ACP Planner - Getting Started

Before making ACP plans, you need to set things up in the Preferences window. If you're a new Starry Night user, you should read Getting Started With Starry Night. If you plan to take dusk or dawn sky-flats, be sure to read Automatic Sky Flats. Before turning on any of the (advanced) Flat Planning options, read Flat Planning Options below.

If you are setting up to use a remote ACP observatory, ask the operator if a profile is available. If so, get it (it's an XML file) and load it using Load Observatory Profile in the File menu. You can then skip the rest of this and immediately start planning for that observatory!

Planner Videos (Suggested Viewing!)

The ACP Video web site has a series of very useful videos covering Planner.

Timing and Visualization Features

If you are a beginner, or routinely plan for single targets, it may be helpful to turn off ACP Planner's target position and timing visualization features (later versions of Planner have this off by default). You can do this with the Disable Timing Features checkbox in Tools/Preferences. While this may help you get started, it also hides Planner's most useful capability. Don't disable timing features unless you have a hard time understanding how objects move in the sky as time progresses, and don't want Planner to help you get your images at the most favorable times.

Profiles - Planning for multiple observatories and/or equipment setups

If you use Planner with more than one observatory and/or equipment setup, you can easily switch between preferences. In Planner's File menu, there are options for saving and loading profiles. All of Planner's preferences and presets are saved in a profile. The Observatory Name field in preferences makes it easy to tell which profile you have loaded. The profiles are XML files. Normally you save them to the Profiles subfolder, but you can send these to other users. If you operate a Share Your Sky! observatory, you might want to put the profile for your observatory in the WebDocs\files subfolder of your ACP install folder so your users can download it and instantly set their Planners up for your observatory.

Display of Times - Planning for a remote observatory

By default, ACP Planner assumes you are making plans for your local observatory. If you are making plans for a remote observatory in a different time zone, you can turn on a feature that causes "local" times in Planner to match those at the remote observatory. It is called "Local time at Observatory..." and includes a field for the observatory's time offset from UTC. Leaving this off will cause local times to be for your location and time zone.

This feature is really useful when you're using Starry Night in conjunction with Planner. Of course(!) the Starry Night time and zone must be set for the remote observatory so you have a view of the sky from there, right? Well, Planner will automatically grab the time zone information from the Starry Night and configure itself to show times that match those in the planetarium (local time at the observatory).

The current release of TheSky6 (6.0.0.55) does not support retrieving of the current UTC offset, so you must set it in Planner's preferences as described below. I have put in a feature request for this, and if they add it, I will release an update to Planner that will grab the offset automatically from TheSky.

If you plan without a planetarium, you need to set the time zone offset for the observatory next to the checkbox. The value is the number of hours that local time at the observatory differs from UTC, including any daylight time in effect. West is negative. For example, US Eastern Standard Time is 5 hours earlier than UTC, so the value to enter is -5 (minus 5). If daylight savings changes at the observatory, you must manually adjust this to reflect the change!

Observing Time Overhead

The Observing Time Overhead section is used to estimate the total time that each of your image sets will take. Values are not critical. Try to get something close to the real times (ask the observatory operator if you are a web user). If the times are too long, the planner will show the observatory busy longer than it will actually be, reducing the available time showing in the planner. If the times are too short, imaging for the next object could be delayed because you planned it for a time when the observatory was still busy doing the previous object. When in doubt, make the times longer rather than shorter. Here are some things to be aware of:

If the observatory is set to plate-solve all images, include the plate-solution time in all of the image download times.
It is assumed that the auto focus time includes time for a pointing update at the end of the auto focus cycle.
It is assumed that the guider startup time includes the settling time. The separate settling time is for internal guider settling after image downloads while the guider is running.

Imager Characteristics

If the observatory has filters, turn on the "Multiple filters" option. This will enable the filters list and several other options.
If the observatory's guider is internal to the camera, it is necessary to stop and restart the guider each time the filter is changed (to adapt to light differences). If this is the case, turn on the "Internal guider" option.
If the observatory's imager has a field rotator, your plans will need to have not only RA/Dec coordinates but also the equatorial position angle (PA) for each target. If this is the case, turn on the "Field rotator" option.

Available Filters (Multiple filters "on" only)

The Filters section lists the filters that the ACP-based observatory has available. The filter names must be the same as those of the observatory! If you are the observatory operator, simply click Get From MaxIm to load MaxIm's filter set into ACP Planner. If you are a web user, look on the ACP/Share Your Sky!™ Instruments and Reference Info page for the observatory you will be using and fill in the correct filter names. If you are planning to use Planner's Flat Planning feature, list the filters in "dusk flat" order.

Auto-Focus

Virtually all robotic observatories have automatic focusing (AF) available, and these settings determine how your plans will manage AF.

If you're using a remote ACP observatory, be sure to ask if the operator has turned on adaptive autofocus. If so, then you don't have to do anything about focusing; the observatory logic will re-focus when the FWHM grows by a set percentage.

To have an AF done at the start of each plan, turn on "At plan start"
Determine if the observatory's filters are parfocal (same focus for all filters), or if the observatory operator has set up focus-offsets, so that switching filters does not require refocusing. If neither of these are true, then you need to turn on the "On filter changes " option. This will increase the time it takes for imaging through multiple filters. If you are the observatory operator, it is strongly recommended to set up filter focus offsets in ACP so that you and your users don't have to focus on every filter change!
If you want an AF before each target, turn on "Before each target". If both this option and "At plan start" are enabled, only one AF will be done at plan start (before the first target).
To simply have an AF done periodically during the run, turn on "Every [xx] min". If any other option causes an AF to be done, the time to the next periodic AF is reset, so feel free to combine this with other options.

Remote Access - Uploading Plans

If you are planning for a remote ACP observatory, fill in the remote info and click Test. If it says your info is OK, then you'll be offered to have your plans uploaded immediately after viewing them in Notepad.

Domain: The domain name (e.g. abc.my-sky.com) and optionally the port number (e.g. abc.my-sky.com:8080), or the IP address and port (e.g. 123.45.67.89) of the ACP server at the remote observatory.
Username: Your username at the remote observatory
Password: Your password for the remote observatory

After filling in this info, click Test to verify that your info is valid.

Finishing Up

The Image Defaults settings determine what values are assigned initially when you manually create a new target. It's not necessary to change these right now, but after you get familiar with ACP Planner, you may want to return here and alter them.
The Reusable Plans switch controls whether a full date/time or just a time is used for timing/waits. Turning this on will produce plans which can be used night after night. NOTE: If the observatory is not running ACP 5.1 hot fix 1 or later, starting a reusable plan later than any of the waits will cause it to wait until that time on the next day! So don't turn this on unless you know the observatory is running ACP 5.1 hot fix 1 or later!
(filters only) The Presets... button displays a window in which you can create and manage preset image set specs. There are several other ways to access the presets during plan creation and mosaic importing, so there's no need to create them here. The button here is provided for convenience. In any case, do not create presets until you have filled in the filter names! Since the presets depend on the filters, once you create your first preset, the "Available filters" fields will be locked. In order to change a filter name, you must first delete all presets.
Click the OK button in the Preferences window to close the preferences.

Now you're ready to start using the ACP Planner. Before doing so, though, if you're a new Starry Night user you should read Getting Started With Starry Night. Then read through the appropriate Routine Use page.

Flat Planning Options (advanced)

If you want to use ACP Planner to generate ACP Flat Plans (advanced users only), you must first order the filters in the list. Filters must be listed in dusk order, that is, from the least sensitive to the most sensitive. Note that Red is typically the least sensitive for flat fields (you're imaging a blue sky!). Typical order would be Red, Green, Blue, Clear for color astro-imaging, or R, G, B, V for Johnson-Cousins. Narrowband filters used for astro-imaging are typically much fainter, and thus should be listed before color or J-C filters.

There are three options in the Flat Planning section of Preferences:

Enable flat plans: This enables the flat planning features of ACP Planner.
Specify file name (expert users only!): This enables an additional feature which enables you to name your flat plans. With this off, your flat plans will be named the same as your observing plan, but with -flat appended. With it on, you'll see a second file-save window when saving your plans. In this second file-save window, you name your flat plan. Don't turn this on unless you're an expert user and need this extra level of flexibility! See Flat Plan Name and Location.
Default flat count: This sets the default number of flats of each type that you want to be taken. You can edit these later in your flat plans if you want different flat counts for each type.