SharpCap Forums

I'm using SharpCap to capture deep sky and also live stack on a setup with a 10 Micron mount and it doesn't need guiding, i would still like to be able to use dithering so i wonder if a unguided dither option could be added?

My thoughts for options for unguided dither:
Dither by time or after a set amount of frames
Dither x amount of pixels (arcsec per pixel of the setup would have to be input, also guidespeed would have to be taken into account)
Dither patterns: Ra/Dec, spiral or just Ra or Dec

Hi,

I think building this sort of dithering to SharpCap directly is probably quite a long way off, so the best approach may be to try and find a way to tweak the current dithering work the way you want. It may be possible to set up PHD in a way that basically turns the normal guiding off (or reduces it to a very weak state) but still performs useful dithering when SharpCap makes the request to dither.

Cheers, Robin

I would also find it useful if SharpCap could dither.
I use a CEM25-EC and don't need to guide. Since you're already capable of moving the mount after a plate solve, I would have thought generating a random value and commanding a move between shots wouldn't be a big leap.

Steve.

How would i use PHD without a guidecamera?

Hi,

PHD has a simulated camera built-in – by default it shows a star image with noise that drifts slowly, but you can go into the settings and turn the drift off. You can also enter the calibration in PHD manually. Set that up and run PHD and tell it to guide and it will do nothing unless it receives the command to dither from SharpCap at which point it would send messages to the mount to perform the dithering. At least I think that ought to be able to be made to work together.


Cheers, Robin