Hi Bill, I recently came across information
(http://www.projectpluto.com/mec.htm) that you had a similar
extension to Guide (ALIGNER) as Tpoint is to the Bisque products. I
am very interested in improving my telescope positioning accuracy for
my CCD interest. My NexStar 8 wasn't giving me the tracking or
pointing accuracy required so I mounted the 8" OTA on a fixed
location Vixen GP-DX mount. COAA has recently introduced their WinCTC
goto for the Vixen GP et al. and in their write-up, praise Guide,
see: http://www.ip.pt/coaa/winctc.htm . I ordered WinCTC.

I purchased Guide a week ago and am slowly becoming familiar with it.
It doesn't have the pretty of my Starry Night Pro, but looks like a
serious product, maybe just what I have been seeking. I have also
gone through other planetary programs with minimal satisfaction.
Anything that can improve positioning accuracy I value highly. I
would like to put in one vote for enhancements in ALIGNER to allow my
telescope to drive position and read true sky position more
accurately.

Regards,
Richard

--- In guide-user@y..., Bill J Gray <pluto@p...> wrote:
> Hi Matt,
>
> "...this looks as though it were derived from the same software
that
> TPOINT was. Is this so?"
>
> More of an "independent co-discovery". A while back, I worked
out
> the math of how such a routine should work. I knew of TPoint at the
> time, but didn't realize that much technical information as to how
it
> worked was available. So I re-derived the math from scratch.
>
> About a year after I did all this, I dug up some text Patrick
Wallace
> (original author of TPoint) had written, describing the theory
behind
> his software. There are differences (he takes into account a few
effects
> I hadn't really thought through), but the basic idea is the same.
That's
> the good news.
>
> "...If so, how does the program work?"
>
> Not very well, to be truthful. First off, due to some lousy
initial
> design
> choices, it only works with encoder-based systems of the Tangent
> Instruments variety (Lumicon, Ouranos, MicroGuider, etc.)
Second,
> the alignment steps are not especially straightforward. More like
> "user-abusive", really.
>
> Both problems ought to be fixable. And the few people who have
gotten
> it to work reported substantial improvements in pointing accuracy.
I've
> held off on playing with it because of the work on getting Guide 8
done;
> I focused on getting "data" tasks done, figuring that software-
only jobs
> could wait a bit. So there's some hope for improvement here. (One
> reason for this is a personal one: I have an Ouranos interface,
> 8192-step encoders and a 13.1" mirror, plus other components, and
> will be building a Dob around all this. Which will also make
testing
> the whole thing a lot easier.)
>
> There is some discussion of how it works (or at least how it
_ought_
> to work) at
>
> http://www.projectpluto.com/mec.htm
>
> -- Bill