Hello All,

Alas, a recent ISS passage and the ISS tracking questions pour in. :-)

I guess this is for Ray.  Tracking ISS yesterday with APCC / Horizons / AP1200 worked reasonably well.
Video from the AP130 with 2x barlow and Canon T3i
http://skywatcher.space/download/iss_20210316.mp4

During the tracking I tried to use the hand-paddle buttons to superimpose correction onto the tracking trying to keep the ISS in the camera view screen. It somehow worked a bit but I had the feeling that the tracking was 'fighting' me back. Once I pushed a button to move the ISS to the center 'something' pushed it back by a bit moments later. I got some success by over-compensating and ISS got then back (closer) to center. At one point in this effort however it got lost outside the view  finder screen and never came back.

Question:

• What is happening there?
• Is it a correct expectation to operate the hand paddle buttons independent from the APCC tracking? (My thinking is that the APCC uses custom tracking rate which is something different from what the buttons do). Is that assumption correct?
• Really cool would be to have a USB access to a PC 'gaming' joystick and use that to move the mount. Any ideas in the AP mount driver to support that?

As always great shout-out to Ray for the excellent work he does!

Cheers,
Gert

During the tracking I tried to use the hand-paddle buttons to superimpose correction onto
the tracking trying to
keep the ISS in the camera view screen. It somehow worked a bit but I had the feeling that the tracking was
'fighting' me back. Once I pushed a button to move the ISS to the center 'something' pushed it back by a bit
moments later. I got some success by over-compensating and ISS got then back (closer) to center. At one point in
this effort however it got lost outside the view finder screen and never came back.

Horizons continuously slews to new RA/Dec coordinates, so the A-P mount hand controller moves probably won't have much of an effect. The drift could be from changes in the orbit of ISS. In a future version of Horizons, I'll try to work in a way to detect relative moves and add them in.

-Ray

-----Original Message-----
From: main@ap-gto.groups.io [mailto:main@ap-gto.groups.io] On Behalf Of drgert1 via groups.io
Sent: Wednesday, March 17, 2021 8:21 PM
To: main@ap-gto.groups.io
Subject: [ap-gto] ISS Tracking with APCC & Horizons plus using handbox buttons ??

Hello All,

Alas, a recent ISS passage and the ISS tracking questions pour in. :-)

I guess this is for Ray. Tracking ISS yesterday with APCC / Horizons / AP1200 worked reasonably well.
Video from the AP130 with 2x barlow and Canon T3i
http://skywatcher.space/download/iss_20210316.mp4

During the tracking I tried to use the hand-paddle buttons to superimpose correction onto the tracking trying to
keep the ISS in the camera view screen. It somehow worked a bit but I had the feeling that the tracking was
'fighting' me back. Once I pushed a button to move the ISS to the center 'something' pushed it back by a bit
moments later. I got some success by over-compensating and ISS got then back (closer) to center. At one point in
this effort however it got lost outside the view finder screen and never came back.

Question:


* What is happening there?
* Is it a correct expectation to operate the hand paddle buttons independent from the APCC tracking? (My
thinking is that the APCC uses custom tracking rate which is something different from what the buttons do). Is that
assumption correct?
* Really cool would be to have a USB access to a PC 'gaming' joystick and use that to move the mount. Any
ideas in the AP mount driver to support that?


As always great shout-out to Ray for the excellent work he does!

Cheers,
Gert

Hello Ray,