Plate-solving using Altair Hypercam 183C

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pwhit
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Joined: Fri Aug 25, 2017 8:10 am

Plate-solving using Altair Hypercam 183C

#1

Post by pwhit »

I'm about to purchase an Altair Hypercam 183C camera. My preferred method for locating and centering on targets when using my Canon DSLR is to use plate-solving within Sequence Generator Pro. I understand there is no native Altair driver for Sequence Generator Pro so will most likely start using Sharpcap to control the camera and hopefully do the plate-solving. Does version 3 support plate-solving for the whole sky ? (the manual says '... only with 5 degrees of the north celestial pole'). Also I've got all my plate-solving software and index files on an E: drive rather than in the default C drive location. Is it possible to 'point' Sharpcap to an alternative location for the software and index files ?
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Re: Plate-solving using Altair Hypercam 183C

#2

Post by admin »

Hi,

first of all, don't delay in purchasing your 183C, as I was speaking to Altair today and that model is selling like hot cakes! Also there's a free 1 year SharpCap pro license bundled with that Altair model and a range of other new Altair cameras.

Anyway, back to plate solving... SharpCap 3.0 supports all sky plate solving using one of

* AstroTortilla
* AnSvr
* AllSkyPlateSolver (asps)

if you have them installed. All three are free products. It will detect each of these automatically if they are installed. I think that with AstroTortilla you get the option to install in a custom location and SharpCap should detect that custom location and find AstroTortilla.

Providing more flexibility for plate solving is on my to-do list for SharpCap 3.1 and it will include a way to manually specify where one of the above tools is installed and a way to specify the options to use. I don't think I will be supporting other plate solving tools in 3.1.

cheers,

Robin
pwhit
Posts: 3
Joined: Fri Aug 25, 2017 8:10 am

Re: Plate-solving using Altair Hypercam 183C

#3

Post by pwhit »

Robin

Thanks for your response. I'm looking forward to getting the Hypercam 183C and using SharpCap 3. If you do ever consider adding more plate-solvers I've found when using Sequence Generator Pro that the most reliable one is PlateSolve 2 from PlaneWave.

Cheers

Pete
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