Plate solving in AA8

[AstroBernd]

Hi ,after you fill in the solve parameters be sure to press the "Save Parameters" button. Is your scope connected to AA so the Ra and Dec are written to the fits. header?
There are two plate solve options "Plate Solve" and "Plate Solve immediate" if you are using the "Plate Solve" be sure to click the highlighted box to load the current images Ra. and Dec. My experience with AA plate solve is better then 99% solve and almost immediate.
Screenshot 2022-01-22 101939.jpg

Thanks Iver for the reply. That is all working well as you describe.
However, the platesolve in the telescope control (center platesolve) never works for me in AA8 (it did in AA7).
Sincerely
Bernd

[Dunmunro]

Thanks dunmonro for the quick reply. Yes I have the astroar8.DAT in the AA8 directory.
I save and load my platesolving parameters as you described and both the platesolve or immediate platesolve work well.
However, the platesolve in the telescope control (center platesolve) never works for me in AA8 (it did in AA7),

Remember that you have to take an test image before issuing the center platesolve command:

Issue GOTO to named target location

take image (it's best to have the plate solve button checked in the camera control image tab as that will verify a successful plate solve) after the GOTO completes.

issue telescope control Center platesolve command.

The plate solve should succeed, AA8 will calculate the offset from the actual position to the target location and issue a goto command to move the short distance to the target location.

Alternately, issue a 'sync to last image' command via the telescope goto control tab, and then reissue the goto command.

[AstroBernd]

Thanks dunmonro,
That’s my process as well. I will double check at the next opportunity (weather here is dreadful).

[AstroBernd]

I wanted to report back on my issue reg. plate solve and center.
Finally, we had some small holes in the clouds on last Sunday evening, i was able to check the plate-solving and "center (platesolve)" in AA8 and it worked spot-on, even with partly clouded out images (really bad). The main issue was really a good setting of the plate-solve image size from the statistics window of a solved image (in my case 142.7 arcmin) with +/-2% variation. This is in absolute terms still a large 3 arcmins that i allow for.
Thanks, everybody!
On to faster target framing!