Sharpcap 3.2 Question

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eseavey
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Sharpcap 3.2 Question

#1

Post by eseavey »

I am curious about the reasoning to keep the live stacking feature as part of the same program, rather then separate it out as a separate program, like DSS live. This would make programming easier I would think, especially the programming for two-monitor viewing could be eliminated. With two programs, you would simply just view each program on a separate monitor.

I will admit, that I have so far no use for the livestacking, because it forces me to have at least 7 stars for alignment, and the Sharpcap will simply not align the images if it does not have enough stars. I like low gain to get the best dynamic range, but that means my stars are quite faint, and Sharpcap will not align the images.

I would like the livestacking to work for me, as I can assess real time whether I need more subs or not, and now it is bit of guesswork. Maybe I am missing something about how to get images aligned in Sharpcap.

I do like the polar align, and focus assist tools, and use them every time.

Thanks
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oopfan
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Re: Sharpcap 3.2 Question

#2

Post by oopfan »

Thanks,

I too use low gain. May I ask what is a typical exposure that you use with a Luminance filter? I typically use 50-60 seconds. I don't Live Stack but I do use Deep Sky Stacker (DSS). When I stack with DSS it has no problem finding at least 100 stars. If instead you are using exposures of 10-20 seconds then you might want to consider increasing your gain. There is another possibility that might explain your low star count but I will wait for your reply.

Brian
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admin
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Re: Sharpcap 3.2 Question

#3

Post by admin »

Hi,

for most users of Live Stack, the attraction is doing it all in a single application rather than trying to set up two applications to talk to each other. To be honest, if you are not picking up enough stars to stack (with the various star detection options tweaked appropriately) then you are probably under-exposing both in terms of not using the full well capacity of the camera and most likely in terms of not overwhelming the camera read noise with the background shot noise (see discussions of the 'brain' smart histogram functionality).

cheers,

Robin
emflocater
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Re: Sharpcap 3.2 Question

#4

Post by emflocater »

Being a Newbie forgive my ignorance and living in the past, but I always thought Sharpcap was used for planetary imaging due to short exposure type webcams. Reading the post above doing 30-60+ seconds EXPOSUREs and talking about lots of STARS I can only think that your webcam is modified and or using a camera capable of long exposure which would mean probably imagings DSO's. Am I correct to say that what your doing is basically long exposure VIDEO of a celestial deep sky object such as a galaxy or nebula and then taking all those frames and stacking them to get 1 image of that galaxy or nebula such as the similar method with a very short exposure time for video of a Planet, Moon or the Sun?
Cheers
Don
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admin
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Re: Sharpcap 3.2 Question

#5

Post by admin »

Hi,

have a read through the manual on Live Stacking - http://docs.sharpcap.co.uk/3.2/#Live%20Stacking . SharpCap supports lots of long exposure dedicated astro cameras now.

Robin
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