SharpCap Forums

Hi, even with the virtual mount you need to enable tracking, otherwise it is not possible to sync to RA/Dec co-ordinates. Previous versions of SharpCap tried to send SyncToAltAz commands to some mounts that were capable of accepting RA/Dec sync commands, leading to problems. I suspect that the virtu...

Hi, no, you shouldn't need to calibrate in ROI mode, since calibration is to work out which way the image moves when the mount is moved in different directions, and that doesn't apply for ROI. The movement speed dropdown is top-left of the tracking window - You may find that there are various rates ...

Hi Stephane, not really - I am going to guess that you have a ZWO camera (or at least one that measures gain in the same way as ZWO), which means that gain=500 is ~300x brighter than gain=0, gain=800 would be 10000x brighter. Since the entire analysis process is done at a single light level, going u...

Hi Mike, that's interesting... What is happening is that SharpCap is rejecting the data because the mount seems to move faster in one direction than the other. What settings were you using for the movement rate? It could be that the command to move the mount is turning off tracking (ASCOM doesn't de...

Hi Bob, glad it worked :) Chris, SharpCap already writes BZERO for 16 bit FITS for the same reason - I will have to check for 32 bit (but also avoid breaking other apps like PIPP which seem to work with the current setup). I think SharpCap currently writes signed 32 bit integers (since the live stac...

Hi, Ah, ok, now I see what might be going on - SharpCap has estimated the sensor to be 15 bit, not 16 bit, which is incorrect. The reason for the 15 bit sensor depth is going to be that all the pixel values were either even (multiple of 2) or odd in the tested area. The only thing I can think of tha...

Hi Menno, the most likely cause of this one is that the actual mount movement didn't quite match the change in co-ordinates reported by the ASCOM driver - perhaps due to backlash, periodic error, etc. A new plate solve fixes it because it will update the mount co-ordinates to match the actual pointi...

Hi folks, more useful info - varying thin cloud could possibly be the cause as if it starts to get a little thicker then the sky background will brighten and that will slowly pull the histogram peak to the right. I will have a go myself the next time we get some clear skies, but if someone has the c...

Hi, since you have a CCD sensor, which doesn't have a variable gain adjustment, you will only get one row in the data table. Nothing looks out of place there except the read noise, which - at 27 - looks rather high. Worryingly high in fact. How do the figures line up with the manufacturers data for ...

Hi, yes, I tried both with the 8 surrounding pixels and with the 4 pixels adjacent and other options. Unfortunately it neither does a terribly good job of finding hot pixels or manages to avoid detecting the brightest pixels in a star as hot in all cases (and the lower the FWHM of your stars, the wo...