New Feature : Planetary Live Stacking

[admin]

Hi,

I will have to look into this - a while back I changed the way that the planetary stacking plugged into the rest of SharpCap (to enable some new features like solar colorization etc) and that change may have had the side effect of limiting the camera frame rate to the stacking rate.

I will see if that's the case, and if so, what can be done about it.

cheers,

Robin

[surfwheel49]

Thanks,
I notice it is happening with the test camera using a recorded ser. Seems worse with higher frame rates (3.5 mS exposures) than lower frame rates (4.5mS). Just wanted to let you know!
Richard
Thanks again for all of your hard work!

[Borodog]

I've noticed the same thing but had not remembered to report it. I was thinking that perhaps it was related to the size of the ROI and having "Planet Disk Stabilization" enabled, which I was enabling but have since realized it is redundant because the tool already does this. Since it gets applied to every frame in preprocessing, it can slow down frame rates regardless of whether you are using the stacking tool.

[admin]

Hi,

actually, I tracked this down - it was the change in the way it was wired into the framework of SharpCap, meaning that the frame rate was being limited to the rate at which the stacking could process them. I have moved back to doing things the old way (with some further changes to avoid throwing away the features like solar colorization), and things are back to normal with the capture being able to run at 200fps even if stacking is only managing 100fps.

cheers,

Robin

[surfwheel49]

Dr. Glover,
I updated the program last night and it worked beautifully! Thank you again so much for your time. What a great addition to an already amazing program!
Richard

[LaurentLab]

Hello, I used sharpcap to check the collimation of my telescope (Schmidt Cassegrain 150 mm) with this new function. The goal was to visualize the figure of Airy. I used a Player One Uranus C camera with a Barlow * 2. After a few adjustments I obtained the figure of Airy. (made in "folder monitor")
Laurent

Capture6_31janv.JPG (140.27 KiB) Viewed 3439 times

[admin]

Hi folks,

I jave just uploaded a new update today - version 4.1.12469. Normally I only do one update a week, but while I was doing some work trying to reduce memory usage in various areas, I found an error in the wavelet sharpening code used in Planetary/Solar/Lunar live stacking.

Once I'd fixed the error (a tiny change to the code), I found that wavelet sharpening at small scales suddenly worked much better than before. This was something I'd had a problem with originally, and I introduced the 'Half Wavelet Scales' option as a workaround to get better sharpening at the small scales. With the new fix in place, it turns out that 'Half Wavelet Scales' is *totally* redundant - in fact the Level 1 slider with 'Half Wavelet Scales' on did nothing and the 2,3 and 4 sliders gave the same effects as 1,2 and 3 without 'Half scales' turned on.

So... I've fixed the issue and *removed* the 'Half Wavelet Scales' checkbox and all the code that implemented it in the new version. If you previously used half scales you will need to tinker with your level sliders a bit to compensate, but you should end up getting a better image *and* doing it with lower CPU and memory usage (or a higher display update frame rate). Win-win...

There are a few other minor changes in this update, but the improvement to wavelet sharpening seemed important enough to push out a special release (especially with the sun so active right now).

cheers,

Robin

[Borodog]

Thanks for the continued work and updates, Robin.

[admin]

Just to highlight how much this helps, here are some images showing the results from the old code (normal scale and half scale) and from the new, corrected code. All 3 have just level 1 wavelets set to 128 (no other sharpening).

Below: No sharpening (for comparison with sharpened versions below)

Screenshot 2024-08-02 224359.png (63.14 KiB) Viewed 2211 times

Below: Old code, normal wavelets, level1=128 (unusable - level 1 had to be used very cautiously with this setting)

Screenshot 2024-08-02 223756.png (226.46 KiB) Viewed 2211 times

Below: Old code, half scale wavelets, level1=128

Screenshot 2024-08-02 223739.png (148.43 KiB) Viewed 2211 times

Below: New code, level1=128

Screenshot 2024-08-02 223937.png (185.16 KiB) Viewed 2211 times

cheers,

Robin

[admin]

Hi folks,

another update to solar stacking with the very latest SharpCap 4.1.12516

This is based on a nice feature suggestion here on the forums - a way to boost the area of the image outside the solar disk to make it easier to see prominences, etc. I've called the feature 'Corona Boost'... It's probably easiest to just show the effect

Without Corona Boost (default)

Without Boost.jpg (37.35 KiB) Viewed 1989 times

With Corona Boost

Withboost.jpg (49.59 KiB) Viewed 1989 times

This feature uses image processing algorithms to detect the edge of the solar disk in the image, then boosts the brightness of the area *outside* the disk by the specified amount (2.83 times brighter in the example above). Do make sure there is a clear edge of disk in view when using this feature (if it can't detect a good disc, it will do nothing).

You can also use the 'Radius Offset' slider to move the cut-off line between the outside (getting boosted) and the inside a bit - this can fine-tune the image to make sure there are no ugly gaps between the disk and the boosted area.

cheers,

Robin