SharpCap Forums

Actually I prefer mono cams over color. Much better image quality in my opinion but it comes at the cost of more effort to make a color image (i.e. LRGB). With mono cams, a common configuration is to use bin1 with the luminance filter and bin2 for RGB. bin2 greatly reduces exposure time but at the c...

Great work, Chuck! Let me see if I understand: Explore Scientific ES127: 127mm f/7.5. Focal Length: 952.5mm QHY183: 2.4um pixel size. Is it Color or Mono? According to the CCD Suitability Calculator https://astronomy.tools/calculators/ccd_suitability With Exceptional Seeing you are slightly under-sa...

If I recall correctly I bought two from Agena:

https://agenaastro.com/blue-fireball-2- ... nsion.html
and
https://agenaastro.com/blue-fireball-2- ... nsion.html

I no longer use the 80mm (the first one). I can send it to you.

Minos, how far do you still need to go? I've got a 2-inch diameter extension that I can send you.

Minos, The "Hubble 5-star Artificial Star(s)" from CCTS looks promising. The one thing I would be concerned about is the battery life. The LEDs will dim as the batteries drain unless the circuit board has a quality voltage regulator which I doubt. You might want to see if you can hack it t...

Minos, "When you say set the stars max pixel value to xxxx, is this something in Astroimagej?" There might be a better way of doing it in SC 3.2. What I do is capture a test frame, open it with Siril, draw a box around the star. Right-click and select "Statistics". One of the sta...

Minos, You also need to capture frames in bin1 mode so you can compare them to what happens when you switch to the different flavors of bin2. 1. Focus in bin1. 2. Set the star's max pixel value to 8192 ADU. 3. Capture a set of frames in bin1. 4. Using the same exposure, switch to bin2 and capture ag...

Hi Minos, I don't know if you can rely on what other people say. The world is rife with people who like to theorize but not experiment. I would suggest finding a 8th to 10th magnitude spectral class "G" star and capturing a few dozen frames with your green filter in all of the configuratio...

Minos, I would recommend going to the sensor manufacturer's datasheet. I would imagine that it is Sony. Chip manufacturers are in the business of selling their products to professional electronics engineers around the world. Their command of the English language is much better than what you get from...

Minos, Hardware binning is frequently used when capturing RGB with a mono camera. The advantages are (1) higher signal-to-noise ratio, (2) shorter exposures than bin1, (3) smaller image files. The disadvantage is lower spatial resolution but that is all right since we rely on the luminance channel f...