Hi Steve,

Something I was thinking about that would be useful, would be a way of knowing how close the Moon is to a target I want to build a plan for.

I can do this of course by launching a planetarium product, but it would be much more convenient to be in CCD Navigator itself.

For extra credit, it might make a nice Target Criteria parameter too. Say, to show me targets that are no less than X arcseconds near the moon?

Thanks for considering!

Jonathan

These are good suggestions and I'll put them on the list for a new version. But there is no good place on the display to squeeze this info in and at this point I don't want to redesign the GUI.

Hi Steve,

I certainly understand the tight real estate problem! Perhaps the "extra credit" part of the suggestion then is do-able now? That is, when the list of available targets that meet my criteria is built, have it exclude targets that are too near the Moon (as specified by my preference in the criteria selection box).

Thanks for considering this!

Jonathan

Hi Jonathan!

I think that the transit and availability graph (which shows when the Moon rises/sets) along with the lunar illumination percentage are enough to decide if the Moon is a problem for an imaging session or a particular target.

For example, tonight the moon rises here at 9:35 pm so I'd think nothing of imaging until then or even a bit later. And if the Moon were at a low illumination percent, I'd consider going a bit longer. But not much.

Knowing the separation doesn't add anything useful to this. If the Moon is above the horizon and especially if it's brightly illuminated, it will interfere with LRGB no matter what the angular separation from the target is.

On balance, and partly because this would effect the trickier parts of CCDNavigator's code, I'm not willing to add it now. But as I plan for a new version, I'll consider adding something along this line.

Of course, I respect your decisions for what to add/change and when. But I also respectfully disagree with your assessment of value. For instance, tonight I have the Moon rising around 10pm in the east but I have target also in the east that's available for narrowband imaging as early as 7pm. It will transit about the time the Moon is rising and that separation will be maintained until my target is below the horizon. That makes this a very good evening to chase that Ha target.

On the other hand, I had the same target last weekend with the Moon right next to it but just outside the FOV. The telescope's objective had Moon flare because of this close proximity. That made the same combination a very bad evening to shoot.

That is what is motivating me to have this additional information to help me plan. As it is today, I have to build a plan then exit and determine if there's a conflict, then if there is, go back and setup another target and then repeat this external conflict testing.

Just because the Moon is up for 5 hours of tonight's imaging, doesn't mean it will impact what I'm doing, so Moon available time doesn't help me to make that call. Proximity to the Moon does.

Thanks for listening.

Jonathan

Jonathan,

Ok. I'll relent.

I managed to squish the GUI a bit so I have a new parameter "Degrees from Target" at the bottom of the Moon panel. It gives the approximate separation of the Moon from the displayed target. I would have preferred this be associated with the Target panel but this was an easy spot to place it and it's still an appropriate location.

The calculation does NOT take into consideration the movement of the Moon during the session and since the Moon moves about 12 degs per day, the separation can be off by a several degrees. The Moon is, of course, also moving during the imaging of the target so an approximation is the best that can be done anyway.

For reasons given earlier, I am not going to incorporate this as a Criteria factor.

This will appear as CCDNavigator 1-20-13. Version 1-20-12 which has been uploaded but not announced, contains the request for saving camera "Calculate" parameters between runs.

Hi Steve,

The link for 12013 doesn't seem to be working.

Thanks,
Jonathan

It's working now Steve and the new enhancements look good! Where do I send my check for all these custom enhancements you're making me? :-)

Thanks!
Jonathan

Enjoy!