This post was in response regarding the StellarMate and the hopeful future addition of mount modeling to the Ekos/INDI ecosystem. I was responding to the question: Why do I care about automated modeling when doing an alignment for pointing should be good enough.
Unguided imaging is where it is at. That is why I have a 10Micron. To do unguided imaging you need to do a model of the sky. For very fast optics with a higher image scale you can get away with doing maybe 25 points. The max is 100 points. The way it works now is a 3rd party application communicates with SGP, MaximDL, TSX pro and perhaps others and it slews the mount all over the sky doing plate solves and syncing the image. Each sync adds a model point. Since it does it automatically you can go have coffee or do some observing while your mount models. When it is done you can do unguided imaging.
If you are in an observatory with a mount and OTA that will remain in place for a very long time this is not an issue. You would only need to do a model once and occasionally do a single sync to update the model. But if you are portable like I am then you do a model each time you set up. Therefore it is a bigger deal.
The only way I can see doing this without automation would be to manually slew to a star using Ekos then center it with the arrow keys and then do a sync. But if I did lets say 75 points to the model that will take quite a while.
Here you can see model maker in action. (This was the old and original program.)
Here is a newer 3rd part program written by someone else in Python. github.com/mworion/mountwizzard Here it is in action:
Here is some discussion on Cloudy Nights on modeling with 10Micron: www.cloudynights.com/topic/569991-buildi...micron-mount-models/
Unguided imaging is where it is at. That is why I have a 10Micron. To do unguided imaging you need to do a model of the sky. For very fast optics with a higher image scale you can get away with doing maybe 25 points. The max is 100 points. The way it works now is a 3rd party application communicates with SGP, MaximDL, TSX pro and perhaps others and it slews the mount all over the sky doing plate solves and syncing the image. Each sync adds a model point. Since it does it automatically you can go have coffee or do some observing while your mount models. When it is done you can do unguided imaging.
If you are in an observatory with a mount and OTA that will remain in place for a very long time this is not an issue. You would only need to do a model once and occasionally do a single sync to update the model. But if you are portable like I am then you do a model each time you set up. Therefore it is a bigger deal.
The only way I can see doing this without automation would be to manually slew to a star using Ekos then center it with the arrow keys and then do a sync. But if I did lets say 75 points to the model that will take quite a while.
Here you can see model maker in action. (This was the old and original program.)
Here is a newer 3rd part program written by someone else in Python. github.com/mworion/mountwizzard Here it is in action:
Here is some discussion on Cloudy Nights on modeling with 10Micron: www.cloudynights.com/topic/569991-buildi...micron-mount-models/