I am wondering if there is an issue between whatever country your main servers are hosted in and Australia - as your site normally flies too!

Next try - 12MB - think I will give it up for a lost acuse tonight and try again tomorrow...

Internal Server Error

The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.
Please contact the server administrator at webmaster@astrophotography.app to inform them of the time this error occurred, and the actions you performed just before this error.
More information about this error may be available in the server error log.

PS the download button says the file is 99.3MB - but the download started says its 94.9MB - so there is some further issue to address there - one of these two things is wrong!

PPS just tried Chrome browser - my credentials were accepted - but it said teh download was 99.2MB - which is the trial version size - not 99.3MB - but it still failed in the first 14MB - so there seem multiple things going wrong tonight...

Regards,

Matthew

[Yoddha]

Hi Matthew,

Thank you for your support for APT and apologies for the inconvenience!

I have sent you a workaround link which should do the work. Also, in the APT site when you enter your key/email and click on Download you will see alternative download link.

We know that in less than 1% of the downloads is possible to have problems. A lot of hours have been spent trying to fix that, however it is not possible to reproduce it in a development environment We have tried to apply every hint posted in the net, but still sometimes there are broken downloads It is something related to the client connection, not the speed, but possibly dynamic routing made from the provider or something.

As for the PayPal process, it is completely out of our hands. PayPal has their security policy and does the versification. We just sent a link in order to identify that there is a request for payment. Once you click on the button in our site, everything is done by PayPal itself.

[g__day (Matthew)]

Hi Ivo,


Many thanks - the link worked and the download took 12 seconds! I wondered if the Payment link was all PayPal's issues losing synchronisation somehow.

Next for me is learning what has changed in your software and others over the last 18 months whilst I have been all work and no play!

Best regards, Matthew

[Yoddha]

[g__day (Matthew)]

Ivo,


I am setting up a new PC to run my astrolab - I have one telescope that uses a MoonLite motorfocuser controlled via a Mini V2 controller - this connects to a ZWO 71MC-c.

If I want APT 4.20 to manage both the camera and the focuser - what focuser do I select for the Moonlite Mini V2? When I install Moonlites universal driver under ASCOM I see two choices:

Moonlite Focuser (.NET) or
Moonlite DRO Focuser Driver

Which should I select or do I need another driver that says Moonlite Mini v2?
Do I just use DRO (it has been an age since I set this up) and the old Lab PC is dying before I wrote all the software settings down!

The SkyX interestly shows my driver choices as ASCOM these two but Moonlite appears and it allows me different choices - Mini c2, a V3 driver or NiteCrawler

[Yoddha]

Hi Matthew,

I'm not sure which option you have to use. If the DRO is working for you, just stay with it

[g__day (Matthew)]

Ivo,

I must say your USB monitor capability in APT is a complete godsend - it allowed me to check all my USB devices in one place for good behaiour and it is awesome!

Secondly I just downloaded V4.21 of APT - the primary download location was slow as again - i.e. 12 kb a second but the alternative link below it flew and took under half a minute to download the 100MB or so executable.

It did open release notes but they seem to be for v4.20 - so I will check again.

Next I am off to learn how to autofocus / fine focus for your software. I have done rough focus with a Bhatinov mask - now I am keen to learn how well APT can control really fine focus of my ZWO gear - a mono camera ZWO 1600MM-c, 7 slots ZWO Electronic Filter Wheel (EFW) and ZWO Electronic focuser EAF. I will also see if I can sense what offset is needed per filter wheel to achieve fine focus.

Can you point me to is there a great Youtube video or Word/PDF link showing one how to best do this?

Thanks, Matthew

PS

The recommended Moonlight DRO focuser software was a complete bust - it didn't detect anything - but the .NET version worked perfectly - will query Moonlight guys about that!

[Yoddha]

Hi Matthew,

Many thanks!

Here is a video where I'm discussing the focusing setup - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKzsrzI2e_w

It can be in help As for the release notes, 4.21 is a small update, usually we mark these as beta/preview, however this is stable as the official version, hence the status... Only the official versions have new release notes, user's guide update and new tooltips.