I appreciate your patience. There is definitely something very wrong with that OIII filter. The SNR numbers in the preview really don't make sense.
One thing: the only way to be absolutely certain that the changes made to the imaging system were seen by the Scheduler is to navigate away from the Scheduler tab by selecting a different tab, and then come back. Clear any existing schedule and try schedule again. Please try that and let me know if it is still misbehaving.
If it is still not working properly, the best way to proceed is to send me your imaging system so I can test it directly. To do that, open the Imaging Systems dialog, select your system, and click the Save button. This will create a .stx file that you can share with me by uploading it here.
2026-05-20, 03:38 AM (This post was last modified: 2026-05-20, 03:47 AM by Mystic Hill.)
Greg,
Thanks for sticking with me on this. I am learning this part of the program at the while trying to understand what it is doing for me.
I am becoming quite the expert at clearing schedules and rescheduling. One reason is the date fails to keep up with me and I have to change the day and start over.
This time I played with scheduling multiple imaging projects for the same night. I think I get it now. I still could not make the OIII event at 00:41:40 display properly with a non-zero exposure time. I still think it has something to do with the Imaging Project's Exposure Goal for Sub exposures being set to "Auto". My other projects are forced to 1 minute.
Please see Schedule information screenshot and stx file.
Roy
Greg,
Since it was cloudy tonight, I went and made sure the first three imaging projects were set to Auto sub exposures. This created more squirrelly times for some filters as seen in the screenshot (attached). for these events the scheduled exposure times are zero.
I tried loading your .stx file into my personal copy of SkyTools and it failed. But when I loaded it with the debugger running in my development copy it worked fine. Sometimes the debugger can mask some kinds of faults. I'm still looking into that, but it may be a clue.
Anyhow, I looked over your settings and all seems good. I just have one question: there is on one available sub exposure time (60 sec). Is that they way it was when it failed, or did you change that to get it to work? If it failed with different allowed exposure time settings in the Imaging System setup, what were they?
I tried loading your .stx file into my personal copy of SkyTools and it failed. But when I loaded it with the debugger running in my development copy it worked fine. Sometimes the debugger can mask some kinds of faults. I'm still looking into that, but it may be a clue.
Anyhow, I looked over your settings and all seems good. I just have one question: there is on one available sub exposure time (60 sec). Is that they way it was when it failed, or did you change that to get it to work? If it failed with different allowed exposure time settings in the Imaging System setup, what were they?
Yes, sometimes there is an exposure time of 60 and sometimes it is zero when the setting is for Auto exposures. I cannot explain the difference. I thought maybe I'd see subs of 300s with Auto exposures because ST4i doesn't know that I am not guiding and I am not permanently mounted. So far I have seen either 60s or nothing, and zero just seems wrong.
Sorry, I wasn't clear. On the Imaging Systems dialog there is a button labeled Exposure Times. When you click on this button a dialog opens. This dialog allows you to tell SkyTools what the allowed exposure times are. There are two ways to do this: by selecting a range of allowed exposure times (e.g 1-5 minutes), or by entering a list of allowed exposure times (e.g. 60, 90, 120, 300). The imaging system that I received only allows for a single exposure time: 60 seconds (which is unusual).
In order to try to understand this problem, I need to know if it has always been set to 60 seconds only, or if you had more allowed exposure times at the time when the problems you reported earlier occurred. .
2 hours ago(This post was last modified: 2 hours ago by Mystic Hill.)
Greg,
Ah ha! moment over here. If I had ever seen the Exposure Times dialog before it was only once years ago and long before I tried making sense out of the Imaging Project framework. There is only one setting for 60 sec, not very Auto friendly at all. Since I have the ability to force exposure times to 60 sec within the Imaging Project I don't need to force it so in the Exposure Times dialog. I am going to try a camera range of 0.001 sec to 5 min and see what gives.
I made a new schedule using Auto exposure settings now that the camara is described as capable of doing a range of exposures and not 60 sec only. This time reasonable exposures from 51 sec to 4 min and 1 sec were recorded on the xml file. I can't explain the apparent affinity for the extra second.
So, briefly, don't over constrain the allowable exposure times if you want Auto exposure to work for you inside an Imaging Project.
