Issue with Polar Alignment

Using SharpCap's Polar Alignment feature
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andix
Posts: 1
Joined: Sat Nov 07, 2020 9:08 pm

Issue with Polar Alignment

#1

Post by andix »

I am new to Astrophotography and therefore havoing issues fdoing Polar Alignment through Skycap.
Aftre having . installd I tried to do plate solving where my Telescope Skywatcher EQ5 mount with Omegon vlox camera 3,0 USB is not able to detect 15 stars rather 1 or two max. I tried gaining or reducing noise etc.. somehow today I had no success getting more then 1 star.
Question is
1. Do I need to do someting with my Omegon camera software bfore using skycap
2. Omegon vlox is directly mounted on the telescope and yet see only 1 star

I need help to solve this as I am not able to move to the nxt step and stuck in first.

Thanks for your help.
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admin
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Re: Issue with Polar Alignment

#2

Post by admin »

Hi,

so there are two main things that could be causing this problem –

1) the exposure time is set too low on your camera. You don't mention this, but a typical value would be 2s exposures for polar alignment. Even if you are already using this length of exposure it may be worth pushing it up to 4 or eight seconds to test if that helps.

2) what model of camera do you have and what telescope have you connect it to? The combination of the size of the sensor on the camera and the focal length of the telescope will determine how much of the sky is in view in the image. For the polar alignment to work this must be an area of at least half a degree on each side, preferably 1° in each direction. With the small sensor of a typical entry-level guiding/planetary camera, you would need to have a telescope focal length of 300 mm or less for this to work properly. If you have a more expensive camera with a bigger sensor then you may be able to get away with a longer focal length. You can find online field-of-view calculators like this one - http://www.12dstring.me.uk/fovcalc.php - to check this.

Robin
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