Crude Real time Newtonian Collimation Feature
Posted: Sun Sep 13, 2020 7:22 pm
I would like to suggest a new collimation tool which would be very quick and intuitive. I believe the current collimation tool is nice for fine tuning collimation after say a meridian flip, but for crude rapid adjustment we need something more simple especially for fast reflector optics.
What I am suggesting would require its own tool menu with some simple features.
It would involve the user making collimation adjustments in realtime live view while watching the laptop screen and adjusting the primary and the secondary after say taking a Newtonian on a long car ride to a dark site and doing a basic laser collimation.
- First you would need a custom ROI display or some way to sample all 4 corners of the frame in realtime, if the user could adjust the size of the squares, that would be great. In a high gain live view feed it would be easy to point the scope at a field of stars in the area intended to image and make adjustments. Some cameras may not be sensitive enough to produce a starfield shooting 1 fps or faster, this would be the ideal framerate to make fast real time adjustments to collimation.
-Next we would need a way to invert the image so that the stars are black and the background is white. We would also need a way to adjust the contrast so we would just be looking at bright star profiles.
This is a crude tool with no measuring, it would be strictly visual and in real time. Poor seeing may prevent this type of tool from working in real time.
But, I want to also suggest a way to mitigate in poor seeing. This would be done by allowing the user to stack 3-10 frames from the 1fps or faster readout. The user would then still have the option to visually adjust collimation, albeit much more cumbersome than making real time adjustments.
Once this procedure is complete you could jump over to the collimation tool that already exists and measure how precise the collimation is.
What I am suggesting would require its own tool menu with some simple features.
It would involve the user making collimation adjustments in realtime live view while watching the laptop screen and adjusting the primary and the secondary after say taking a Newtonian on a long car ride to a dark site and doing a basic laser collimation.
- First you would need a custom ROI display or some way to sample all 4 corners of the frame in realtime, if the user could adjust the size of the squares, that would be great. In a high gain live view feed it would be easy to point the scope at a field of stars in the area intended to image and make adjustments. Some cameras may not be sensitive enough to produce a starfield shooting 1 fps or faster, this would be the ideal framerate to make fast real time adjustments to collimation.
-Next we would need a way to invert the image so that the stars are black and the background is white. We would also need a way to adjust the contrast so we would just be looking at bright star profiles.
This is a crude tool with no measuring, it would be strictly visual and in real time. Poor seeing may prevent this type of tool from working in real time.
But, I want to also suggest a way to mitigate in poor seeing. This would be done by allowing the user to stack 3-10 frames from the 1fps or faster readout. The user would then still have the option to visually adjust collimation, albeit much more cumbersome than making real time adjustments.
Once this procedure is complete you could jump over to the collimation tool that already exists and measure how precise the collimation is.