SharpCap Forums

Hi Robin,
Can the seeing monitor be used as a sky quality meter? My PoleMaster is mounted on the saddle, and so it points to the area where my imaging scope is pointing. I then connect the PoleMaster to SC and place the Seeing Monitor rectangle in the region where I'm imaging. I monitor the histogram throughout the night. Does using the Seeing Monitor this way make sense?

cytan

Hi,

I don't think so. The Seeing Monitor code looks for contrast in the image, which is good for lunar/planetary/solar imaging but won't really help you very much for deep sky. If you want to monitor how the seeing level changes over the course of the evening you could put SharpCap into multi-star FWHM focus mode and then set a frame rate limit in the controls on the right so that may be only one frame every 2 to 5 minutes is passed through - if you don't touch the focus then that graph will indicate how star sizes have changed over the course of the night. (Note that I assume that you are talking here about sky quality in terms of seeing conditions, not in terms of background brightness).


Cheers, Robin

Hi Robin,
Thanks for the suggestion. I'll try it out the next time.

Yes, I want to monitor the seeing conditions during the night during my DSO imaging session. Since the PoleMaster is only used at the beginning of the imaging session, it would be useful for it to monitor the seeing conditions during the night because it's not doing anything else.

cytan