About SkyGuide (for Windows OS)

SkyGuide is the entry level of the SkySurveyor suite. SkySurveyor suite was designed to provide the easy to use tools for guiding and focusing as well as to fully automate the wide-field mosaic capture process.

SkyGuide for Windows OS exits on two versions, 32 bits and 64 bits.

Both SkyGuide versions wors with the ASCOM Platform (version 6.4 or higher).

The 32 bits version of SkyGuide is also able to work with MaxIm DL (version 5 or higher) but it is limited to frame sizes of 1 MPixel (for ASCOM and Maxim-DL).
The 64 bits version does not have frame size limitation however it does not support Maxim-DL.

The main idea behind SkyGuide (short name SKG) is to uses all information that exists in the frame of a camera, usually the guider, however SkyGuide works with any camera including the imager in the context of a single camera solution.

The purpose of an auto guiding software is to correct the mechanical tracking errors and any drift caused by polar alignment errors, flexures and other sources. To do that, the traditional guiding software measures the displacement of the centroid of one (or several) star available in the field of the guider camera. Nevertheless, the error measured does not only contains the error of the mount and setup but also the error caused by the turbulent layer of the earth atmosphere that impact the intensity and the shape of the stars light (seeing), as well as other noises.

The primary effect of seeing is a random wandering of the star centroid over time, the guide star is jumping around.
Other optical aberrations may still exist but they account only for less than 20% of the overall seeing effect.

SKG improves the guiding performances under seeing limited conditions by averaging the information contained inside the entire frame instead of using a single guide star.

To do that, we have developed a patented US10264164B2 algorithm that use Advanced Digital Image Correlation (ADIC).

ADIC is a mathematical and statistical technique for measuring the registration (offset and rotation) of a given image relative to a reference image,

For more information on intellectual property please visit: https://www.innovationsforesight.com/intellectual-property/

The installation and use of SKG implies full agreement with its license, terms and conditions as well as the related patent rights.

With ADIC, SKG is able to guide on various objects, not only a guide star. It becomes possible to guide on the moon, on a planet, a comet, and other structures and patterns.

With SKG, there is no need to find a star, just slew your telescope on the targeted object and start auto guiding.
If there is any pattern available, beside noise, SKG will be able to guide.

With SkyGuide you can:

• Use Sequence Generator Pro to manage complex capture sequence
• Create an save one or several instrument profiles
• Use auto dark frame to remove fixed pattern noise
• Crop guider frame
• Save guider frame in FIT format
• Dither frames when the imager camera has finished exposing
• Suspend guiding when the mount is slewing to another target and resume it when the mount is tracking the new target
• Output guiding history to Comma Separated Files (CSV)
• Use ASCOM compliant telescope and cameras
• Use MaxIm DL 5 or 6 for cameras not compatible ASCOM (i.e. SBIG) with SkyGuide 32 bits for Windows
• Displays drifts, like those caused by polar alignment error
• Displays the mount stand-alone tracking errors before any correction (open loop error)
• Displays the mount guiding errors after SKG correction (closed loop error)
• Displays the error reduction, on both axis, showing the auto-guiding improvement versus the mount stand-alone  tracking errors (open loop).
• Calibrate auto guider
• Control auto guiding through our REST API
• Be notified via push message on your smart phone if something bad happen (signal lost, mount failure, ...)

Icons used in this manual:

The background color of information fields displayed on the various panel of the user interface can be the following: