Optimize mosaic plan automatically

Zw14WJ24

Hello, I used the mosaic functionality of Asiair yesterday and I loved it. I took a 4-panel mosaic of RGB filters. However, the mosaic planner can have features that optimize the plan.

My plan was for each panel to have 30R, 30G, 30B subframes. Dither is every 5 subframes and autofocus every filter change.

5 frame -> dither -> 5 frame - > dither .... -> filter change -> autofocus -> 5 frame -> dither -> 5 frame -> dither... -> filter change -> autofocus > 5 frame .....

(5 frame-dither) = 6 x 3 + 2(dither before filter changes) = 20 dithers per panel

As you can see, there are lots of unnecessary dithers.

The first optimization would require having filter offset feature. What would have been like:
5R - 5G - 5B - dither - 5R - 5G - 5B ....

(5 frame-dither) = 6 dither per panel

We also saved 3 autofocus.

As you can see, we saved 15 dithers per panel and it's huge considering we have multiple panels with mosaic. it could've saved 60 dithers for me for 4 panels mosaic and 9 autofocus for 4-panel considering we calibrated the filter offsets at the beginning.

( I don't know if it's related to only mosaic but this can be also used in normal plan and autorun I guess)

Zw14WJ24

Hey ZWO team, does this feature make sense? Could you please consider this as it will make capture optimised and reduce the wasted time.

PMTeam@ZWO

Zw14WJ24 Thank you for your suggestion. I will give your suggestion to the development team for consideration.

AstroDude42

I'd vote for the filter offset feature. But reducing the number of dithers will increase noise. You will end up with the same pattern on n channels, where n is the number of channels (i.e. in RGB, LRGB, etc.). And if you stack those it will be of less quality than each channel dithered on its own. The only thing you win is time. But astrophotography is about investing a lot of time to increase the outcome. Just my 2 cents.

Zw14WJ24

AstroDude42 Yes but if you can see the walking noise in 3 frames, you'd def. have a bigger problem somewhere else. This feature is not mandatory anyway. I go to the field to take photos. I'm willing to make this sacrifice on walking noise if there is any without giving up on the dither completely.