Your First Plan (Starry Night, no rotator)

Your first plan should be for a single target night. Plan ahead! Don't wait till it's time to start your run!

1. Start up Starry Night .
2. Set Starry Night's location to your observatory.
3. Set Starry Night's date/time for the start of your run (later tonight!) and stop time flow if needed.
4. Locate your target in Starry Night. It must be "up" high enough to image when you run starts (the time set in Starry Night, right?).
5. Capture the target:
   1. Hover the mouse over your target until its name appears in the HUD. If needed, zoom in so you can distinguish your target from surrounding objects.
   2. Right-click on your target in Starry Night.
   3. In the menu that appears, select Add target-name to ACP plan. The Planner will appear and your target will be in its list.
6. Add images. If you have filters, add some images for each filter and binning you want.
7. Click the Update button. The total imaging time (including overhead) will appear in red. The time in Starry Night will jump to the end of your run, showing you where your target will be then.
8. Adjust your images and click Update again until the total time is what you want (the target is not too low in the west!).
9. Select File/Save and save your plan, for example FirstPlan.txt. It should go into My Documents, ACP Observing, Plans.
   1. Enter any comments you want in your plan in the form that appears.
   2. If the ACP Start window appars, answer No.

That's it! Either run your plan on your local ACP or upload it to the remote observatory and run it there. Of course, the observatory must be ready to image and it must be the date for which you made the plan. The plan will wait till the time you set in Step 3 above, then start imaging.

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