I don’t know what information will help, so I will keep my initial post short. This weekend SGP would not take flats, no matter what I tried. My first attempt, using a new equipment profile, (collected darks and lights just fine), Auto Flats Wizard (which has worked for me in the past) produced two messages followed by the sequence stopping with no flats taken:
“Observatory missing”: I’ve never seen this and have no idea what it means. It went away when SGP asked me if I wanted to unpark my scope (I don’t think it was parked) and I clicked the “Yes” button.
“One or more exposure has default exposure of 0s”: I’ve seen this message several times and the Auto Flats Wizard has worked. I have never to my knowledge set a “default exposure length”, but I did confirm neither min nor max exposure was 0s. The result was SGP telling me it “was waiting” for a few seconds, the giving me the “Perform End of Sequence Tasks” pop-up and ending the sequence. With no flats taken.
This means that the sequence has options selected that require an observatory and will typically tell you exactly what that option is in the error dialog (possibly some slaving options are selected).
This means that your default flats exposure time is unset for the filter / binning combination you selected for flats. Not a big deal really… when this happens SGPro will start at 2.5 sec. If you set it closer to the actual value you know to be true for that combination, AutoFlats will need to iterate less times and save a few seconds.
As for understanding why no flats were taken, we’ll be happy to take a look at logs showing the AutoFlats run. You can submit them using SGPro. Additional details here:
Thank you, Ken. I will double check the sequence which produced the error, but I think I have “no observatory” specified. I don’t have any building automation for SGP to help me with.
The behavior you describe is exactly what AutoFlats has done every time I used it until this past Saturday: first exposure is 2.5s and then it iterates from there to find the correct exposure. Great tool after you helped me get over the learning curve a few months ago.
I’ll look for the log. It’s been a while since I submitted one.
I am at my observatory this weekend using my “regular” gear and a sequence I’ve used before. I took sky flats in the afternoon without problem. I guess there must be something wonky in the new sequence from last week. I’ve attached the sequence I’ve had trouble with (GSO NGC7380) and the sequence which has performed as I’ve expected (Hickson16).