Getting Started
Step 8: Automated Acquisition Run

Please note that this plan and run uses only a tiny part of ACP's plan capabilities. For full information see About Observing Plans. Once again you need to know about, and use, the free ACP Planner! For this step, though, you are going to create your plan by hand.

1. Using Notepad, create a plan with at least 5 targets in it. Use the tab-delimited format as before. Again, make sure that the targets will be well up in the sky for at least an hour or two. Use right ascensions within 2 hours of the current sidereal time.

   Enter #INTERVAL xxx directives to set the exposure intervals. You can insert these before each target if you want different exposure intervals for each target. Each time ACP sees #INTERVAL, it will use that interval for all targets following it. Use the magnitude of the object to estimate a good long exposure for each target.

   You should have something like this (in this example, PGC galaxies were used). Note the various formats that can be used for the coordinates (and that the spaces between parts are TAB characters). You can just use one format:

   #interval 120
   #FILTER Luminance               ; Required for systems with filters (carries over across targets)
   PGC22857        08h 08m 41.60s  -18°41'38.0"
   PGC3173  00:53:58.00     +00 59 16.0
   #INTERVAL 90
   PGC3291  00 55 44.50     +00:38:17.0
   #INTERVAL 180
   PGC29822        10.2307778      38.7652778
   PGC21739        7.7657778       -2.9111111

2. Save this plan as My Documents\ACP Astronomy\Plans\Test2.txt and close Notepad.
3. Load the AcquireImages.js script into ACP's console. Click the Browse... button in the Script area and select AcquireImages.js. It should be listed without navigating directories.
4. Click the Run button. A file selector will appear. Select the Test2.txt plan file you just created.
5. Watch the console window to see the progress of the script. It should take a pointing exposure, plate solve it, print out the pointing error, update the scope's pointing, then take the first final image and plate solve it as well. It will then progress through the remaining images, taking a pointing exposure and correcting the telescope's pointing only if the pointing error exceeds that set on the PinPoint tab of ACP's Preferences window.
6. When the script completes and you see "end of run" in the console window, take a look at the images you just acquired. They will be in a date-based folder My Documents\ACP Astronomy\Images\yyyy-mm-dd (local time).
7. You should also look at the run log (and maybe print it) using Notepad. It is located in My Documents\ACP Astronomy\Logs. The file name is the UTC date/time of the log.

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