Ahhhh excellent!! Thank you Jeff. I'm going to move this to the hardware & drivers section since neither of these are issues with ACP itself. Since you found it, you followed the "moved" link :-)
Ahhhh excellent!! Thank you Jeff. I'm going to move this to the hardware & drivers section since neither of these are issues with ACP itself. Since you found it, you followed the "moved" link :-)
-- Bob
Bob, I am still having difficulty getting scripts to run with guiding. Jeff D. helped me work out perhaps an update issue with the Gemini. That is after I had the same issue with the totator trying three time to find the correct angle for the image. I have written another script for tonight and will start it around 8:30. If you would like to join, perhaps you will see something I have missed. Let me know. Eric
I'm not sure what I'll see... please save the log though and I'll analyze it tomorrow. I am really focused on getting the Scheduler 8.2 Field Test out and have been at it since 0600 this morning. The log will tell all. I am still pretty sure that (a) something is slipping, (b) the power being delivered to the rotator is insufficient, or (c) the camera package is so heavy it is exceeding the torque limits/capability of the rotator. It acts like it is on the edge of completely stalling. I'm waiting on a big windows update right now so I will call Jeff and fill him in.
PS Getting the mount to track accurately should also be high on your list, as the guider will be working it's tookus off to make up for the slow sidereal tracking. It's also almost certainly the reason you aren't able to satisfactorily image unguided beyond a few minutes on that super high grade mount. It's much better than that!
-- Bob
Bob, this is an update from last night's run.
1. The script seemed to run, at least in the beginning. It ended about 24 subs in for no reason I could see. I restarted the script and collected another 18 subs.
2. We are guiding, although it's a bit rough. There must be some settings that need adjusting.
3. Field rotation is still an issue. Over the course of the evening I got three rotation angles in my subs, as before. there is still an issue here.
4. ACP is activating the rotator three times during script startup. I have not seen that before using this new setup.
5. I uploaded the logs from last night.
Jeff from Optec says his rotator expert will .be in today and will take a look at the thread and see if he can add some insight into what is going on.
Eric
Good morning Bob,
I just want to confirm that for the log file entry below, you are simply logging the current rotator position as reported by the rotator driver.
"Rotator mech. position angle is 272.3 deg"
In other words, this is not a calculated position or a derived position from a plate solve, but the position reported back from the driver. Is that correct?
Thanks,
Jeff.
I left a message for Jeff, he was on another support call. It must have been a tough one since he didn't call me back before dinner their time ha ha.
The first log shows the guider miss, followed by a pointing update which corrects the rotation and then the guide star is there, and the guider starts OK:
05:45:29 **Autoguiding failed.
05:45:29 Doing pointing update to assure guide star on internal/OAG chip
05:45:29 Doing auto-center...
05:45:29 Switching from H to L filter for pointing exposure
...
05:45:52 Imager sky position angle is 21.4 deg.
05:45:52 Rotator mech. position angle is 245.7 deg.
05:45:52 Within max error tolerance, no re-slew needed.
05:45:52 PA error of 26.6 deg. detected. Correcting...
05:45:52 Start rotate to PA 48.0 deg (raw rotator angle 272.3)
05:45:52 (wait for rotator)
05:46:10 (rotation complete)
05:46:10 Target is now centered.
...
05:46:10 (take guider image at initial interval 5 sec)
05:46:26 (guide star SNR=32.2 X=282 Y=312)
...
05:46:37 Guide angle is 133.9 deg.
05:47:12 (autoguiding at 3.00 sec.)
...
05:47:12 (guided dither - moving guide star dx=-2.4 dy=-2.1 guider pixels
05:47:22 (ex=0.50 ey=1.50)
05:47:22 (guider error n/a or too high, try #1)
05:47:34 (ex=2.84 ey=0.06)
05:47:34 (guider error n/a or too high, try #2)
05:47:46 (ex=1.07 ey=1.63)
05:47:46 (guider error n/a or too high, try #3)
05:47:57 (ex=0.32 ey=1.20)
05:47:57 (guider error n/a or too high, try #4)
05:48:09 (ex=0.44 ey=0.18)
05:48:09 (guided dither, 1 good cycles)
05:48:21 (ex=0.06 ey=0.21)
05:48:21 (guided dither, 2 good cycles)
05:48:28 (ex=0.30 ey=0.28)
05:48:28 (guided dither, 3 good cycles)
05:48:35 (ex=0.18 ey=0.07)
05:48:35 (guided dither, 4 good cycles)
05:48:42 (ex=0.01 ey=0.16)
05:48:42 (guided dither, 5 good cycles)
05:48:42 (guider check OK)
The fact that it takes 4 tries after the step-input to the guider is completely normal. ACP will wait for 5 good guide cycles (below the max guiding error you set) in a row before starting the image. Anyway it's pretty cool that ACP will do a pointing update after failing to start the guider if you have an off-axis or internal guider. It saved the guiding this time.
I am more worried about the end of the log. It looks like something froze the system up. The log ends part way through a line indicating that ACP terminated abnormally. Can you tell me more about the conditions at the time you saw this.
On the second log there are multiple huge misses by the rotator. Maybe that's what you're seeing, ACP correcting for missed rotations.
09:17:43 PA error of 108.4 deg. detected. Correcting...
09:17:43 Start rotate to PA 48.0 deg (raw rotator angle 74.3)
...
09:25:34 PA error of 143.1 deg. detected. Correcting...
09:25:34 Start rotate to PA 48.0 deg (raw rotator angle 291.2)
...
11:36:58 PA error of 149.1 deg. detected. Correcting...
11:36:58 Start rotate to PA 48.0 deg (raw rotator angle 154.8)
I'd say the rotation problem is getting worse. I would really have someone check closely that your camera isn't loose and getting looser. I'd hate to see it fall out and hit the floor.
Around dawn, it looks like it was trying to start the guider and had trouble even after it corrected the rotation. It looks like you killed the run? Maybe it was getting light?
-- Bob
Bob,
The end of the first log is when the script was terminated by ACP after image 23. I have not idea why that happened. I made a new script and restarted the second run. That must be the second log file. Sam has checked the attachment to the rotator/focuser and it seems fine. Maybe we just have to tear it all down and put it back together, "the fresh sir cure."
Eric
Bob,
I ran last night on the same target VdB152. Here are the results.
1. The script moved the rotator once and then a second time with a short correction.
2. the focus went fine.
3. Before I started the script, I did another guider calibration.
4. The script ran to the point of guiding. That did not work. One axis went completely of the scale and kept going. I started over, ran a new guider calibration, started the script with the same results. At that point, I aborted the script.
5. In the end, I just ran directly from Maxim, after doing a guider calibration in Maxim. That ran fine all night.
6. Those subs turned out to be rotated from the original FOV from the earlier runs before the change was made in the Gemini setup. The stack from last night is angled about 45 degrees from what I set up in the script and from the image I sent you yesterday. there still appears to be an issue with the rotator I don't understand.
Of course I have uploaded the logs from last night.
Autofocus filter selection: I have run the filter offset script multiple times. It seems to go through the filters over and over and never comes to an end. This morning it ran for two hours and finally I had to abort it when it got light. Focus still uses individual filter focus rather than offsets. Please advise on what the issue is here.
Thanks.
Eric
20180914@031507.log - Looks like you killed the run during the autofocus after it figured out the rotator offsetI ran last night on the same target VdB152. Here are the results.
03:16:15 Imager sky position angle is 242.8 deg.
03:16:15 Rotator mech. position angle is 154.8 deg.
03:16:15 Within max error tolerance, no re-slew needed.
03:16:15 PA error of 165.2 deg. detected. Correcting...
03:16:15 Start rotate to PA 48.0 deg (raw rotator angle 320.0)
03:16:15 (wait for rotator)
03:18:20 (rotation complete)
...
03:19:36 20:19:36 ** Starting Near Focus **
03:19:45 20:19:45 Pos., HFD, MeanFocus, X, Y, Flux, Pixel, Count
03:19:45 20:19:45 66527, 04.51, 66240, 2922, 1301, 250, 1014, 1
03:19:52 **Script Error**
03:19:53 Source: ACP
03:19:53 Message: The script was aborted.
03:19:53 Location: line 1433 column 25.
20180914@032015.log - Guiding problems but the rotator is behaving, assuming you requested 48 degrees #posang 48 in your Plan.
03:26:07 Imager sky position angle is 47.9 deg.
03:26:07 Rotator mech. position angle is 320.0 deg.
However
03:26:08 Switching from L to H filter for imaging
03:26:09 (take guider image at initial interval 5 sec)
03:26:24 (guide star SNR=very high X=266 Y=398)
03:26:24 (first exposure estimate 3 sec)
03:26:29 (guide star SNR=very high X=266 Y=398)
03:26:29 (final exposure for guiding 3 sec)
03:26:34 (guide star SNR=very high X=266 Y=398)
03:26:35 PA=48 (off-axis guider @ 45.4 deg)
03:26:35 Guide angle is 93.3 deg.
03:28:28 **Guider unexpectedly stopped while waiting for measurement
This says you had a very bright guide star in the guider. Why it would not start guiding ????? You mentioned that the guider went off the side? This says that guiding never even got started, it could not even measure the deviation (guide error). I will continue to analyze your other logs.
20180914@033356.log - Another kill during AutoFocus
03:35:19 20:35:18 Moving to: 65045
03:35:31 20:35:31 Pos., HFD, X, Y, Flux, Pixel, Count
03:35:31 **Script Error**
03:35:31 20:35:31 65045, 04.87, 1248, 2381, 75, 1035, 1
03:35:32 Source: ACP
03:35:32 Message: The script was aborted.
03:35:32 Location: line 1433 column 25.
03:35:32 20:35:32 Moving to: 62373
03:35:32 20:35:32 Stopping operation: FocusMax is being terminated
20180914@033552.log - The guider started successfully but it looks like it is not guiding with the correct polarity or calibration.
03:40:53 (take guider image at initial interval 5 sec)
03:41:08 (guide star SNR=very high X=268 Y=398)
03:41:08 (first exposure estimate 3 sec)
03:41:14 (guide star SNR=very high X=268 Y=398)
03:41:14 (final exposure for guiding 3 sec)
03:41:19 (guide star SNR=very high X=269 Y=398)
03:41:19 PA=48 (off-axis guider @ 45.4 deg)
03:41:19 Guide angle is 93.2 deg.
03:41:23 (autoguiding at 3.00 sec.)
...
03:41:23 (guided dither - moving guide star dx=0.8 dy=0.9 guider pixels
03:41:34 (ex=1.17 ey=0.28)
03:41:34 (guider error n/a or too high, try #1)
03:41:46 (ex=1.94 ey=0.41)
03:41:46 (guider error n/a or too high, try #2)
03:41:57 (ex=2.94 ey=1.73)
03:41:57 (guider error n/a or too high, try #3)
03:42:09 (ex=3.38 ey=4.37)
03:42:09 (guider error n/a or too high, try #4)
... killed at this point for guide star drift-off
The logs indicate that the "script" (observing plan for VdB152 H3) has #posang 45 in it? That's the PA that ACP is rotating to anyway, and it is happy now!! Would you please check? Post the script/plan here as an attachment.6. Those subs turned out to be rotated from the original FOV from the earlier runs before the change was made in the Gemini setup. The stack from last night is angled about 45 degrees from what I set up in the script and from the image I sent you yesterday. there still appears to be an issue with the rotator I don't understand.
I am in the process of releasing a field test Scheduler, something I've been trying to do all week, and I really really want to get it done today. So depending on my time I may call you to look at your guider settings. Since you had it working before with ACP and since you are guiding OK in MaxIm a lot has to be right. But if you calibrated separately at some random PA in MaxIm then tried to run ACP that will always fail. You must calibrate using the CalibrateGuider script with the camera at 0PA and a bright star in the guider. That's the only way the scales and angles will be right. Recall that ACP, once calibrated, can guide all sky, all rotations, without re-calibrating. The easy way to get a star in the guider at 0PA is described here:
-- Bob
Bob,
I aborted the script when it went to the final position, after focus, and at that point the guider went off the rails and there was no point in continuing the run. It should have been at the right RA at that point.
Do you have any thoughts on the filter offsets?
I am also running a new target tonight. It has the same RA.
Eric
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