Eclipse Sequence Generator

[galljj]

Well, I think I got it to work in auto exposure mode

First, things that didn't work -

Leaving the exposure setting blank
Editing the exposure setting in the .scs file to AUTO
Creating a sharpcap profile profile that has auto for exposure

But, if created a .scs file and edited it to eliminate all exposure calls and to a sharpcap profile call it ran. Of course I forgot to do something that would cause the light incident on the camera to vary, so all the shots were at the same exposure - which the camera selected, not me.

So, a little more testing to do.

Fortunately eclipse day - normally cloudy where I am, will be clear.
Unfortunately, all my testing has been in my basement, as it has been cloudy for a week !

best to all

this is a great little tool, riding on top of a superb piece of software.

clear skies

john

[galljj]

I should have mentioned I am running a ZWO camera.

As mentioned previously, only certain cameras have auto exposure capability

john

[admin]

Hi,

glad you found a solution - I will have to add steps to the sequencer in future to add an easy way to set auto exposure (once the eclipse is all done and dusted!)

Good luck to everyone trying to image the eclipse tomorrow - hope that the clouds stay away and that your software and hardware run without any glitches!

cheers,

Robin

[galljj]

Well, auto expose failed. It set the exposure very high, reflecting I suspect the large proportion of black pixels. So, the image was blown out.

I was able to quickly recreate t he sequence - thanks L-Kid - and off we went.

All seemed to go nicely. Some great screen captures on my Ipad.

The saved FITS files are another matter. Hopefully I can sort these out.

john

[admin]

Hi John,

that's a rotten shame, sorry to hear it

With hindsight it makes sense that the autoexpose function of the camera would be trying to balance the 'average' brightness of the image and perhaps end up bringing the levels up too high if there is a very small amount of bright area. Hope that some data can be recovered.

Robin

[galljj]

All's well that ends - mostly- well. I managed to salvage some shots.

Turns out I misjudged the exposure in totality - I didn't think to bracket whilst making modifications on the fly. And, for some reason I my saved shots were in monochrome. Operator error.

but still ...

eclipse corona_.jpg (110.81 KiB) Viewed 6598 times

color corona .PNG (74.38 KiB) Viewed 6598 times

[admin]

Hi John,

glad to hear that you were able to recover some of the images. Those two certainly look good.

Take a close look at the 'monochrome' images - if you zoom in and see a chessboard pattern at the pixel levels then they are saved RAW colour images and the colour can be recovered by using the correct software settings to debayer them.

cheers,

Robin

[Fishie]

Hi,

Thank you for developing this script. I used SETnC with my Canon DSLR cameras in the eclipses in 2023 and 2024, and now am considering of making the switch to an astronomy CMOS camera in Spain this August.

Upon testing, I found that some exposures went missing and SharpCap showed 0 frames saved. It seems random to me which exposure went missing:

untitled12.png (98.61 KiB) Viewed 1081 times

Anybody else has experienced the same issue?

Many thanks!

Best,
fishie

[admin]

Hi,

could you post both the sequence file that the web page generated *and* the SharpCap log from the run that created the missing frames please? That way we can see what was supposed to happen and what actually happened. I suspect it is going to come down to something related to timing - perhaps that in a short period where the sequence wanted to capture some frames there was no time to actually capture a frame or something, but we will see. It could be partly due to using the DSLR which may take longer to download and prepare a frame to pass to SharpCap than a dedicated CMOS astro camera would.

cheers,

Robin

[Fishie]

Hi,

could you post both the sequence file that the web page generated *and* the SharpCap log from the run that created the missing frames please? That way we can see what was supposed to happen and what actually happened. I suspect it is going to come down to something related to timing - perhaps that in a short period where the sequence wanted to capture some frames there was no time to actually capture a frame or something, but we will see. It could be partly due to using the DSLR which may take longer to download and prepare a frame to pass to SharpCap than a dedicated CMOS astro camera would.

cheers,

Robin

Hi,

Attached please find the log file of the run and the sequence file.

Log_2026-02-22T06_58_25-18976.log

(665.66 KiB) Downloaded 2 times

SharpCap_Eclipse_Sequence.scs

(7.33 KiB) Downloaded 4 times

I am using a ToupTek ATR2600C camera and originally intend to loop through eight exposure times from 10ms to 1.28s. I'm asking it to capture three frames each exposure time (step) but some of the frames seem to be missing. Here each step # should have three frames, but #16 and #17 only has two:

Untitl2ed.png (218.55 KiB) Viewed 1043 times

And here's how I generated the sequence:

Untitled.png (173.23 KiB) Viewed 1043 times

Many thanks!

Best,
fishie