SharpCap Forums

Just installed V3 on my desktop, pro license. No connection to the scope or any meaningful camera. That is all on my observatory PC.

Question -- noticed in the tools list 'Collimation [experimental]', but its not in the help file that I could see or anywhere else. And given the rain, clouds and other stuff we are blessed with (rude words) it will likely be a while before I can explore. Can you say anything about the approach being used and what folks might look for? My scope is a pier-mounted Ritchey-Chretien so it doesn't need it a lot, but when it is good seeing (rare) I do check.

Thanks,

greg latiak

Hi Greg,

the manual hasn't caught up with v3 yet (but at least it's not going to be as long catching up to 3.0 as it took to catch up with the previous versions!)

The collimation tool works by measuring the variation of star sizes across the frame, then trying to find a pattern in this data. If your collimation is good then the smallest, sharpest stars should be in the middle of the frame and they should grow bigger moving outwards from the center, equally in all directions. If the smallest stars are somewhere else on the frame then that's where your optical center is on the sensor. If the pattern isn't symmetrical then you probably have secondary tilt. At least that's what it would mean for a Newtonian, anyway.

I wrote the code, it didn't seem as useful as I'd hoped, then for various other reasons I took the newt off of the mount and used the Vixen ED81S for quite a while, so I never really got an opportunity to refine it any further.

cheers,

Robin

Thanks.

g