Would love to see per-event dither settings (frequency). When imaging short exposure I set the dither to every few frames to save time, but long exposures every frame. This means manual intervention.
Good program, keep it up.
Kevin
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I have a side-by-side rig and am changing my observatory to a slotted, rotating dome. SGP’s dome slaving parameters currently only offers a vertical offset of the scope from the RA axis. In some orientations, this will not allow the scopes off to the side to have a clear view of the sky. Adding a horizontal, or angular offset for a scope position would solve this. For example, a scope’s positions could be defined as 12" vertical offset and 10°East offset from the RA axis. Or 12" vertical offset and 5" East offest. Not sure how many people have this issue, but to me it is a critical one.
The typical reason to dither is to help your image processing program handle hot pixels and column defects by moving those defects around on an image by image basis. To do that, you want to dither on every frame regardless of the length of the exposure. The only real option is how big of a dither to perform to achieve the goal of eliminating defects in the processed image. Normally, a hot pixel or column defect will look the same in a ten second or a 600 second exposure.
Charlie
As an addendum to my original post, I completely forgot to add another partially complete feature that will be in a release shortly after 4.1… specifically:
Matched Flat Events
Really nothing more than a normal flat event with a new property. That is to say: you assign the event type of flat and all the normal things will auto populate for that filter-binning combo. Nothing new there… Still working on the UI for this, but the idea is that you can assign the flats event to a lights event that has the same filter-binning combo. Just before a frame from this event is captured, SGPro will inspect a combination of the matched light event and the most recent light image file from that event, determine the mechanical position of the rotator when the light frame was captured and then move the rotator prior to flat integration prior to integration. Some notes:
- The existing Flats wizard would work in the same way, but it would optionally allow for the flat events it creates to be automatically attached to its corresponding light event.
- Initially, I think this property will only be valid in targets that have no light frames. Eventually, we’d be able to remove this restriction when we can add steps to essentially “recover” the sequence if a new light event were to run after a flat frame that moves the rotator.
- Would not be available to the manual rotator.
- Would not be available to DSLR users emitting only RAW images
Maybe some other stuff… but that’s the general idea
This would be great!
The current “work in progress” allows for managing “sub frame sets”. A subframe set is user created with a series of drawn rectangles that allow for the areas defined by the rectangle to be interpreted as “included” or “excluded”. For instance, if you wanted to make a subframe set for a rig that should ignore the edges of the image and also the center:
- Draw an “include” rectangle over the entire portion of the image you want to include (i.e. crop the edges).
- Then, switch to an exclusion rectangle and make a rectangle in the center
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That’s excellent, @Ken . Just to clarify, when you say “work in progress”, do you mean that it is already out in a beta or that is in development?
One more request, would it be possible to insert auto-centering actions in a sequence with triggers like every number of frames or every xx minutes? This would help to keep the frame centered with unguided imaging.
Thanks,
Luca
It is close to beta, but not in it currently. While it’s not fully ready, the primary reason is that we don’t want to have 2 beta tracks at one time and 4.1 is still in the last phases. Specifically, with respect to this feature, the auto focus subframe “editor” (drawing boxes) is almost complete and the work for the AF routine to actually use said boxes is also complete. Still more work to do on management, deleting, editing, defaults, how to assign to a target, deeper integration with equipment profiles, etc…
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Please add this! Its amazing!!
For those of use with multiple setups on one mount, it would be great to be able to switch between them during the night. For example, if a small target is available for the first half of the night, I’d want to use my RC10 with its camera and OAG guide camera. But a larger target may be available for the 2nd half of the night so I’d like to switch to using my small refractor and piggybacked guide scope/camera.
Currently, SGP is locked to one set of gear for a session. Perhaps some way to link SGP sequence files so that when one sequence is complete, it closes itself, and you can specify another sequence file to start up as a follow on, with its own set of equipment connections, which automatically connect when kicked off.
Allow the end time of a sequence to include a date so that a sequence can span multiple days.
I love the way I can currently use SGP to shoot around the clouds by using its recovery mode. Since I have a CloudWatcher, with can monitor sky brightness as well as clouds, wind, etc. I can set a non-dark sky as an unsafe to open condition for the observatory. Then if a sequence spanned several days, recovery could would keep checking with the Cloudwatcher until the sky is dark enough, and clear of clouds, etc., and re-open the observatory to continue shooting a target.
This would take automation to the next level where you could set up for a particular target, and let your gear automatically start and stop whenever conditions allow, to gather loads of integration time over many days.
This is currently supported with SGPro now. You’d need to set dawn as an unsafe condition, dark as safe and then ensure that the target has no end time. Combined with the “restart when safe option” this can carry a sequence for many days without human intervention.
I have the latest release version and the start and end times for a target just have “Today” and “Tomorrow” next to them. No way to set a date for either of them. Is it available in the beta? Or are you just saying to leave the end time checkbox unchecked and let it run open-ended?
Yes, this.
OK, thanks! Might be nice to limit the end date, but this does get at what I want to achieve.
A mosaic sensitive AF option would be useful.
It would be an option that turns off the AF routine when centering between targets of a mosaic sequence of the same object (ie. small moves) but maintain AF when centering on a new object (ie. large move). This would be especially useful eg for SCT’s that suffer from mirror shift after large movement of the scope but not necessarily after very small movements and when your sequence includes several objects among at least one is a mosaic.
One feature I’d find useful is an option to set the Image History panel to show FWHM in arc-seconds instead of HFR. I’d like to be able to use that graph to track seeing over time and FWHM correlates directly to seeing, while HFR does not.
I know that changes in focus over time will also affect both HFR and FWHM, so it would not always be an accurate representation, but regular autofocusing would take care of most of that.
It would be great to be able to set up a “seeing monitor” sequence in SGP to use just for keeping track of changes in seeing over time. Using FWHM in Image History would be a way to do that.
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Thank you for the opportunity to make suggestions. Here are my thoughts.
- The ability to capture a certain amount of subs (time frame) of a certain quality. HFR is your current measure, but SNR, eccentricity etc. should also be considered. Performance tradeoff’s of course need to be considered.
- For people with manual rotators and OAG;s, the ability to talk current angles directly with PHD2. I expect that the accuracy we now get via plate solving is far greater than the PHD2 calibration process.
- The speed of plate solving is to the point that you can run it after every frame and rectify if out by more than your plate solving error. Use the image you just captured whilst dithering / settling.
- The new dark theme is great, much appreciated, but an image from framing and mosaic wizard object leaves white borders to the left and right with my setup. An actual captured image was fine. This was a sequence from 4.0. Dark theme should equal black borders.
- Splitting the job queue functionality out of the sequence. The ability to have a number of sequences active based on time, elevation limits etc. Data from each target can go into separate directories. The ability to add / edit targets whilst a sequence is active.
- Given everyone has a smart phone in their pocket, a phone app to drive / keep tabs on SGP remotely
Hope some of these are of interest. Please keep up the great work.
I forgot one.
7. Auto exposure length option based on target and conditions.
You already calculate the ideal exposure time, making this an optional input into sequence exposure (maybe even the default) will help beginners get up to speed. Auto rather than 0 being the default exposure value.
Experts will select their exposure time manually in exactly the same way they do currently.
You already have a process in getting the ideal ADU for flats, repurposing a version of that for auto exposure maybe the way to go.
The more smart defaults the better.
Just a comment on your #6. I use an app called GNS (for Good Night System) that is supported natively in SGP’s notification system. So my phone app monitors the progress of my sequence, lets me know how its progressing, and notifies me of errors or warnings generated by SGP. It can set to wake you up if the situation warrants. It also has a heartbeat signal from your imaging computer to your phone app so it will alert you even if SGP dies, or if your computer crashes or goes up in smoke. It’s published by Lunatico Astronomia.
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