CPWI, software for Celestron Mounts is AWESOME!

 

M 27 - The Dumbbell Nebula

Scope: Celestron 6se with .63 focal reducer

Mount: Celestron AVX

Camera: self-modded Canon XS body

ISO 1600 - Nine 8 minute subs (plus darks, flats & bias shots)

Stacked with Sequator   Post-processed with Luminar 2018

For years now I have used the standard ASCOM driver for Celestron telescope mounts like NexStar and AVX. Accuracy has always been less than stellar. I learned just a few days ago that Celestron has a new software for controlling one of their telescope mounts with a computer: CPWI, which stands for "Celestron PlaneWave Instruments".

Wanting to spend less time centering the night sky objects I decided to download it (it is free) and install it on my Win10 laptop (sorry, no Mac version yet.)

At first I wasn't too happy. After starting CPWI, my guiding software, PHD2, would not recognize the mount or the software. Solution: I needed to change the driver in PHD2 from "Celestron universal driver" to the CPWI driver. Now it connects without a problem.

Here's where to learn more about it and download it: https://www.celestron.com/pages/celestron-pwi-telescope-control-software

There is a need, at least for my setup, to open the various programs I use in a particular order or else suffer from COM interference issues.

1. Start CPWI and connect it to the mount.

2. Start up PHD2 (with the CPWI ASCOM driver)

3. Start up my camera image capturing software (in my case BackyardEOS).

Once I got the general idea of how the CPWI works I have found it to be AWESOME and ACCURATE!

Now I spend more time imaging than searching for the object!