SharpCap Forums

hi

Trying to get accurate PA I got to know about SC.
One question is bugging me: Will my ST2000 be a good match to accomplish PA with SharpCap?

On the web site one can read "A field of view in the camera of between 1 degree and about 2.5 degrees" is requierd.
On the user manual: “A field of view in the camera of between 0.5 degrees and about 2.5 degrees.“
My setup has 0.97x0.73 degree field of view (FS102 + ST2000) so I am kind a short for the 1 degree minimum but can come clean over that "other" 0.5 degree minimum.

Will ir work for me?
Thanks

Xumie

Hi,

most likely it will work – the reference to the 1° requirement really goes back to the initial versions of polar alignment back in SharpCap 2.9 and 3.0. As I've improved the polar alignment code since then, it started to work quite happily with smaller fields of view in most cases.

You will of course need an Ascom driver for SharpCap to be able to talk to your camera – it's worth checking that out and seeing what sort of frame rate you can achieve – if the frame rate is to slow you may find that while it technically works, the time taken for the system to update may make it frustrating to use. You might find that using binning will helpers that can often increase the frame rate on CCD cameras.

Finally, remember that you can test all of this without needing a SharpCap Pro license – just download and install the normal version of SharpCap and you can run through the first two stages of polar alignment (as far as being shown the current polar alignment error). If it works nicely up to that point then you can be pretty confident that it will work nicely for the final adjustment stage which is what you need to buy the licence for.

Cheers, Robin