tmo-wiki

When the scheduler is running, it will take both Dawn and Dusk flats at the appreciate times. Currently, it is set up to take B, V, R, and Open flats.

The auto flat script looks in the following files for what type of flats to take at Dawn and at Dusk.

/Users/admin/Documents/ACP Astronomy/Plans/SchedulerDawnFlats

/Users/admin/Documents/ACP Astronomy/Plans/SchedulerDuskFlats

Note - the file reads “bottom to top”, so anything at the bottom will get observed first then whatever is at the top will get observed last. The “Open” flat was moved to the bottom since by the time scheduler got to the open flats the sky is usually too bright for Open and thus fails.

Additionally, the filter has to be verbatim to the filter as it is listed (capitalization included). So the open filter needs to be listed as “Open” in the SchedulerDuskFlats file.

Once taken, these files will be placed locally on the TMO Desktop at:

/Users/admin/Documents/ACP Astronomy/Images/AutoFlat

And then can be found online here via the Astronomy Cluster

At the end of the night, the final SSP shift should open up Scheduler and click the 'dispatcher running' box which will enable full a full autonomous mode for the telescope.

If you go to open the AAVSO Scheduler (yellow gear icon to the right of ACP's icon), a common error might occur:

Saying that it can't open cause another instance of Scheduler is already active, even though you don't see it anywhere on the desktop!

If this is the case, it is likely that the icon is 'hidden' in the Windows “dock” / “system tray”. In order to access it, you'll have to go to the area indicated by the red arrow in the image below (bottom right of the screen). Once that menu pops up, you'll want to double click the yellow gear icon indicated by the green arrow.