I am trying to image SH2-129 (Squid Nebula) but my permanent  pier with AP1100AE is in my backyard and the nebula is due north east where my house occludes it until the wee hours.

Is there a way to find out via APCC or some other means when my scope on AP1100 will clear my house (that is what time in the wee hours of the morning) so I can program a start time in SGPro?

Shailesh

On Wed, Jun 1, 2022 at 12:47 PM, Shailesh Trivedi wrote:

Is there a way to find out via APCC or some other means when my scope on AP1100 will clear my house (that is what time in the wee hours of the morning) so I can program a start time in SGPro?

Slew to the DEC involved in the daytime and a RA that puts you above the house, and take images slewing east until the house occludes, that gives you the altitude of the house.  Probably add 5 degrees or so to prevent edge/heat effects from having an impact, and set SGP to not start until target rises above that altitude (which you can read off APCC).  That's assuming SCP does that kind of thing, NINA does, I don't speak SGP.  Or if it has the ability to enter a custom horizon you can use that as the house horizon altitude.  Altitude/Horizons are absolute and won't change night to night, but if you need a time of day, Telescopius has a pretty good readout for altitude vs time.

Maybe it's a florida thing (hotter here) but I find I need to get pretty far above the roof (concrete tiles in my case) before seeing settles down, I think rising heat from the daytime sun. 

Roland,

I tried that last night but the scope's altitude and az did not change even though I know it crosses the meridien at 5am, which is too close to sunrise.

Shailesh

I use sky safari in AR mode (augmented reality) where it uses the phone camera to show the physical scene overlayed with the star map.   I just hold the phone where the telescope is setup, and point the camera to area of the sky I’m interested in…

I did this and I know from my horizon limits in APCC at the target AZ the Altitude shows 20 degrees but clearly that is incorrect or from another scope. Using your technique Rolando, I used 40 degrees of Altitude and got 12:35am. Will try this.

Thanks,

Shailesh

This is great Jeff. I have not used Sky Safari and wonder if it is available on an Android phone.

Shailesh

Karen,

I see many versions. Which one should I buy?

Shailesh

Thank you Karen

I use Sky Safari Pro V6 on my Android Galaxy S20 5G smartphone without any problems. 

Thanks Hy Murveit

Reporting back. I used Roland's method to determine when the Squid nebula would rise above the  2nd story of my house (using my planetarium software) and arrived at 12:35am. I am happy to report that this worked using SGP and now I have a method to image it while I sleep. I have captured images which are decidedly Ha and Oiii (not my house).

Thanks to everyone for provided methods which worked for you. 

Shailesh

There is a super cheap version of Sky Safari, a more expensive one, then the Pro version.  More money gets you more objects plus some other things - see their website.

Eric