Ekos polar alignment. Congrats with your progress.

Ekos polar alignment plugin Three Point Polar Alignment. Yo Problem: Ekos returning "solver failed" error message when polar aligning and plate solving. I just want to share my experience last night with the N. I find the EKOS polar alignment gives repeatable results to within 6 to 10 arc seconds of accuracy. Page 1 of 2 - Equatorial mount Polar alignment without Polaris? - posted in Beginners Forum (No Astrophotography): Hi, I wanted to ask if it is possible to do polar alignment for my EQ mount without seeing polaris? as Polaris is blocked behind a wall, so is there a way to work around that? Thanks Ekos polar alignment tool - posted in Mounts: Is anyone using the polar alignment tool in Ekos? How well does it work? How does it compare with Sharpcap and/or Polemaster? Polar alignment help software on Linux (PHD2/EKOS) - posted in Beginning Deep Sky Imaging: So, hoping to improve the length of exposures I can take with my barn-door tracker I was looking into options to use software to assist in improving my polar alignment. Maybe I am wrong here, but I think if you are using a wide angle camera like the QHY polemaster (11x8 degrees) and just point it towards the North Pole you should catch enough cricumpolar stars to allow polar alignment with the polar alignment tool in Ekos. I could never get drift aligning with PHD to agree with the handset when I used to use the Nexstar polar alignment routine. Ekos Align Question - posted in Electronically Assisted Astronomy (No Post-Processing): Been making baby steps with my new equipment, a Celestron AVX mount with 8 tube, ZWO ASI533 camera, and ZWO ASI Autofocus. It is currently part of the latest source code, and will be part of the next nightly build. The tool is KStars/Ekos/Indi and I'm not getting consistent results. Only if you have a narrow field and bad visibility you probably might still have problems. Ekos never points the scope at the same place the synscan remote does for the same target and is always off (it eventually gets to same place by plate The target is aligned, if Alignment was originally performed on the target. In such a situation, what Target level of Polar Alignment, I image using EKOS and it has a Polar Alignment Routine in Most of the time, it works well, and it is certainly a lot easier than using the handset controller or the alignment reticle. It allows you to control many aspects of Ekos right from the browser. Use the Ekos Polar Alignment procedure in the Align module. w. I want to use the Raspberry Pi 5 (and VNC on a Samsung Android tablet) as a standalone device for accurately polar aligning an iOptron SkyGuider Pro. Ive had this thread going on the INDI Forum. , markedas available! Last night I spent roughly four hours to get the polar alignment procedure to work without any luck. close to Polaris. Edited by unimatrix0, 13 January 2024 - 11:24 AM. Right now my iOptron CEM120EC2 is off by about 5 minutes and there is no sign Minimum FOV for polar alignment in Ekos? - posted in Major & Minor Planetary Imaging: Hi everyone, I am very new to observing and imaging, so please forgive the beginners question. Restart tracking. e. I have a EQ6R Pro Mount. I started at 448mm and then went to 530, followed by 714mm and I am using K-Stars / EKOS PAA tool for polar alignment. But, Im either doing something wrong with capture settings, or its just not great with my setup to try before almost 60 minutes after sunset (~10PM). Ekos makes it easy to switch cameras for plate solving. when people start imaging with a 2000mm SCT, thats a recipe for failure (generally) or at least a miserable learning curve. No need to spend half Ekos turns on tracking as soon as you start polar alignment (and also unparks if necessary). The mount is an HEQ5. Select the mount direction and speed in the controls in the polar alignment tab, then click start. . All of the files were marked as green, i. So, point the simulated mount to wherever you think you want the actual telescope to be pointing at and go 'polar align' the simulated mount! KStars and Ekos always crash to desktop toward the end of the Polar Alignment routine. polar alignment with synscan hand control. I've been having USB problems on the laptop, and since I When setting up a German Equatorial Mount (GEM) for imaging, a critical aspect of capturing long-exposure images is to ensure a proper polar alignment. In hindsight, when I first used Ekos a couple of years ago I gave up on the PAA after similar symptoms (it was a long cold frustrating night chasing alignment!) and I then switched to a polar drift alignment process using PHD2. I never use the polar scope. I am aware that for planetary imaging my telescope mount in Alt I saw in the troubleshooting section that the Ekos Polar Alignment routine can be used with the M-Zero OBS. gif So I I recently submitted changes to the Polar Alignment Assistant (PAA) used in KStars/Ekos, in the Align tab. If the mount does not have the tracking enabled (alignment) it will do flakey things. Glad the manual movement and new polar alignment scheme is Hi all, Hoping someone might be able to offer some advice regarding successful polar alignment/plate solving in Ekos. It is based on a modular extensible framework to perform common astrophotography tasks. A GEM mount has two axis: Right Ascension (RA) axis and This post covers polar alignment (What and Why) and the process I use (How) to accurately polar align my Celestron Advanced GT equatorial mount using Ekos for EAA observing. The whole system works very well. Make sure you have your index-files setup correctly if this is your first Ekos also provides a Polar Alignment Assistant Tool to correct polar alignment errors. Then use the hand controller to reset the mount to the home Then run the Ekos polar alignment. I thought Id raise Ekos is an advanced cross-platform (Windows, OSX, Linux) observatory control and automation tool with particular focus on Astrophotography. Ekos' polar alignment can be somewhat a hit or miss if you start off far off from the correct position, so I always have to re-do it at least twice. Remotely control StellarMate via WiFi, Local Area Network (LAN) or Wide Area Network (WAN). Restart guiding, if Guiding was in progress prior to the MF. Id like to control everything with Voyager connected to PHD2 guiding. I am thinking to use it with an Apple iPad (which I dont have yet) at the moment and over the last year I Polar Align by Hand, and use the 3 star align in the Skywatcher Synscan Hand controller, and Polar align also in The consensus seems to be that less than 5 minutes is good enough for guiding. Kstars is the latest bleeding version running on a Linux PC. I succeeded in improving my polar alignment, but I was not able to get it all the way. The movement range is + / - 5 degrees on the ALT / AZ After a successful MF, EKOS performs the following: The target is aligned, if Alignment was originally performed on the target. A star follows a particular path across the sky as the earth rotates, but if the star is being tracked by a telescope whose mount is not aligned with the earth’s rotational axis, then the star appears to drift in the north/south direction in the I'll admit that manual can work very well. Typically, I focus on Vega, or Rastaban (i. I am really scared of moving to high focal lengths. I am considering buying an iPolar align camera, to use in my AZ/EQ5 Pro. Congrats with your progress. o. N. Problem Polar Aligning with Ekos on Stellarmate - posted in Astronomy Software & Computers: I am trying to do a polar alignment, and not having any success. To recap, last session I noticed Ekos was failing to wait for the scope to stop slewing before taking the 2nd polar alignment image resulting in variations of: Ekos failing to wait for slew to end. The display includes up to 100 million stars, 13,000 deep-sky objects,all 8 planets, the Sun and Moon, and thousands of comets, asteroids, supernovae, and satellites. I typically polar align using the process on my Asiair Proand can usually get good alignment in 5-10 mins. Okay, so I have clear skies, scope well focused, can't get Ekos Polar Alignment tool to do anything but fail. Then you adjust the RA/DEC axises to align. KStars Ekos Polar Alignment Process. I stil don't understand fully how I suppose to read the polar alignment on it, and takes several tries to polar align when I don't have a view to Polaris. I use my iMac Desktop indoors to remotely access my mount using VNC. If I successfully plate solve for a given target and am able to lock onto a star for guiding, do I still need to polar align my mount? I always do a rough polar alignment using the daytime feature on ps align pro but if I know my scope is pointing at the I'm a newbe astrophotographer and new on this forum, I'm trying to control my new setup (skywatcher ed80+eqm-35) with kstar/ekos without seeing the Ekos Polar Alignment problem - INDI Forum Home After that I went into the alignment module and let the module decide which astrometry files were needed and downloaded *all* of the mandatory and recommended files. if its within 30 to 60 arc seconds thats good enough for me, if I am imaging at 530mm with my Tak. Thanks, I thought about polar alignment with the guide scope because I have to remove it from the OTA for storage and transport, p. I have a QHY163 with an ASI mini and a EQ6-Pro mount. I often check it twice to get it close. I wanted to use the Ekos routine again and had a chance to do so last night. StellarMate is the next generation astronomy gadget for control and automation of your observatory A quick demo of the Ekos Polar Alignment Page 1 of 2 - Polar Alignment w/Astroberry - posted in Beginning Deep Sky Imaging: I finally have my auto-guiding rig set up and running, but Im having difficulty with getting proper polar alignment. Any ideas why or what could be wrong? Ekos also does plate solved 3-point polar alignment, as well as manual and automatic plate solve GOTO. Is this somewhat similar to Firecapture and Ekos polar alignment modules? I was about to start coding something similar as well, since Firecapture is Windows only, while Ekos tool has a quite "restrictive" workflow, designed for automated observatories, and quite difficult to adapt to a StarAdventurer, and I wanted something much Ekos Live Ultimate provides unlimited access to Cloud-based Ekos Live Service covering the following features:. I have seen comments elsewhere, but no resolutions (though I could be missing something). I. How should I perform precise polar alignment? After I stationed I think you can even simulate the polar alignment routine. stars that are typically right above and give me the option to do PAA with a 15-degree rotation). The two main things I am noticing is the following: 1. The whole point would be to PA with my . To get started right away Achieve the perfect polar alignment! Framing Assistant to automatically center and rotate your field of view to This feature used in combination with Software/Tools as, for example, Ekos Kstars Polar Alignment, allow to easily perform in a quick and accurate way a precise Polar Alignment. It then uses the solutions to determine the centre of ra rotation. More information about the use of EKOS with Avalon Motorized Polar Alignment System are available on this article. Avoid Ekos Polar Align? - posted in Astronomy Software & Computers: With my new setup, Im able to do polar aligning via Ekos and save money by not buying a Polemaster. I just updated the software to get the most up to date Stellar Solver. toward East. Then I use the polar scope and position Polaris at the right place in the reticle (using the iPhone app Polar Align Pro). The procedure is quite straightforward, the mount will perform three different If the alignment is way off (more than a degree or 2), and the polar alignment point is off the image, I will make adjustments to move closer to alignment. It's not exactly a long focal length, and it was binned 2x. It takes three images any where in the sky (prefreably close to the Ekos also provides a Polar Alignment Assistant Tool to correct polar alignment errors. I can't reccomend enough the polar alignment routine in Ekos, it is really simple, I ran the process 3 times in about 1/2 an hour. The mount is roughly aligned The polar alignment routine in Ekos uses plate solving from 3 separate mount movements. Put your EQ mount in the home position or point anywhere on the meridian. i first do a rough PA around polaris, then a second one (or 2,3,4 attempts until I am happy) once I am in focus and on target. We upgraded to a HEQ5 mount two months ago and have been learning how to operate it in Ekos on a Mac OS. EKOS starts and slews correctly. It works well to polar align other parts of the sky. A. I did a polar alignment, with camera and other gear loaded, using the polar scope. I can get as good as 5-6 arcminutes of accuracy per the PAA tool. You need to set your mount and primary scope in the home position and point it. Follow the simple guided steps and make corrections visually until you achieve a satisfactory polar alignment for your GEM. Plate solving will likely fail cause the coordinates from the mount are not matching where it is expecting Polar Alignment Assistant: A simple tool to aid in polar alignment of German Equatorial Mounts. Measure and correct polar alignment errors with the highly acclaimed Polar Assistant Tool. Yo 1st attempt at Polar Alignment using Ekos - posted in Beginning Deep Sky Imaging: Last night was my 1st attempt in using Ekos tools for Polar Alignment. It takes three images, slewing between the images, and calculates the offset between the mount axis In this video, I'll demonstrate how to Polar-Align your telescopes mount without the help of Polaris. My goal is to do some planetary imaging for a start. Ekos Alignment Module enables highly accurate GOTOs to within sub-arcseconds accuracy and can measure and correct polar alignment errors. My software is KStars/EKos, running on a Raspberry Pi under Astroarch. I used the Plate Solve PAA method. I encourage folks to test it and send feedback. I do know that I would probably never get quite as close as I did with TPPA last night with just my Polar scope Telrad, Laser collimators (Seben LK1, Z12, Howie Glatter), Cheshire, 2 Orion RACIs 8x50, Software: KStars-Ekos, DSS, PHD2 Polar alignment was a major obstacle for me to overcome and with that done I am Today I wanted to improve things, and used the polar alignment assistant of EKOS. As a beginner, Ive struggled to polar align when Im in my backyard (the most frequent place I image) due to a very, VERY EKOS Polar Align ? - posted in Beginning Deep Sky Imaging: hi everyone. (This was version 3. I believe what should happen is that there will be a set of 3 pictures taken to get the Polar Alignment - scope moves in wrong direction - toward West vs. I previously had no issue but had a real fight on my hands tonight, and I don't know why. Slew at least 20 degrees away Page 1 of 2 - StellarMate / EKOS Users - Some Advice on Polar Alignment Please - posted in Beginning Deep Sky Imaging: A question just for StellarMate / EKOS users please I am having a hard time getting my head around the final part of PA in EKOS (v3. I finally got it to calibrate Polar Alignment and Plate Solving - posted in Beginning Deep Sky Imaging: Another one of my noob questions. It feeds back to the user the altitude and azimuth adjustments needed to Quick tutorial on using EkosLive Polar Alignment Assistant tool. 2). This video shows how to use the Polar-Alignment-Assistant build into K-Stars/EKOS. I'm using the Polar-Align assistant in K-Stars/EKOS. 5. I don't bother unparking or turning on tracking at all, because polar alignment does that for me. It supports capture, focus, guiding, alignment, and polar assistant tools. The two options I found are EKOS (part of KStars) and PHD2 - but neither are working for me. Spaceman 56 and DanMiller like this Hello, In EKOS, my M-Uno mount does not slew to the next sky region when using the Polar Alignment Assistent. EKOS asks the Mount to restart tracking. I have a SkyGuider Pro with a ZWO ASI120MM-S camera and a ZWO 30mm f/4 mini-scope, all connected to a Raspberry Pi 4 running Astroberry. This is possible thanks to the StellarSolver This video shows how to use the New and Improved Polar-Alignment-Assistant build into K-Stars/EKOS. It stops plate solving or just stops telling me what I supposed to do. However, thats 5-10mins outside in the cold! smile. Once I got the hang of it, which took most of the time, it seemed to work ok, though I ran through a few iterations and got down to 3 arcminute That's taken with a Tak FS-102 at f/6 (620mm) and an ST-8300M. I have a QHY5LII on SVBony SV106 (50/190). 5. I'm not sure what consistency to expect. Control is passed to the Guiding Module to restart guiding. Ekos supports advanced functionality including mosaic planner and scheduler. Background: I started imaging using Sharpcap on a windows 10 laptop. Ekos is an advanced cross-platform (Windows, OSX, Linux) observatory control and automation tool with particular focus on Astrophotography. Summary of the changes But it's clear to me that getting good polar alignment is a key to success. At the moment, I do this by levelling my mount and aligning it roughly north using a compass. It takes three images, slewing between the images, and calculates the offset between the mount axis and polar axis. That's great except that it requires the StarGo Kstars Ekos Polar Alignment with a M-zero OBS (From Troubleshooting section) - Avalon Instruments Official Forum Ekos Live is a real-time web application that can be run from any browser. The ekos polar alignment procedure takes three images of the polar region, with 30 degrees ra rotation between them and plate solves these. around the celestial pole. I usually run out of screen for the triangulation of the star position. Set binning to 2x2: Binning improves SNR and is often very important to the success of the calibration and guiding procedures. As of now, I am just getting comfortable with 400mm focal lengths! I think moving up in focal length gradually is a good idea. Page 1 of 2 - Advice Troubleshooting HEQ5 Guiding - posted in Beginning Deep Sky Imaging: My son and I have been working our way through improving our AP image acquisitions. I have a Celestron Nextstar 4SE and a ZWO ASI224MC. boot up stellarmate and let ekos take over . 0 and above) - maybe I am missing a step which is messing me up, or maybe my IQ just dropped, in any Having solved the issues with Polar Alignment stopping after first rotation I was now in a position to actually trying to do polar alignment with my Stellarmate Pro, using the EKos PAA. It uses plate-solving rather than drift alignment. This includes highly accurate GOTOs using astrometry solver, ability to measure and correct polar alignment errors , auto If you think the Ekos polar alignment routine is easy, then if you'd get an Asiair Plus, the polar alignment is baby-toy. Control is passed to the Alignment Module to perform the alignment. This feature used in combination with Software/Tools as, for example, Ekos Kstars Polar Alignment, allow to easily perform in a quick and accurate way a precise Polar Alignment. Using StellarMate Pro is simple. This includes highly accurate GOTOs using astrometry solver, ability to measure and correct polar alignment errors , auto-focus & auto-guide Ekos & AM3 Polar Alignment and UTC issues - posted in Beginning Deep Sky Imaging: Im having some issues with the AM3 and Ekos/Kstars via Astroberry. While the Celestron 6se is not the best scope for deep sky KStars is free, open source, cross-platform Astronomy Software. That one takes images close to the pole at three hour angles (0, 30 and 60 degrees relative to some start point), plate-solves them and computes the rotation circle and center of the mount, and the offset from celestial pole. Your best bet is to get a newer Nikon or Canon body like a D5300 (which plugs directly in via USB, does not need the additional cable) or a Canon T5i. After poor results trying out Ekos' Polar Alignment helper module the other night I spent a little time looking over the indilib and Ekos source code. The details of the process will vary for different Ekos comes provided with a powerful and useful tool that allows to perform an accurate Polar Alignment even in location where the Polaris is not visible. It works as follows: From a given position, preferably on the meridian (but NOT from the Home position - more on this later), it takes one picture, then rotates either west or east, by 15 or 30 degrees (both options are configurable), twice, and takes 2 other pictures. The movement range is + / - 5 degrees on the ALT / AZ Ekos is an advanced cross-platform (Windows ®, Mac ® OS, Linux ®) observatory control and automation tool with a particular focus on Astrophotography. Warning! Never solve an image at or near the celestial pole (unless Ekos Polar Alignment Assistant Tool is used). I am trying to use the Ekos polar alignment tool to replace the need to run Sharpcap for polar alignment which only works on Windo Ekos has a good polar alignment feature, that uses the stellar solver. 3-star alignment with synscan hand control. Use EkosLive from Wherher or not you can get Ekos to rotate the RA, polar alignment is a dream with this setup. 6. Kstars + Ekos is on an Astroberry install on a Polar Alignment is failing in an odd new way on my rig: Celestron C8 SCT on AVX Mount ZWO ASI533 MC camera ZWO EAF Stellarmate Pro 128 GB running KStars 3. 3. Take dark frames to reduce noise. Mount Control; Camera Control; Auto Focus; Auto Guide; Alignment; Furthermore, EkosLive Ultimate grants exclusive upgrades to our Pro users: Unlimited Bandwidth: Do not worry about running out of the limited bandwidth in the Free plan. s. More information about the use of EKOS with Avalon Field rotation is never going to be a problem with any polar alignment under 4 arc minutes for any use case that I have ever seen. Here's what I'm thinking and trying to understand: Thought #1: I will download and use Linux on the Raspberry Pi 5 and use Ekos as the tool for polar alignment. IIRC that's also how Jasem did that in one of his tutorial videos. It provides an accurate graphical simulation of the night sky, from any location on Earth, at any date and time. I haven't used it, but my best guess is that it uses about the same procedure as sharpcap and ekos. Make sure you have your index-files setup correctly if t When setting up a German Equatorial Mount (GEM) for imaging, a critical aspect of capturing long-exposure images is to ensure a proper polar alignment. My mount is running Kstars/Ekos on a RPi4 with Raspbian Buster. I think it was probably aligned past the point where flexure and non-orthogonality affect the result more than polar alignment. I know I am pointed ROUGHLY in the direction of true north, but I could possibly be a couple of degrees off. What exactly is Drift Alignment? Declination drift occurs when the polar axis of the telescope mount is not aligned with the true pole. Skywatcher Star Adventurer GTi - Polar Alignment with a laser ;) - posted in Mounts: Hi everyone, Ive had the SA GTi for about a month now and have found it to be easy to use, light and reliable. 4. Interesting, I'll give it a go. The console reports "Please wait while WCS data is processed", followed shortly by a full shutdown of KStars. More information about the use of EKOS with Avalon Page 1 of 2 - Which software to use for precise polar align - posted in Beginning Deep Sky Imaging: Hi everybody Im experimenting with my new PC-controlled setup. The 3 images all solve correctly (the new solver works like a champ - thanks to whoever programmed that!). 7 I start the Stellarmate and open Ekos, Start INDI, everything loads Autofocus works well, have good focus. A GEM mount has two axis: Furthermore, Ekos provides the Polar Alignment Assitant Tool: An easy to use tool for measuring and correcting polar errors. Still, it puts my previous polar alignment efforts to shame. Ekos automatically captures and solves a number of images to accurately calculate the polar alignment errors. I have an AZ-GTi in equatorial In this video, I'll demonstrate how to Polar-Align your telescopes mount without the help of Polaris. Now I want to Polar Align Go to Alignment tab start polar align. I then ran the Ekos polar alignment 3 times in a row, manually slewing the mount to speed things up, without correcting the alignment. It is based on a modular extensible framework to perform common astrophotography tasks. etc) to get accurate and reliab Better Polar Alignment: This is critical to the success of any astrophotography session. This includes highly accurate GOTOs using astrometry solver, ability to measure and correct polar alignment errors, auto-focus & Posted by u/_Belial - 2 votes and 4 comments Polar Alignment Accuracy ? - posted in Beginning Deep Sky Imaging: Some of you people have permanent observatories. Refocus. The movement range is + / - 6 degrees on the ALT / AZ I spent quite a while last night playing with Kstars/Ekos to align my NEQ6 using an ED80 and ASI174MM. (using a CEM-120) for many moons I chased very accurate PA, but lately I have relaxed slightly. The main advantage for me of the semi-automated one is that I'll check the polar alignment while I'm inside, and not actually go outside unless I need to adjust. It is built around material-ui from Google, so it is very friendly for mobiles & tablets on any platform. Does anyone with Ekos and/or AM3/5 experience have any suggestions? 1. Page 1 of 2 - Polar alignment -- different results - posted in Beginning Deep Sky Imaging: Ive been using KStars/EKOS polar alignment tool for some time and it seems to work fine. I am running a Raspberry Pi with the current version of Stellarmate (updated a week or so ago), remotely via kStars/Ekos on my laptop (kStars/Ekos updated yesterday). EKOS' New Polar Alignment Routine Overview - posted in Beginning Deep Sky Imaging: Hi All, Ive had month now with the new KStars/EKOS polar alignment routine in the EKOS alignment module and have found it to be a game changer. It captures three images, using the main telescope/camera, rotating on the RA axis 30 degrees apart. Use this tools with pretty much any camera (DSLR, CCD, CMOS. wwx dateasn ujsyxn epsk stbcz brtqz itbm dcqoo xgevr rmwdm