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

Hi All,

ST4i shows the Aten class NEO asteroid (163899) 2003 SD220 will pass through the tail of Ursa Major and between M 51 and M 101 on the mornings of 12 DEC 2018 and 13 DEC 2018. A 100 mm camera lens on a crop-sensor DSLR camera (12.8° x 8.5° FOV) should fit both galaxies and Mizar & Alkaid in the field. This looks like a good opportunity for an unique astro image.

The attached .stx file contains the osculating orbital elements for the epoch 27 APR 2019. My ST4i won't plot the asteroid on the Interactive Atlas, but it will work with the Exposure Calculator and will draw the asteroid track on the atlas so you can see where it's going.

Rats!!! The forum doesn't allow .stx files as attachments. Rats^2 .zip files aren't allowed either.

OK, I changed the .stx file extension to .txt and the forum accepted it. Hopefully anyone interested can download the .txt file and change the extension back to .stx and feed it to ST4i.

Happy hunting & Clear skies,

Phil S.

P. S. God knows clear skies are a rare thing in Ohio lately  .

Hello everyone,

I have been working hard on getting complete data for all of the iTelescopes. The difficulty has been in obtaining data for all of the filters. The Astrodon OIII 5nm filter is commonly used and there is not yet any data available for it. I am waiting to hear from the new owners of Astrodon, once they scan the filter. In the meantime I have constructed a facsimile of this filter by stretching the 3nm filter to 5nm. This should be very close to the actual filter data.

I have also had to construct the HeII and SIII filters for T17 because I have yet to find any data for them. They are apparently custom filters.

T17 also has a spectroscopic grating installed, labeled "Custom." I have created a filter to represent the grating that attenuates the signal by 5 magnitudes, which when selected will approximate the SNR in the stellar continuum.

Changes have been made to reflect the new T09 system.

I am told that T27 has been decommissioned, so this telescope has not been updated. Feel free to delete it from your Imaging Systems.

The new data will be made available later today. I will post a notice here once it is ready. In the meantime, be sure to update SkyTools Imaging to version 4.0b, as it has fixes that are important to the iTelescope update.

I've been fiddling around with the scheduler, and am noticing something that's got me baffled ...

   


I've created a project as shown; 60 SNR, "Main extent/ arms" detail, IQ of A, multiple nights exposure ...

   

... when we look at the project in the Night Bar it looks OK; we have a blue line when it's possible to expose, a red line for the altitude, moon is tucked away, and we have two green bars; the top one we see an IQ B period from 2240 to 2300, an IQ A period from 2300 to 0050, then another IQ B band from 0050 to 0205, finally a "no way" band from 0205 to 0215.  In the lower bar we see a short period for setup in red, a period of time from 2305 to 0050 when it's good to expose and a yellow indent bar to indicate what region it's indicating.  That's all good ... I specified the minimum project detail as IQ A, multiple nights, cool ... and that's reflected in the top listbox ...

Notice on the bottom listbox it's giving me my filter time starting at 23:05 with 62x1 lights (it's occluded, but that listbox indicates it will be 2% complete toward my SNR 60 goal with this.  That makes sense, this is an SQM 19.1 site so I expect a short exposure time to help mitigate the skyfog, integration time of 62m ..

Look at the "Schedule" listbox though ... it shows at 23:02 I slew on over and change my filters and it's scheduling me for 62x1 lights, that's fine ...

If I bring up the "Exposure Calculator" to get a better idea of my signal and sky ADU values the Night Bar looks similar to the main one, and I get three "Exposure Opportunities" which correspond to the three green bands in the main bar; I've selected the middle one for IQ A, cool ...

... but here's where it gets strange; in the "Exposure Opportunities" for that IQ A row it's telling me a duration of 65min (fine, that's pretty close to 62min) but it's saying the ideal exp time is 1sec, when on the main dialog it's calling for 1min (one second is too short anyway unless I'm taking 65 * 60 lights for a total integration time of 65min).  Stranger still, in the "Calculate SNR for Exposure" it first set the "total time" edit for 115m and then in the group box it's telling me about 13 exp at 8min, which gives us a total integration time of 114min which matches the time of 115m it put into the edit box.

If I manually adjust the 115m that it put there to the 65min that the main dialog and the "Exposure Opportunities" listbox row call for then the text numbers get closer ... but am I doing something wrong that's causing these effects in the first place?

Thx!