Connecting an iTelescope Account

Hi Matthew;

The "connect account" feature had other unintended actions that literally let someone "highjack" another member's account. We deactivated that link.

In fact, that is not needed to get iTelescope images sent to your account. Let's talk off-line about this if iTelescope gave you an unexpected answer to your question?

Ken

Brian:

Yes, the #vphot command line or checking the vphot box on iTelescope, allows images to be automatically uploaded from iTelescope to the vphot ftp site and ultimately arrive in your vphot image list. 

However, in order for vphot to know who the images belong to, it needs to find an observer name in the fits header that it understands and can relate to a vphot user. In my case, my name is used by iTelescope in the observer fits header. VPhot is able to connect my name to my vphot user account and the images get to my image list without any action on my part. This is true even though my normal observer/user name in my own personal telescope settings is my observer code (MZK).

So, please look first at the observer fits header in one of your iTelescope images. You should find your images in the iTelescope FTP site and can look at one of them to find out. Hopefully, this will be something that makes sense in terms of identifying you and linking you to your AAVSO account.

IF that is not the case, then it is not reasonable to expect that the image will get to your vphot image list. Check this out and let's see if it answers the question?

BTW, the "connect account" feature had nothing to do with this function and it was causing other problems. Thus, we decided to remove that function.

HTH, Ken

Brian:

Have you ever got iTelescope images directly in your VPhot image list? I assume not?

Try #vphot on your next run, and let's talk. BTW, my itelescope username header also has part of my name in it.

Ken

This thread started by Matthew and Brian looks to have fizzled out. Let's see about revisiting this again! I also would like to have my images taken on one of the iTelescope instruments auto-uploaded to VPHOT. iTelescope offers the option to do this but the breakdown looks to be on the AAVSO end. There's no mechanism apparently existing now to allow the transfer in a "seamless way". Can't this be fixed and solve the security issue that presented itself earlier? The answer to Matthew's and Brian's questions needs to be completed. At the time of the last post to this discussion it was rather unclear whether or not the Observers name in the FITS header (the observer's actual name is indeed given in the header) was recognized by VPHOT and thus allow the transfer to occur. And it was also left unclear if VPHOT can read only the observer's AAVSO member initials but not the Observer's name (or both). Leaving it up to the AAVSO member to experiment and try to see what happens is not a satisfactory solution to this situation. What is needed is a yes or no, followed by publication of the answer.

 I have never tried to have images sent directly to VPHOT. A couple of years ago I discovered that what the VPHOT manual says about how to have the transfer done is incorrect. My good intention at the time was to bring up this issue in the forum but so much for my good intention: I never got around to doing this until now (Matthew beat me to it) So, I continued on with the old fashioned, slow way of downloading my images from iTelescope to my local machine, then upload to VPHOT. It's a bit onerous knowing that the capability to do direct uploads used to exist and could be done again somehow. My experience has been the iTelescope scripts used to control the image-taking are very picky. If your script asks the telescope computer to do something that doesn't work for whatever reason the entire observing run often aborts. I was quite timid about risking observing runs for experimentation.

Now that we are having this discussion I have decided the best approach is to be proactive and not reactive! I'm going to try the #vphot option in a couple of scripts and see what happens!

I will everyone know the outcome, and then publish the results in the forum.

OK, last night I was able to get an image using an iTelescope scope using the #vphot script command that sends the image to AAVSO/VPHOT. My iTelescope name (identical to my AAVSO member name, but not my observer initials, is in the FITS file) is indeed in the FITS file header. The observing run successfully concluded and the telescope status output indicated it did recognize #vphot as being enabled. However my image doesn't look to have made it to AAVSO. The image was however saved in the iTelescope database. Maybe having the AAVSO observer initials, and not the actual name, in the FITS header is the only way the transfer will work. I'm not ready to bug iTelescope to change my user login name to my AAVSO observer initials at this point (there may be some issue on their end why they might not want to do this -- I've noted you can readily change your iTelescope account and profile data in everything except your user name). Rather, I would ask if other iTelescope users could doublecheck my results and we can go from there.

All iTelescope and VPhot Users:

The current procedure necessary for you to get your iTelescope Images automatically sent to your VPhot Account is for you to provide your iTelescope User Name (not your password) to the VPhot Administrators. So, if you would like the image transfer to complete automatically, please send a private email to George Silvis (gasilvis@gmail.com) and Ken Menzies (kenmenstar@gmail.com).

We will add this information to the VPhot user database and you should be all set.

Ken