I have been wanting to give Ekos/INDI a try for awhile and finally had a chance last night.
I have been imaging for over a decade with Windows/ASCOM/Maxim and more recently SGPro so I feel fairly comfortable with most imaging topics.
Overall I was pleased with the night but there are some issues which I hope I can get some help with understanding.
I even managed to capture some quality data:
astrob.in/full/301313/0/
Here are my comments/questions - most are likely either configuration settings I didn't see or understand properly.
GUIDING
The internal guider worked well with my SX Lodestar on my AP Mach1 mount. I also used PHD2 which did well.
Some questions:
- In the INDI lx200ap driver it seemed like the 'Use Pulse Cmd?' option didn't always show up and didn't seem to persist ON even when I saved the INDI configuration. Any input on how this option works would be helpful. I did finally get it enabled and PHD2 was able to use pulse guiding with the Mach1 so that was good.
- I could not find the option in Ekos or the internal guider to set the threshold for letting the mount settle after a dither operation - could someone please explain this to me?
ALIGNMENT MODULE
- Plate solving with the offline astronomy.net module worked GREAT out of the box. Well done!
- However I could never get a slew to work accurately. I would "Capture and Solve" - have it set to SYNC Mount (I set the lx200ap driver to use RECAL) - then I would slew to the target again in Kstars. The target was always offset slightly - maybe 10-15 arcminutes. It looked like a Jnow/J2000 problem. Would like some help here.
- How does the alignment module use all the historical plate solves with a pointing model? I do NOT want it to do anything with my slew requests besides pass them on to the mount. My polar alignment is accurate enough all I need so a plate solve/sync/reslew and targets in SGP are always centered. I'd like to replicate this setup under Ekos. I did not use the 'Model Editor' button on the Alignment screen to create a module.
- What is the easiest way to enter a J2000 RA/DEC and have the mount slew to it? I plan all my framing with aladin and have a RA/DEC in mind already. Also can I do with without using the scheduler - my preference is to just enter the coordinates manually and have it slew.
FITS VIEWER
- Is there anyway to manually stretch the image in the FITS viewer - I'd like to set a black point and gamma at least.
- When I saved an image from the FITS Viewer to a FITS file it was unreadable by Maxim and Pixinsight on my Windows machine - anyone seen this?