2018-09-21, 03:36 PM
(2018-09-21, 02:50 PM)theskyhound Wrote: Wow. That really should not be necessary! Something doesn't seem right. Why does the first one stop at 60? When you get the chance, please consider posting a screen capture of the Scheduler window so that I can understand what is happening. I suspect that you don;'t have something set up right. Its always better to do things correctly than to kludge them.
No no ... I *want* it to stop after 60min, at that point it's gotten what it needs to hit the target SNR and it's good, I have no need for it to linger longer. Consider the minor planet photometry project, where I want to get a series of lights throughout the evening to see if something "moved". I'm not interested in getting the super best picture of the minor planet, I just want to get an image good enough to be able to compare it to another image taken 10min later or so. ST4 has just that capability (and the user is warned that iTelescope won't appreciate that kind of schedule with a gap in the middle, in fact) ...
Now consider that I have a DSO that I want to get multiple lights of over a period of several weeks. Each individual light I want to get an SNR of 60 for, and on this night ST4 calculates that it will take 60min for that to happen. Assume that this evening the DSO will be in an IQ A position for a total of 130min ... based on that I actually have the potential to take two of my 60min SNR 60 lights during that 130min interval which is what I want; two lights today, two more tomorrow, maybe ten more by the end of the week, hopefully I'll hit my goal of 50 SNR 60 lights of that object by the time the object is no longer in IQ A range for the season ...
I can't use the multiple exposure checkbox in the Exposure Goals section since the DSO isn't a minor planet and it's greyed out, so by duplicating the project I have ST4 schedule project "A" for the first part of the IQ A period, when the scheduler gets to project "A'" it says "oh look, there's a period available right near the end of the IQ A range for this, great!" and schedules project A' right after it schedules project A. End result: I will get two SNR 60 lights of the DSO object ...
There's another advantage of duplicating projects: say that tonight my IQ 4 windows is only 95 minutes ... project A makes it find, but project B only has 35 min to image, not enough unless the project is set to "ongoing" which means that tomorrow with another IQ 4 window I'll have enough time to get another complete A light but ST4 will also be able to finish up the ongoing A' project, giving me a total of three DSO lights over two days ... woohoo!
Hope this makes sense!
