Contents - Index


Options

On this page, you can set the activities and events during the course of a session.  The options are divided into 3 phases as indicated by the tabs at the top of the page.  Activity flows top to bottom  from the first entry on the Startup tab, through the Acquisition Tab to the last entry on the Shutdown page.  Each tab is described in its on topic.




Mount Options

You can select Tracking Off While Waiting or Park While Waiting to determine what your mount does while waiting.  For example, when I take dusk flats, I select Tracking Off While Waiting so that the telescope will be pointed nominally to the zenith to facilitate cooling.  Others may not need this and can select Park While Waiting.
  • Assess Data: If you have Data Assessment checked on Preferences, Assess Data tab, this button will be active.  With it you can select a folder containing FITS data and CCDAutoPilot will run the assessment criteria against all files in that folder, reporting the results on the Info window to the left of the page.

  • Abort: ends the assessment activity in progress.

  • Move to updated coordinates: When checked, the mount will move to updated coordinates, i.e. coordinates that have changed between sub-exposures, due to non-sidereal moving objects. This is most useful for unguided imaging of comets, asteriods and the like. See Guiding and Tracking Techniques for more discussion of this capability.
  • Update Tracking Rates: When checked, any target that has an entry for RaRate and/or DecRate on the targets part of the Session page will have its coordinates and tracking rates updated at run time. When unchecked, only the coordinates will be updated at run time. This latter condition should be helpful for astrometry of non-sidereal objects.