John,

I really love CCDAP and it has greatly improved the organization of my imaging sessions. There are however a couple of items that would make my life even easier, if they were included as new features on a future version.

1. The Status form that pops up at the start of a run is "Modal", covering up any other windows. I like to watch what is happening in TheSky and CCDSoft during a session, so is it possible to add a MINIMIZE button, or MINIMIZE to TRAY option?

2. Last night I was running a session on the Helix Nebula, and everything was going fine until CCDAP tried to select the guide star. After it downloaded the first guider image, it was clear to see that there were three nice MAG 8 stars available. The problem is that it didn't choose any of them, rather it chose a star 3/4 off the right corner of the guider CCD. Could you add an option that would pause the run and let me manually select the guide star? Sorry, I don't have an Optec Pyxis yet, so having the option for interactive control would be nice.

Thank you for your consideration.

Bill

Hi Bill,

1. See the help topic "Running a session/Status Window". Go to the Window menu and uncheck Always on top. You can then minimize the status window. I personally feel this is a bad idea in that you might not know what else is going on. I generally resize TheSky and camera control program to still allow some of the CCDAP status window log area to "peek through"

2. Careful positioning of the FOVI in TheSky by translating should center an appropriate guide star at the start of a run. See the help topic "Entering Targets with TheSky6". If you need to manually position the telescope to get a guide star after a meridian flip, see the help topic on Meridian Flip and uncheck Auto Guide Star Select. If unchecked, the run will pause until you select a guide star and tell it to continue.