Routine Use: Starry Night

If you haven't yet read the introduction to ACP Planner, do so now! Then come back here.

If you are a new Starry Night user, please read Getting Started With Starry Night before trying this! You need to have Starry Night Pro or Pro Plus, version 5.6 or 6.x.

Starting a new ACP Plan

There are two ways to capture targets from Starry Night:

• Clicking on an object in the virtual sky
• Center of an FOV indicator (current "gaze")

Start Planning

1. Move to a time early in the evening and pick an object that is in a favorable position. To change time easily, either
   1. drag open the Graph area at the top of Starry Night's star window (or type Control-G) and drag the graph left and right, or
   2. use the mouse wheel to roll time back and forth. For mouse wheel usage, see Getting Started With Starry Night.

Click to Capture Object

1. Right click on an object and select Add xxx to ACP Plan.
2. When the collector appears, you can click on the new target's name in the list and change the name.
3. Select the newly added target and fill in the image set specs for your object, selecting filters, exposure counts, exposure times, and binning levels. You can use presets to make this easier.
4. Now click Update to save your image set specs for this target.
5. At this point, you may notice that Starry Night's time has jumped to the end of the time needed to acquire your just-added target.
6. Click on Starry Night to bring it back to the front and continue to plan. Don't close the collector.

You'll see a new display that tells you time left to observe, time before an observation starts, etc. This will help you to move time around to select additional objects throughout the night. After adding a new target, the Planner will automatically set the Starry Night time to the end of the just-added target.

Capture from FOV Indicator

1. Set your orientation to Equatorial (Options menu, Orientation).
2. Right click on your target and choose Centre.
3. Zoom in until your FOV indicator fills most of the display.
4. Hand-pan until your target is located where you want it in the FOV indicator.
5. Right click on the virtual sky and select Add Current FOV/Gaze to ACP Plan.
6. When the collector appears, you can click on the new target's name in the list and change the name.
7. Select the newly added target and fill in the image set specs for your object, selecting filters, exposure counts, exposure times, and binning levels. You can use presets to make this easier.
8. Now click Update to save your image set specs for this target.
9. At this point, you may notice that Starry Night's time has jumped to the end of the time needed to acquire your just-added target.
10. Click on Starry Night to bring it back to the front and continue to plan. Don't close the collector.

You'll see a new display that tells you time left to observe, time before an observation starts, etc. This will help you to move time around to select additional objects throughout the night. After adding a new target, the Planner will automatically set the Starry Night time to the end of the just-added target.

Editing Existing Targets

You can also make changes to the targets already in the list. Bring Planner to the front and right click on the desired target and select Edit... This causes the Edit name window to appear. You can change the name, coordinates, and start time. Click OK to save your changes. You will be warned if your new start time overlaps another target when you click OK, and the Edit name window will stay open.

Dusk and Dawn Flats Options

You should look at Automatic Sky Flats before using these options. If you enable either or both of the the Take Flat Fields options for your plan, ACP Planner will include a command to start the ACP automatic sky-flat system at the beginning and/or send of the plan. If you select dusk flats, you must start your observing before dusk twilight; a half hour before sunset will do. Also, do not delete the first #waituntil directive in the plan, or your imaging will start right after the dusk flats. Not a good time! If you select dawn flats, your imaging must end early enough for the dawn flats to be acquired before the sun gets too high. If you're doing in-planetarium planning, this should be easy to determine. After your imaging completes, the dawn flat process will simply wait until the sky conditions are right for acquiring your flats. If your imaging runs too long, the dawn flats will simply be skipped (and you'll have some washed out images too!).

The observatory operator should have already set up ACP's automatic sky-flat system to take a standard set of dawn flats. Confirm this.

Important Hints

• If you're planning for a remote observatory in another time zone, you should enable the "Local time at observatory" option in Planner Preferences. Click here for more info.
• If you have Starry Night's time set to before the current clock time, you won't be able to add a target. After all, you can't observe in the past!
• If you have Starry Night's time set within the time during which an existing target is being observed, you won't be able to add a target.
• You can also smoothly roll time back and forth by clicking on the minutes in the clock (they will turn white) then rolling the mouse wheel. You'll have to hold the mouse over the minutes for this to work.
• You can add an object to the graph, showing its altitude versus time, by right clicking and selecting Start Graphing in the popup menu. If you want to observe several objects, add them all to the graph and plan using the altitude curves.
• Don't miss the [-][+] icons at the top-left of the Graph. It's useful to zoom into the current night.
• You can delete objects (including the Sun and Moon) from the graph by right clicking on their legend and selecting Stop Graphing from the popup menu.
• The Add to ACP Plan option appears in several places, not just from right clicking in the sky. For example, if you have the Find panel open, the light blue options icons will pop up a menu with it included. It also appears next to objects you add in the Planner. Thus you can add objects to your plan from various panels, but be sure you have the time set for the time at which you want to observe it!
• You can also add a target manually by right clicking in the Planner's target list and selecting Add New Target. Again, be sure you have the time set for the time at which you want to observe it!

Saving Your Plan

Once you have completed your night's plan, you need to save it to a text file for input to ACP.

1. Bring the planner to the front and select File/Save as...
2. If you want to add any comments at the top of your plan, enter them into the Add Comments window that first appears.
3. Click OK to close the Add Comments window.
4. Next the File/Save-as window will appear. The first time you use the Planner, you'll notice that the save window is already located in the My Documents\ACP Astronomy\Plans folder. This is where ACP looks for plans by default (assuming you are running ACP locally). Thereafter, it remembers the folder into which you saved the previous plan.
5. If needed, select a folder then give your plan file a name and save it.
6. If you have ACP installed on your computer, you'll now be asked if you want to run your plan in ACP now. If you have ACP, MaxIm, and your observatory instruments running and ready to go, click the checkbox and then answer Yes -- the plan will start. It will, of course, wait until the start time of the first object.

   If not, and you answer No:

   1. Next, you'll see your ACP plan file appear in Notepad. If you want, give it a last check here. You can make last minute changes to image set specs. It's pretty easy to understand. But if the format is a bit daunting, don't worry, just close Notepad.
   2. At this point, you can either run your plan in ACP whenever, or upload it via the web and run it remotely.

Creating a Flat Plan (advanced users)

If you're an advanced user and want to create a flat plan for your observing plan, ACP Planner can do this by scanning your plan and making a flat plan that acquires just the flats needed to calibrate the images in your observing plan. For more information on this, see Automatic Sky Flats and Flat Planning.