ACP comes with a set of standard scripts. You should become familiar with all of these, as they will probably be useful at one time or another. You don't need to know how they work, or look at the code in the scripts. To run a script, select it in the console (use the Browse... button) and click the Run button to call the script's main entry point.
Expert Users Only: ACP also comes with a large library of support functions, AcquireSupport.wsc. Most of the ACP standard scripts use the common functions in the AcquireSupport library. If you plan to write scripts of your own, you should definitely get familiar with the contents of AcquireSupport.wsc. It will save you considerable time and pain. Look at the standard scripts to see how AcquireSupport is invoked and used. Also be sure to read through the Scripting Guide. When working with AcquireSupport.wsc, the PrimalScript editor is a great help. See the Resources page in the Scripting guide.
This is the script you will use most often. It implements ACP's observing logic with observing plan input. Normally, when started, AcquireImages.js will display a file-open window, asking you which observing plan you want to run. There are three ways to bypass this and have AcquireImages.js run without user interaction:
Acquires flat fields in one of two modes: sky flats using the "minimum gradient" position in the sky or using an artificial light source. For sky flats, it picks a position in the sky on the solar circle near the zenith, offset in the anti-solar direction by 15 degrees. This should be "close enough" for most uses, including precision photometry. For more information and the theory behind this selection, see "The Flat Sky: Calibration and Background Uniformity in Wide-Field Astronomical Images", Chromey & Hasselbacher, PASP 108: 944-949, October 1996.
Before using ACP's automatic sky-flat system, be certain to read Using Automatic Sky Flats. It won't work unless you set it up once for your system and prepare at least one flat plan. In particular, see the Getting Started section. ACP's automatic sky-flat capabilities are incredibly powerful, so if you are interested in automating sky-flats, do read about it! AutoFlat.vbs normally runs only under control of the observing system. In this normal mode of usage it expects to find a default or standard flat plan in your Plans folder (typically My Documents\ACP Astronomy\Plans):
Until you get familiar with the flexibility and degrees of freedom that flat planning can provide, it is strongly recommended that you prepare one standard flat plan for general use, called defaultflat.txt, put it into your default plans folder, and use the #DUSKFLATS and #DAWNFLATS directives in your ACP observing plans. It's going to take you some time to determine the optimum ordering for your filter/binning combinations to make the best use of the twilight sky window available for sky-flats.This script will perform an auto-focus using FocusMax. The AutoFocus option in ACP Preferences must be enabled, and FocusMax must be installed. It simply calls a library function in AcquireSupport. If you have FocusMax's AcquireStar feature enabled, all of its features will be used, otherwise ACP will select a focus star somewhere within 15 degree radius of the current telescope position, then call FocusMax to focus using that star.
This script is useful for testing your guider setup with ACP's "smart autoguiding" startup. Position a guide star on the guide sensor with the mount tracking, then run this script. It will immediately do the smart autoguiding startup, choosing the exposure interval for the guide star, then if guiding errors meet limits it will start guiding. At this point, the script displays an OK button and "Press OK to stop guiding". When you press OK, ACP's guiding shutdown logic will run, stopping autoguiding gracefully. The mount will be left with tracking on so that the guide star will remain on the guide sensor.
This script will calibrate the auto-guider at the current telescope position. If you have an internal or off-axis guider, a bright guide star must already be positioned on the guide sensor. If you have a rotator, it will calculate the mechanical offset of your imager with respect to the true position angle then send the corrected guiding angle to MaxIm before calibration. The Guider option in ACP Preferences must be enabled and the guider must be set up in MaxIm DL.
This script will perform a single PinPoint pointing update at the current telescope coordinates and (if possible) sync it to establish pointing accuracy. If the ACP Pointing Corrector is active, and something (including this script) has already sent one sync to the scope, this script will instead add a mapping point to the pointing corrector. If the scope cannot be synced (for example Paramount running TPOINT pointing correction) the script will jog the scope to remove the pointing error.
This script will find a magnitude 6-9 star within 15 degrees of the current telescope position, assuring that it does not have another star within 30 arc seconds. It will then slew to this star, do a pointing update, and thus center the star in the field. This is useful if you want to do something like collimation or focusing by hand. The CCD must be on the telescope - it will not work for visual observing. The mag range (6-9 by default) can be modified on a per-filter basis by including extra info in your FilterInfo.txt file.
This script will take a pointing image at the current telescope coordinates, and solve for the true focal length as well as the horizontal and vertical plate scales of your imager-telescope combination. This is useful for setting PinPoint up for plate solving in ACP preferences. The PinPoint plate scales must be somewhere near the actual plate scales, (within 50% either way) or the plate solution in this script may not succeed.
This script can recover the position of a "lost" scope. It is usable only for scopes that can be synced. The script takes a pointing image then sends it to Astrometry.net for all-sky plate solving. This almost always succeeds, returning coordinates of the location at which the scope is really pointing. As a final check, those coordinates are then plugged into PinPoint for an independent solution. IF the coordinates agree, then the solution is truly correct and the coordinates from PinPoint are used to sync the mount, recovering its position.
This script will automatically determine the focus offsets of all of your filters with respect to a user-specified reference filter. The offset values are displayed at the end of the script on the console. Useful if you have FocusMax installed, and AutoFocus enabled in ACP.
Useful if you happen to own Software Bisque's version of Patrick Wallace's the TPOINT Telescope Analysis Software. This script will convert a MaxPoint calibration file into a TPOINT-importable text file. Thus, you can transfer a pointing model generated by MaxPoint into TPOINT's analysis program. For more information, see Analyzing With TPOINT.
Converts a mosaic export file from Software Bisque's TheSky into an ACP observing plan format. This does not run in ACP's scripting console, rather it runs under Windows Script (on the desktop). Here's how to use it:
If you have a rotator, and if you specified a position angle (or picked one up from a rotated FOVI) be sure to include a #posang xxx directive in your plan so ACP can position the imager at the correct rotation angle for the mosaic. This script tests the accuracy of ACP's Pointing Corrector (which of course must be active). It measures the pointing error at a user-specified number of random points all over the sky and calculates the RMS pointing error of ACP's model. It works even if image simulation is in effect.
This script will train the ACP Pointing Corrector. If image simulation is in effect it will still work, using the pointing error generator. If you edit this script and set FAST_TEST to True, the simulated image and plate solving will be skipped and you'll see the behavior of the pointing corrector in hyper-time -- very useful for learning about the behavior of the corrector.
It generates the given number of random points with a statistically even distribution across the sky, honoring the slewing limits. As it visits each point, it plate solves and syncs, and sync is what adds the mapping point to the corrector. When it completes the corrector will be trained. Points are split into east and west sets, with the east set being completely done before the west set. This limits the run to one meridian flip for GEM mounts.
It is not necessary to train the corrector this way! From the very first image that you acquire after resetting the model or changing telescope type, all of your images will be centered. The corrector will learn as you acquire more and more images. The effect will be to reduce the frequency of pointing updates as the model gets better and better.