Beginners unluck

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cranea
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Joined: Fri Jan 29, 2021 6:35 pm

Beginners unluck

#1

Post by cranea »

Hello Robin

Great to have your fantastic piece of software and I am trying to understand as much as I can but with a slow learning curve. I am 73 years old, my astronomy experience is about 6 months, and I want to get into astrophotography. I purchased your software because of its simple interface but full of features to help me learn this subject.

I have a Meade LX200ACF 8" set up in my sliding roof observatory. On the end of the scope I have a attached a Meade microfocuser and this has the Atik 414ex camera attached. all wirings are set up okay. The camera USB cable is attached to a USB powered hub which is then connected to my adjoining warm room with a 5m USB cable which runs under the observatory. The scope is also attached to the laptop in the warm room via a long RJ11 cable with a RS232-RJ11 USB adapter. I use the Meade ASCOM Generic driver written by CJD and my camera appears under Atik cameras in SharpCap.

When I load SharpCap and select the Atik 414ex camera, all seems well apart from the Capture Display area. Initially this turns black and after a few seconds it turns completely white. I can see no image at all. I am currently trying this in the daytime, just to make sure everything connects and 'does what it is supposed to', but I do not understand why the Capture Display Area shows nothing. In fairness to this I have also run PHD2 with my StarShoot Autoguider and I cannot get that to show me an image either. I have also shone a torch down the telescope tune but this makes no difference. All the USB systems seem to be there in the Device Manager (Win10 64 bit laptop core I5 16GB memory). Can you advise on what to do?

Kind regards

Gerry
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Re: Beginners unluck

#2

Post by admin »

Hi Gerry,

Actually, what you are seeing is fairly typical for trying to use the camera attached to a telescope during the day. The telescope will be set up to focus on distant objects so will not show an image of anything nearby because it will be so far out of focus. If you can point the telescope at a tree, building or roof or other structure at least 100 m away then you may be able to get an image of it during the day.

The usual checklist I would run through with a new camera setup is roughly like this

1) does SharpCap detect the camera and can you open it in SharpCap?
2) when the camera has been opened, does the frame count increase in the bottom left-hand corner?
3) does the camera respond to light? – that is do you get a brighter image in SharpCap if you allow light to get to the camera then you do if you cover the camera
4) can you get an image of a distant object using the camera and the telescope?
5) can you get an image of the moon using the camera and the telescope?
6) can you get images of things that are fainter than the moon?

It sounds like you've pretty much got as far as step three already with the camera giving a bright image after the first frame arrives. If you're getting a bright image with out any light getting to the camera then there may be a problem though.

Hope this helps, Robin
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