I created a 9 panel mosaic which I’ll be shooting with 3 different narrowband filters. I’d like to avoid going 1 panel at a time as to avoid gradient issues from the moon and sky conditions over the next several weeks. Ideally I want to shoot target 1, take 5 exposures for each filter (rotating through), then target 2, same thing, but after target 9 I want it to start over again on target 1. Is this a possibility?
You’re on the right track, imo, wanting to rotate through things to avoid winding up with, say, “All my panel 1 Ha frames were taken at low altitude in bad seeing”.
Couple of ways you can go about this. None are “convenient”, and there’s no toggle/checkbox/setting to do what you want.
- You can adjust the “Repeat” value for each event before starting a session. You’ll have to do a bit of math to figure out how many frames a full evening’s imaging will get you. (E.G. 3 filters, 10min exposures, 30 minutes per mosaic panel to get 1 exposure of all filters on all panels. If you have, say, 9.5-10hrs of dark to work with, then you could get 3 exposures/filter/panel in a night. So…whatever “Repeat” is set to…bump it so it’s 3 more than the current number of frames taken.
- You can also then re-order the targets in the target list, so each night you’re starting on a different target. Night 1, you do 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9. The next night, move 9 to the top, so it’s 9-1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8, then 8-9-1-2-3-4-5-6-7 and so on. Over the course of the mosaic, you’ll wind up working on each target (panel) at different altitudes.
- Your other option is to make use of the “Duplicate Target” and “Copy Events To/From” features, available by right clicking on a target. If you wanted to work through all panels several times a night as you describe, then this would be a way to do it.
- Using the “3 exposures/filter/target” example above, you could set every event to be just a single exposure, then copy each target twice, for a total of 3 copies of each target, each doing one exposure/filter, ordered as you wish for the night.
Yeah…it’s convoluted…really no elegant way of doing it that I’m aware of. I know several have requested that such functionality be considered as upcoming enhancements, but I cannot speak to where such work might fall on the devs’ radar right now. So for now, we sling enough targets/events/exposures around to bend the session to our will. 