New user settings

[Capesky1]

Hello,

We have recently acquired a ZWO as1071mc astro camera. It is attached to a PlaneWave 12.5 Dall-Kirkham scope on a PlaneWave L350 mount. This equipment is located in an observatory. I have installed the latest version of SharpCap and would appreciate any advice regarding initial settings and usage.

One of our main uses is for public star parties and we would like to use the best settings for quick use and fairly short exposures. At other times we plan on multiple frame longer exposures. All comments are appreciated.

Thanks for you assistance.

Charles

[admin]

Hi,

SharpCap pro has a feature called 'smart histogram' which can combine measurements of your cameras characteristics with the background sky brightness measured at your location to work out some optimum suggestions for exposure and gain values. You can read more about this feature here - https://docs.sharpcap.co.uk/3.2/#Smart%20Histogram.

Because your camera is a fairly popular model, SharpCap already has its measured characteristics in a database, so there is no need for you to run the sensor analysis procedure which you will find mentioned in the documentation.

Since you want to do outreach work, you will probably best off with relatively short exposures – maybe up to 15 or 20 seconds. If you set a maximum exposure time like this in the smart histogram brain window then the algorithm will take account of it and suggest a higher gain value that will go along with the shorter exposures to give good results.

Hope this helps Robin

[Capesky1]

Robin,

Thanks for the information. We will try out your suggestions.

Charles