Framing image from previous session

[Astro_Hoff]

My question is, how do I frame my image from one night to another so as not to need cropping (or as minimal as possible) after stacking? Usually I eyeball it as best I can from night to night from a previous capture. Is there another more accurate way to do this? Maybe I'm missing something obvious.

I have seen that APT has a tool that allows you to set a star mask so that you can re-align easier over multiple sessions. This would be a fantastic feature to implement in SharpCap.

Thanks

[admin]

Hi,

you could do a plate solve on your image from the previous evening to get the exact coordinates of the centre, then go to that position using your planetarium software, then use SharpCap's own plate solving functionality to re-synchronise and re-goto for accurate positioning. I have the idea of a feature to allow you to go to the position of previous image on the list of possible things to do in future.

Cheers, Robin

[Astro_Hoff]

Thanks Robin.

I will give that a try next time. I really hope to see a feature like this in the future just to make it a more simple operation. That is why I like SharpCap Pro so much, it's so easy to use (even for me ). Best $20 I've spent.

[MikeHuerto]

Hi Robin,
Any progress on this feature? I just started dabbling in NINA, and its framing assistant allows you to take/platesolve coordinates from a previous image for correct framing. I find this so useful, that I now image isn NINA, and livestack via the SC camera folder. The other reason I now do this is that NINA has a pointing tolerance setting for plateesolving. Any chance of adding that as well

In general I find the SC interface very easy to use, which is why I will probably always stack using it, but would prefer to be able to do image capture and stacking one program. Thanks again for all the hard work with SC!

Best

Mike

[admin]

Hi Mike,

it's still on the to-do list. Right now I am finishing the deep sky annotation, and then I want to look into satellite trail removal (as I think that is going to become more and more important).

I guess the idea of a tolerance for plate solving also implies a loop - solve, sync, re-goto, re-plate solve, good enough? finish or go round again...

cheers,

Robin

[MikeHuerto]

Hi Robin,

Meanwhile, my faux solution to pointing tolerance in SC, is to just program in 3 x platesolving into the sequencer. Generally, I´ve found that the by the third try, its as close as its going to get!

By the way, thanks for putting in the DSO catalog. That's very useful. Hope you can add more catalogues soon!

Best
Mike

[admin]

Hi Mike,

glad you have a workable solution for now.

The idea with the annotation is to add your own custom catalogs if you want. There is at least one thread on cloudy nights where people are doing this and sharing their custom catalogs : https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/8069 ... nnotation/

cheers,

Robin