my camera SV503 Cannot see planet in Sharpcap !

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Zeeman Zeeforce
Posts: 20
Joined: Sun Aug 22, 2021 7:53 am

my camera SV503 Cannot see planet in Sharpcap !

#1

Post by Zeeman Zeeforce »

Hello everyone, I appreciate if anyone can help me, I am very frustrated !

I have an Svbony SV305 Camera and a cheap telescope Celestron 102GT 4" 102mm, and when I use my camera on Jupiter or Saturn I only get a black image ! I can see the moon ok thru my telescope and sharpcap ( it looks green and huge , probably over exposed ), but when I center and focus Jupiter or saturn with my 25mm eyepiece and then I remove the eyepiece and insert my SV305 Camera, I only see black on the screen. NO planet , no light, no nothing !! ... I am very new to astrophotography and sharpcap ! Is there something in the software I need to turn on like gamma, or saturation, or any of those many settings ?? I am just very frustrated because I know the object is in the view of my telescope and I know by SV305 works because I can see the moon with it. But sharpcap does not see Jupiter or Saturn. I know the SV305 ccd is sensitive enough to pick up faint light through the telescope, but I am just surprised all I see is a BLACK IMAGE in sharpcap. ANY advice is Greatly appreciated. I am on a budget and I waited years to get into astrophotography .. so this is Very Frustrating ! PLEASE HELP. Any suggestion you throw at me I will try ! Thank You for your Help.
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Menno555
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Re: my camera SV503 Cannot see planet in Sharpcap !

#2

Post by Menno555 »

Hello

Like you already noticed, there are a lot of settings and in the beginning that can be somewhat overwhelming :)
But experiment a lot and you will get to know it all.
On the planets. The first thing to do/try, is to adjust the exposure time on the right hand side panel. The moon is very bright, so exposure times are very short, like for example 500 ms. But the planets are not that bright, so to see/capture them, you have to adjust the exposure time.
So try something like 5 seconds and see what happens. Play with it.
There is also the Gain setting. I don't know how high that goes with your camera. Look what value that gives when the slider is at maximum and then set it to 10% of that. So if has a maximum of 600, set it to 60. This is no golden rule or something, it's just a setting for this now.

Menno
Zeeman Zeeforce
Posts: 20
Joined: Sun Aug 22, 2021 7:53 am

Re: my camera SV503 Cannot see planet in Sharpcap !

#3

Post by Zeeman Zeeforce »

Hello and thanks for your response. I tried changing the exposure time to 2 to 5 seconds and it kinda worked, I was able to see Jupiter using the SV305 Camera ... however, since my cheap telescope mount DOESN'T have tracking, I wasn't able to take any images of Jupiter because it moves out of the view way too fast !!!! ... is there anyway I can hook something up to my Celestron mount to make it track??? I have a Celestron 102GT Telescope and the tripod mount doesn't have a tracker. I have included a couple of pics of my telescope. Any advice to save me some money is Greatly Aprreciated !!
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brisguy
Posts: 66
Joined: Fri Mar 26, 2021 4:08 am

Re: my camera SV503 Cannot see planet in Sharpcap !

#4

Post by brisguy »

Your setup should be just fine for taking good images of the larger planets and the moon. I have a similar setup - same camera and a 120mm scope.

However, there are several things you need to account for:
- You cannot use an eyepiece to set the focus for your camera. The focus point is quite different. You will have to readjust the focus once you place the camera in the tube. SharpCap has several focusing tools, but I think the easiest and most reliable is the one used with a Bahtinov mask on a star. You can actually make a mask out of paper if you are on a budget (see You Tube). Alternatively, you can use one of the other tools like contrast detection which can be used on the moon.

- Because of the focus difference, it is difficult to change between visual use and camera use during the night. You should pick one.

- You claim your mount does not do tracking, but the info I read online says that the 102GT does offer tracking. You should investigate how to make that work.

- Even if you do not have tracking, the planet should stay in your field of view for long enough to get a decent image sequence. For planets, you essentially want to capture a video and process it with AutoStakkert (free) or similar. This software will evaluate the sequence, help you choose the best images in the sequence, and then stack them. You can then sharpen them with Registax (also free) to get amazing results.

- in order for the above process to work best, you need to take the shortest exposure possible so more gain is better, but too much gain will add noise, so it is a tradeoff you will have to experiment with. Reducing the Capture Area will also help. However, this reduces your field of view and shortens the time the planet stays in view if you are not tracking.

- You mentioned a green moon. This is probably because you have not set the white balance correctly. There is an Auto White Balance control you can use that will get you close if you aim at the moon or it also works for targets you use in the daytime. Personally, I just set my Red and Blue to 150 and my Green to 100 and leave it there. You can always adjust color balance in the final image.

Check out the tutorials on this forum for some great information for capturing the moon and Jupiter.

Finally, you don't have to wait until nightfall to experiment with SharpCap or the planet capture software I mentioned. You can point you scope at terrestrial objects in the day and use the same techniques to capture and process images. Astrophotography can be a lot of fun, but there are many, many things you have to learn and practice before getting good images. Hang in there!
Zeeman Zeeforce
Posts: 20
Joined: Sun Aug 22, 2021 7:53 am

Re: my camera SV503 Cannot see planet in Sharpcap !

#5

Post by Zeeman Zeeforce »

thanks brisguy for your VALUABLE ADVICE. I have been playing with my camera settings and I have also tried all these programs you mentioned and I AM FINALLY getting somewhere !!! ... I was able to get Jupitor and saturn much better ! However, its hard to adjust the colors and i have tried many things. Also, in black and white my pics have a Grid Pattern and I DONT KNOW how to get rid of that grid pattern. Maybe you can give me some advice on this stuff ! Here are pics of Jupitor in both black and white and in color and some of the settings I used. Again, i appreciate any advice you have for me !

Zeeman
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JUP 1 A FINAL.jpg
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brisguy
Posts: 66
Joined: Fri Mar 26, 2021 4:08 am

Re: my camera SV503 Cannot see planet in Sharpcap !

#6

Post by brisguy »

Hi Zeeman,

Glad to see you are making progress. Since we are now discussing general image processing techniques not related to SharpCap, I think it would be best for you to take this up on the Cloudy Nights forum. Look for the planetary imaging forum. In case you are not aware, this is an excellent resource for astronomers of all levels with hundreds of enthusiasts taking part and helping others. I will say for now that there is something wrong with your imaging setup either in capture or processing.

The grid lines on your images indicate that they have not been debayered. If you capture in a RAW format on SC (and you should, in general) then the image is stored with the RGB channels separate and will show a grid pattern when viewing as a normal grayscale file. Autostakkert should automatically debayer the images and create an RGB tiff which can then be processed in Registax.

The other problem I notice is that the histogram only shows the RED channel and is 'rectangular' in shape. I am not sure what could cause this, but for planetary images, it should be a 'rounded bump' and should show all three colors. See attached screencap and note that this shows the results after using the Autobalance button in the RGB Balance tool. Before that, the peaks for the various color channels were not aligned.

The good news is that the basic detail shown on your images is good and once you get all the capture and processing bugs worked out, you are going to get some great images!
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