Dither without guiding?

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Chris A
Posts: 43
Joined: Fri May 03, 2019 4:06 am

Dither without guiding?

#1

Post by Chris A »

Hi Robin

I liked the fact that you added dithering without requiring any guider in SC4. I tried it yesterday by going into the guiding tab and set the mount to dither without guiding using ASCOM, and then I connected my mount in SC using the ASCOM driver. During the live stacking, I did not notice any dithering, and I even looked into the live log section. I was running two Sharpcaps on my desktop and use two cameras for EAA and that is why I am not guiding. When I only run one Sharpcap, I use the other camera as a guider in PHD2 and the dithering works fine. Perhaps this feature of dithering without guiding using ASCOM is strictly for the sequencer feature? I have not tried to run only one Sharpcap the dither without guiding using ASCOM, so perhaps using two Sharpcaps at once is the problem?

Thank you for any suggestions!

Cheers,

Chris A
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admin
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Re: Dither without guiding?

#2

Post by admin »

Hi Chris,

did you go into the Live Stack guiding panel and enable dithering there?
Capture.JPG
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Setting up unguided dithering in the settings only tells SharpCap to use that sort of dither when other parts of SharpCap need to use dithering - you then also need to turn on guiding/dithering in those other parts of SharpCap.

cheers,

Robin
Chris A
Posts: 43
Joined: Fri May 03, 2019 4:06 am

Re: Dither without guiding?

#3

Post by Chris A »

Hi Robin

I totally did not know that these options had to be selected. It is clear again here tonight, so I will select these options where you highlighted in yellow and try it out. I guess the one you have checked but not highlighted ("pause stacking if guiding is lost") is not necessary since I will not be guiding. I will update you tomorrow how everything turned out and as always thank you for your amazing service!

Cheers,

Chris A
Chris A
Posts: 43
Joined: Fri May 03, 2019 4:06 am

Re: Dither without guiding?

#4

Post by Chris A »

BTW Robin, I gave this some thought and know that I will only be able to dither one camera setup at one time since both setups (2 Sharpcaps, two cameras & two scopes) are mounted on one mount - Losmandy G11 and they are not timed exact in sync. Would you also agree with this or do you have any other options besides two separate mounts? No rush for the answer and thank you once again!

Cheers,

Chris A
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Re: Dither without guiding?

#5

Post by admin »

Hi Chris,

you are exactly right - one SharpCap will take charge of the dithering and the other will have no idea about it, so will happily take frames all through the dithering interval :(

Even if there was a way for SharpCap 2 to know about SharpCap 1 dithering, you then hit the problem of the frames not being in sync :(

Off the top of my head, I can't think of a good workaround for this at the moment - the only thing that might work would be to have a separate application that handled the dithering and have 2 SharpCap's both talk to it to allow the dithering to be synchronized. Unfortunately a lot of work...

cheers,

Robin
Chris A
Posts: 43
Joined: Fri May 03, 2019 4:06 am

Re: Dither without guiding?

#6

Post by Chris A »

Hi Robin

Thank you very much for the feedback. I appreciated it! Yes, I see exactly what you mean and I will just switch back & forth from one Sharpcap (SC) to another SC pending on target object that I want to dither. I know that I must go into the settings of one SC program to the other SC program and select/deselect the features in the live guiding tab. I also must make sure that the mount is only connected to one SC at a time because I notice that SC connects to the mount when the monitor guiding application is selected.

I used the dithering via ASCOM without guiding and it worked flawlessly. It also made a big difference regarding the random background noise level. I posted an image of M64 in the gallery section using the dithering via ASCOM without guiding and live stack. Keep in mind though that my skies are terrible at Bortle 8.

Thank you again Robin for your help/advice!!
Cheers,

Chris A
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