I should have mentioned this sooner, but I've been crazy busy lately. I will be attending the TSP for the first time (long story), arriving on Thursday afternoon. We will have a table in the Vendor area so I shouldn't be too hard to find.

Questions about SkyTools 4 Visual are strictly forbidden!

(just kidding)

Hello Friends - I have captured NCG5139 with my ASIAIR , refractor 500/90 without any light pollution filter 
You may like this , kindly check on my blog 

https://astrobalcony.com/deep-sky-astrop...-ngc-5139/

Hi All,

A new iTelescope has opened in Chile. The designation is T40. From the iTelescope description:

Telescope Optics

OTA: ASA 500
Optical Design: Corrected Newtonian Astrograph 
Aperture: 500mm
Focal Length: 1940mm
F/Ratio: f/3.8 
Guiding: External 
Mount: ASA DDM85

Phil S.

Hello everyone,

I will be attending the Northeast Astro-Imaging Conference next week. We will have a vendor table. If you are going, please consider stopping by for a chat!

Hi  

Does anyone have data files for the ZWO LRGB and narrow-band fiilters ( https://astronomy-imaging-camera.com/wp-...SI1600.jpg )?

Thanks,
--jim

The anti-virus software Bitdefender has been wreaking havoc with SkyTools 4 Imaging installs, and is now doing the same with SkyTools 3. It is apparently removing or blocking database files during the installation of SkyTools. When started, SkyTools can fail in any number of strange ways. This has caused a great deal of trouble and cost me a lot of my time, reaching the point now where the first thing that I ask when a customer seeking support is what anti-virus is running.

If you run into obvious head-scratching problems soon after installation, please uninstall SkyTools. Delete the "SkyTools 3" or "SkyTools 4" folder in your Documents area. Disable Bitdefender. Re-install. Note that deleting these folders will delete all of your custom data, so I do not recommend doing so if you have spent a great deal of time configuring your instruments. If you don't want to lose your data, please contact me for support.

Database files are very unlikely to harbor dangers to your computer. But more to the point, it is unconscionable for Bitdefender to be removing or interfering with your database files without a big obvious warning to the user. The failure to do so means that I cannot recommend that SkyTools users continue to use Bitdefender. The anti-virus that comes with Windows is sufficient and does not interfere with the working of your software.

Hello everyone,

In recent years there has been a trend in amateur astronomy that I find to be needlessly confusing. That is the trend toward calling visual observation "observing." This appears to be driven by the amateur imagers among us, who are looking for a quick counter to the word "imaging." 

The problem is that this is a misuse of the word "observing." Consider that professional astronomers are broken into two main camps: theoreticians, and those who do observational astronomy. When an observational astronomer uses a telescope, regardless of what instrument is attached, he/she is said to be "observing" and making "observations," and this has not meant looking through a telescope in a very long time. In short, observing is the collection of observational data as opposed to theory. In my opinion, it should not be used to describe looking through the telescope only.

Hi Greg,

I'm not sure if this question belongs here or in the iTelescope Forum, feel free to move it.

I'm trying to get up to speed on using the iTelescope system in preparation for an upcoming tutorial with Dr. Sasse next week. For starters I wanted to do astrometry on 2 main belt asteroids (10482) Dangrieser and (10483) Tomburns using iTelescope T05 in New Mexico. I created Imaging projects for each object as shown below:

When I ran the ST4i Scheduler, there was a gap between the observations of the 2 asteroids, so I decided to add some exposures of Comet 46P/Wirtanen to fill the gap. The Imaging Project for Wirtanen is shown below:

As the comet is very bright I tried to limit the exposures to 15 min/filter, but I messed up the exposure time for the blue filter and the Scheduler produced this Plan for T05: (Looks like I can't control where the attachment files appear in the post - this will probably get confusing  sorry.)

Question 1: Why did the Scheduler schedule Wirtanen 3 times? Given the brightness, 15 min/filter should have been plenty of exposure. 2 minutes should have provided SNR's in the hundreds for each color and 1000+ for the Clr filter. I didn't select the Astrometry option for the comet, but I did for each asteroid. This added 2 hrs to the plan's run time.

Question 2: If I strip out the extra Wirtanen imaging runs would the plan work properly or will the times for Tomburns be incorrect? Except for the extra Wirtanen images and the error I made on the blue filter this is close to what I wanted to accomplish.

When I tried to schedule Dangrieser only I got this plan: The dither command is included, but I don't see the explicit dithering commands for RA & Dec as in the plan for all 3 objects.

I fixed the error with the blue filter & got this plan as a result: Both asteroids are dithered, but there are still 3 series of exposures on Wirtanen.

It looks like I can't add more attachments. I add a second post with additional attachments after you have a chance to digest this one. Let me know if you have questions about what I'm trying to do. Maybe I'm asking too much of the Scheduler & should simplify what I'm doing.

Also, how do I remove an Imaging Project from the Scheduler's consideration? It now has 3 objects and I can't remove Wirtanen to schedule just the 2 asteroids. I must be missing something.

TIA,

Phil S.

[attachment=216]
Hello
for working with iTelescope, especially with narrowband it is a discount of up to 50% for a moon illumination above 75%.
The object info window is a good help to see the time window which the angle separation is above 60° (Example), but what is the llumination?
It would be nice to have a graph overlay on the object info which shows the degree of illumination!
Then a quick look shows the time with an illumination of >75% and an angle separation of >60°.
Perhaps the same Info is usefull in the Planner bar.

Thanks
Ed

With the interest in this comet growing, I am receiving a lot of emails asking how to best use SkyTools to observe it. There is a web page that explains how to update your data and use all of the various tools available for the comet observer:

https://www.skyhound.com/comet_guide.html