We do real-time light curves and simultaneously monitor the scope’s pointing accuracy by using the plate solve data from each image. I can not find a way to have Voyager plate solve each science image, it seems the only thing you can do is a separate image sequence (I hope I am wrong). How much would it cost me for you to add “plate solve all images and correct scope position if off by X” to the software?
Voyager has many great features that we are excited to use but for us this is a must have.
Tom
I am in similar position on this - we currently process platesolving in a pipeline away from voyager, but given it has all the engines and databases already installed I was hoping that this could be an asynchronous option - maybe selected from within the fits viewer for non-scripted use and of course as an action in dragscript/sequence. I’d not use it if it delayed the taking of next shot though.
Though our current pipelines don’t strictly need it I sometimes would like to use astroimageJ for realtime curves and WCS solved files help with that.
This is a bit of a slippery slope though as the next question is calibrating frames once saved and so it goes on…!
Best,
Gavin
I may as well flag here that I have suggested some additions to FITS viewer to help with my science runs.
Currently to be sure that my target star is correctly exposed i need to open up maxim or astap and reopen a file that voyager has just saved and use the curser pointer to check the adu values across the star.
My suggestions are that the cursor pointer in FITS viewer shows the adu value as well as the current x, y co0ordinates…and an option to highlight saturated pixels in red.
FIT viewer is just a little tool. Is not on my scope to do this kind of development. I already have request on the todo list but with very low priority.
Sorry- i hit some key that sent the message before i finished it - i wanted to flag that this was not mission critical As I always want to give you a steer on the urgency of the request…, but i would be surprised if anyone else doing science work with voyager would not find it very helpful! All best with your work this week!
a lot of people doing science since years with Voyager but usually they use other tools for their task with the done images. I’ve my priorities and this cannot be changed. If someone want special/custom development I’m happy to talk with him in private, send me a message in PM or by support email.
Leonardo,
just some clarification on the realign process please…
the wiki you pointed to says that it conducts a precise pointing exercise at the allotted time.
can i confirm which of the following should happen:
at the realign time voyager looks at the last image taken in the sequence, plate solves it and then issues an offset to realign the scope to the target co-ordinates…
or
after taking the last image in the sequence before the realign time voyager pauses the sequence, takes an image in order to precise point, solves that new image and issues a goto command for the full RA/DEC , takes a further image and plate solves that and then issues an offset move to bring the target to centre…
?
thanks Leonardo- that’s what i thought and for anyone watching i can confirm that my experience with precise pointing is a solved position less than an arc second from the given target.
solving last image not always work, depends on filter used, if you have trails for some reason, too much stars, median too high, image so big. Our experience is to use a fresh one. Also we have tried to do in parallel some years ago but this interfere with emergency events and real needed to do plate solving (only one image at time can be solved). We have decide to go for reliability and quality.