I am just getting started in the Voyager trail because I am ultimately interested in the Array so I can sync my tandem telescopes. For now though I am only working with one scope. Haven’t been able to do an imaging session yet but I have a question I am hoping someone can help me out with.
I see that in the settings you can specify that Voyager uses a specific filter for autofocus and platesolving. However, Voyager doesn’t allow for filter offsets. So how does this work? If I specify I want all auto focus runs to be done with Luminance filter but am imaging HA and the filters arent parfocal then focus run will be useless when HA becomes active again. Same question in regards to having a default filter specified for platesolving.
Because you can platesolve and autofocus faster with a luminance filter than you can with a 3nm ha filter. Its a very commonly used strategy and this is the first imaging software I have encountered that doesn’t let you do it without buying an upgrade.
If you have not tried Voyager’s Robofocus, give it a try and you might be impressed. Focusing with narrowband filters does not necessarily slower than focusing with broadband filters! It chooses a different magnitude stars, and do the focusing in the same speed. No need for filter offset anymore.
For platesolving, I believe Voyager remembers the filter position w.r.t. each filter before changing filters, so you are not loosing focus by changing Lum for plate-sovling, and changing back to your narrowband filters.
I recently had a chance to try Robofocus V curve focus through NB filters testing Voyager out against a friends setup (I am using an OSC camera at the moment, waiting for a mono camera to arrive) and Robofocus nailed focus through his NB filters, and quite quickly. Due to going to a much brighter focus star, the focus exposures were in the order of 1.5 seconds for his 6nm Oiii filter, I cant recall for the HA or Sii, it might be a little longer for a 3NM filter but you could be quite surprised how quickly it will do the focus run. He commented that Voyager was definitely focusing better than the software he is using (Which I won’t name) and produced sharper subs.
Regards plate solving, I use All Sky Plate Solver and ASTAP with Voyager (I used to use a local astrometry.net server for blind solving, but ASTAP is faster) and all three have proved quite capable of plate solving with reasonably out of focus stars. Unless your filters are quite different focus wise I would think you should be able to focus through your HA and then use lum for plate solving (And you can set up a default filter for plate solving so it you were imaging HA for instance it will change to lum to plate solve and then back to the HA to continue) I have some NB filters in front of my ASI2600MC at the moment while I wait for my mono version and I focused through a lum and then accidentally plate solved (Successfully) through an empty filter slot, you cant get much further from parfocal than that.
If something not work like you think not necessary mean not work at all. You don’t have to upgrade anything. I tell you about array because you wrote you are interested in .