Stellarium

Can I set telescope coords remotely?

Asked by Gerrit Barrere

I have an astrophotography scope with a camera attached. I would like to write a script or program to tell Stellarium that my scope is currently pointing to a certain point, without sending this information to my mount. I would plate solve an image and then sync it to Stellarium only. This would be to help me do a two-point iterative polar alignment with my scope hand controller without disrupting where the mount thinks it's pointing. Stellarium would then show me where my scope is pointing relative to the alignment star I'm after, even if the star is out of the FOV of my camera. Then I can use the HC direction keys, watch the scope position move in Stellarium, and know if I'm moving in the right direction.

I'm using StellariumScope successfully now, and I think what I want is for my script to use the same interface that StellariumScope does, if that's possible. Is that ASCOM, or a specific Stellarium API, or ?

Thanks for any help!
Gerrit

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gzotti
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Best gzotti (georg-zotti) said : 		#1

Stellarium has its own telescope control plugin that talks to various telescopes. Details: see User Guide.
StellariumScope is 3rd-party, so we don't know its internals.

Stellarium can only send GOTO(coordinates) commands, and will only display the pointer where the telescope reports it. It assumes the scope is perfectly aligned.

You can communicate with Stellarium with the RemoteControl HTTP API to read positioning, query object coordinates, move to certain coordinates etc.
https://stellarium.org/doc/head/remoteControlDoc.html
The telescope plugin is not currently supported by the RemoteControl plugin.

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Gerrit Barrere (gerritb) said : 		#2

Thank you Georg! I think I can make Remote Control do much of what I want.

Gerrit