Kstars with Ekos anybody using it?

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Glenbo58 Canada
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Kstars with Ekos anybody using it?

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Post by Glenbo58 »


Being a Macbook user I spent much time researching what will work & what wont for OSX platforms. PHD2 guiding does have a Mac version but downloading the INDI drivers for my equipment seems confusing to me. Kstars with EKOS is a complete astro suite that runs on the INDI server. I have downloaded it & it seems to work on my Macbook. Can anybody using it give me their feedback on it? I am completely new to astrophotography. & just picked up a modified DSLR, a ZWO 120 mini guide camera & a reducer/flattner for my 102 ed. I am finding the EKOS part of Kstars overwhelming to learn how to use.
Lunt 102 ED, Celestron AVX, Orion Q70 38mm. Meade Super Plosl 26mm. Orthoscopic 18mm. Antaras Plossl 12.5mm.
Viven SLV 5mm. GSO 2.5 3 element barlow
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KenGS
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Re: Kstars with Ekos anybody using it?

#2

Post by KenGS »


I use KStars/Ekos running INDi on a Linux box and KStars/Ekos on Windows. Ekos is rich in features which have been added organically so it can be hard to come to grips with it. I'm currently working on a re-write of the documentation but it's a big job. The current handbook is at https://docs.kde.org/trunk5/en/kstars/kstars/index.html and the Ekos section is buried quite deep at https://docs.kde.org/trunk5/en/kstars/k ... -ekos.html
Having said that it is probably no harder to learn than any of the other suites. AP is just an incredibly complex activity.
You should probably start with navigating using KStars. Set up your location, connect to INDI via Ekos, right click an object near the pole and try a short goto. Make sure you know where the abort button is in case things get out of control.
Once you are confident with a simple goto, try the capture module using the preview button. You can then progress to setting up a simple capture sequence to capture some images.
Then you can move to the alignment module to polar align, star align and plate solve on different targets.
After that you can think about guiding with either PHD2 or the Ekos internal guider. I prefer PHD2 but that's because I'm used to it.
I would leave the focus module till after that and manually focus for now. The focus module takes some tweaking to get right for any given set up.
Try each step above and if anything doesn't make sense just ask here or at the INDI forum for help.
--Ken
GSO RC8 CF; Vixen 150mm F5 Newtonian c.1983; Super Polaris mount; DMD-1 controller; DIY Arduino controller; EQ6Pro mount; Synscan 3 controller; Avalon M-UNO; Vixen 60mm F12 refractor guidescope; Meade Lightbridge 12"; ASI1600MM-C; ATIK 420, Tamron 46A 70-210mm, ST80, Imaging Source DBK-21AU04-AS cam, Prostar/Toupcam GPCMOS0120KMB, ZWO ASI120MM-S, Bortle 5 sky.
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