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Can you track ISS with this feature?

do you know for sure (ro somebody) if it works with Star Adventurer Gti? I dont know hot to check which borad do i have in my GTI, do i have to open it to check it? thanks in advance

Hi!! My AzEq6 mount makes strange sounds. The engines make certain sounds that I have never heard. Is something wrong or is it because of the different speed at which it moves?

Thank you for all your hard work. I have a quick question. Is your app/program compatible with OnStep systems? Kind regards, Damo

What caused this flare?

I have the doc for ZWO's AM5 mount that exposes the command for variable speed for both axes. Would you be interested in adding support for these mounts? I will be happy to test and troubleshoot if you can write a custom driver for them.

Thank you, this is really helpful! Just a quick question - my iPhone compass always shows true north. Do I still need to input the magnetic declination?

Thank you very much for all your time in this wonderful project! qq.. reading in "mounts and interfaces" seems I can use legacy --> "Nexstar/CPC ALT/-AZ" for my Nexstar 130SLT ? .. its not CPC but is AltAz. does drive the mount , just wondering about accuracy. Thanks again

Does this program play nice with 10um mounts?

Does this work with Skyadventurer GTI mount?

Will this software eventually be able to track a rocket launch?

I would like to use this to point an antenna for satellite comms. While I do have astrophotography gear I could piggyback that I could use to ensure my alignment was good, I don't have that luxury when the satelittes are eclipsed or during the day. Is a rough polar alignment good enough for those cases? That may be more of a radio question and I understand if you don't have the answer offhand yourself. Was more just curious than anything.

I didn't even know there was firmware on my skywatcher mount I could update.

Will my AP Mach 1 work in continuous tracking mode?

That's really cool. Would it look less blownout if you were observing it by eye?

Good day. Thanks for your brilliant program. How can I slew to GEO satellites? Unfortunately pushing "Start satellite Tracking" it doesn't slew.

Hello, Great video. I do not see the update to my Live View window after saving all my Viewing Limits - Elevation. I need your help when you have the time.

Can geostationary satellite's create a periodic repeating stationery reflective flash similar to a distant camera flash visible to the naked eye from earth without a telescope?

Hi, Thank for the video. What is the LST in mount position/status?

Hello, good software. Only automatic corrections are missing. Maybe in the future it will come to this.

Awesome.. Can this somehow be adapted to rocket launches and airplanes?

Cool. Anyone know if Losmandy G11 will work?

Thanks for the addition. Useful feature!

Hello, I saw your video about mount and ascom driver requirements for smooth satellite tracking. I currently use an EQ8R pro form my astrophotography alongside GSS. I wouls love to use that set up to try and capture the ISS. Do you have any idea weather my ascom driver works well with the software ??

This is so fantastic, but I can't help but think I missed a video or a Read_me file that I should have seen or read. Am I to be at my polar aligned telescope while following these steps? I got to the mount calibration step just fine, but if I missed any instructions that directed me to set up my telescope, then I probably missed some other things as well. Thanks again, I just want to make sure I get set up right the first time. - "Dustin"

The software version number is 1.7.8 however it shows that a newer version 1.7.7 is available.

Was looking forward to using this however the SYnscan Pro app I have failed to connect to the mount on it's USB serial port. I know the USB serial port works as I can drive it using the ASCOM driver (but I only get bunnyhops with that). Annoyingly, my mount is the AZ-GTiX which has Wifi, and if I connect the Synscan App using the network it all works perfectly. But then I'm stuck with a PC that no longer has an Internet connection because the mount acts as the "router" but obviously only supports itself.

Hey hi....Have you tested it Practically? Is this will track accurately? Thanks!

Congrats on your first transit! You did a pretty good job actually; with my first transit I think I got my focus pretty good, but my exposure time was way to long so it didn't look half as good as yours. Maybe you could add a simple tool to estimate correct exposure: take satellite angular velocity, enter your scope focal lenght and camera pixel size (which basically gives you angular resolution), and you can calculate how long would it take for the satellite to move one pixel - that would be a reasonable exposure time. I actually have a spreadsheet to do exactly that when I try to capture a transfer. With Sun transit you can go pretty low as you have plenty of light, but with Moon or especially planets there have to be some compromises. One other idea I have, that you could maybe think of adding in the future: generate precise ground track of a satellite (optionally with specified offset) the same way you do it for transit lines - I recently learned that there are some satellites that use visible laser eg. for cloud cover measurement and if you know precisely where and when to be, you can actually see that laser beam shine on you if you look up :)

Something I forgot to mention in the video, is the “T+Epoch” parameter in the “Satellite Data” frame. The epoch is the time of reference for which the orbital elements are derived so it gives you an idea of how fresh the data is. Of course, even if it is reasonably current an orbit adjustment could have just been made. Anyway, “T+Epoch” is the age of the data is expressed in days. When I got permission to use direct links from Celestrak.com for TLE files, they requested that the software has some mechanism to prevent a user from continually downloading files and putting undue resource on their servers. To honour that request, SkyTrack will not download a new file if the current file is less than one hour old. For transits, you may want to work around this by deleting the previous TLE file in the skytrack folder so a new one will download. Doing that should be the exception though.

Congratulations for your transit!! Once I tried to understand how often the TLE of the ISS were updated and to what I noticed the TLE were updated once or twice a day. And I met at a star party someone who works in collaboration with NASA about a project he has with the ISS, long story short, he told me that they perform manoeuvres to slightly change the trajectory of the ISS several times a day but the TLE don't get publicly updated every time they do it. It might be why your transit was not perfectly were you expected it. I also noticed that sometimes, ISS tracking is very precise and easy, and sometimes it's a bit off for "no reason".

Excellent demonstration! Will be trying this out with my iOptron AZ Mount Pro too.

Fantastic. I have a few coming up.

This software is awesome. Any plans to make it track planes or maybe rocket launches?

Awesome! Do you believe the new ZWO AM5 mount is able to track? Thanks

Super interesting. I know it's obvious to those who have looked at ascom on more than just the surface level, but I've had multiple conversations with newer mount owners hadn't grasped the concept of ascom being a platform and ascom drivers *not* being made by ascom but instead by the manufacturer or whoever else, which leads to implementation inconsistencies. Just thought it worth mentioning. I'm also curious what command set some iOptron alt/az mounts have that the EQ counterparts don't have (there must be enough difference to make a legacy driver worthwhile.) I recently got a CEM40EC, knowing it wouldn't work with continuous tracking, as far as I know. Interestingly, the ascom calibration fails to run at all, immediately failing when I try to run it. I didn't spend a lot of time debugging but it was curious. Anyway I appreciate all of your information and continuous support and enjoy SkyTrack immensely! I'm just using my old AVX for it still ;)

Thanks for that video, I didn't realise there's THAT many requirements for actual satellite tracking that mount has to meet. One thing you could've probably mentioned is that some mounts (like older SW mounts for example) have a "speed limit" for continously updating MoveAxis speed, and above that they have to stop before they can actually change that speed (my ongoing problem with AZ-EQ5, still waiting for that promised firmware update :D) - and with that they will track fine only if satellite is moving slower that that speed limit in each axis.

Love Skytrack. A big thanks.

wish i had found your video before i tracked the comet manually :)..but this would help certainly next time.

I tried it out and it works! I did my usual routine with APT, sync the mount and connect with phd2, calibrate phd2, goto C/2022 E3 (ZTF), open skytrack, download ephemerides and connect with phd2. The Ra/Dec rates are automatically transfered to phd2, very nice. Now I started taking 180s exposures for 1h30m. On the first picture the comet was centered and after 1h30m the comet was still perfectly centered, amazing.

I used a plugin for N.I.N.A. called Orbitals which besides other things also connects to the comet tracking feature of PHD2. This worked really well on C/2022 E3 (ZTF) till late in the night. Upon looking into PHD2, I saw that the RA value was set to 5000arcsec/hr and did no longer go higher. This seems to be the current limit of PHD2. As far as I understand it, SkyTrack's custom tracking doesn't have such limits?

When you click on 'Start Satellite Tracking' and the circle turns green to indicate that it 'is in the FOV'. For that to actually work, the mount would have to be very well star aligned? How about polar alignment? It's probably hard to say, but do you think it's worth a try using the C9 on an AVX mount? As far I remember, slewing to a target after doing the two star alignment was never spot on. Sometimes the target wasn't even in the FOV. Since I started using N.I.N.A., I don't bother much with alignment as it frames the target by doing plate solves and for that a rough alignment is sufficient. Thank you.

This is rather insightful. A few nights ago I used JPL horizons dRA*cosD, d(DEC)/Dt data with phd2 but was rather disappointed. It didn't keep up with the motion. I though maybe it was too fast for the default 0.5x guide rate; but now I see in your video the RA Rate is not the same dRA*cosD value I can pull up for February 2nd. So my question is, is there a different field I need to filter for, or do I have to do some kind of conversion of dRA*cosD? I also get similar numbers from the minor planet center ephemeris.

So if custom tracking is grayed out I can always connect with phd2 and track on a star. Do you have to enter the RA/Dec rates manually?

Thank you so much for this fantastic new feature! I had previously had to track the comet by locking onto the comet itself via PhD2. Now I can use multi stars tracking to get a much better performance. I am also amazed at how often you crank out new features.

I assume that this would work for other targets beside comets... Would that be correct? Thanks

This looks like a great piece of kit! However, when I connect to my CGEM mount the Skytrack sidereal time differs from the mount sidereal time by about 14 minutes. Is it best to fix this in Skytrack, or to change the mount's hand controller to be the same as Skytrack? Where does Skytrack get its local sidereal time? Thanks! :)

PHD2 does a great job of comet tracking. Comparisons with ASCOM Ra/Dec rate properties comet tracking may be difficult as the comet nucleus may not be perfectly spherical.

Awesome! Something to think about.. PHD2 has a comet autoguiding mode which requires comet drift rate information, and it serves a TCP socket server which planetarium apps can use to send this information to PHD2. CDC, for example, implements this link. I see that SkyTrack queries comet RA and dec drift rates from JPL, so the data is available in SkyTrack. Please consider adding a "Send comet drift rates to PHD2" button or something like that. Granted, users can just view the downloaded ephemeris and manually transcribe rates into PHD2, but the drift rates change by a couple of percent per hour around closest approach, making it cumbersome to keep up with manually. Then again, this may open a can of worms if you have any interest in broader integration with PHD2, and by the way that API is not well documented as far as I can find.

Do I need to enable custom tracking for long exposures like 2min? I want to image comet c/2022 e3 ztf.