Guiding with sharpCap Pro?

[Grafuso]

Hi,
A question about SharpCap Pro: Can you use it to guide to a sunspot and make an AVI at the same time?

Grafuso

[admin]

Hi,

yes, that's possible - you can use the 'Feature Tracking' tool to get SharpCap to keep the image steady by sending movement commands to the mount, then when that is calibrated/configured and running, start capturing. The documentation for Feature Tracking can be found here : https://docs.sharpcap.co.uk/4.1/#!2!Feature%20Tracking - however, note that the latest updates of SharpCap4.1 have improvements to Feature Tracking that are not yet in the documentation. In particular there is a new 'Phase Offset' method of tracking the movement of the image that seems to be more reliable than the older 'Use Image Features' option.

thanks,

Robin

[Grafuso]

Thankyou!
Does guiding with ShapCap Pro also work without the combination with PHD2?
Best regards
Grafuso

[admin]

Hi,

SharpCap doesn't do deep sky guiding like PHD2 does, so is not a replacement for PHD2. You *can* use SharpCap in conjunction with PHD2 - SharpCap will monitor PHD2, schedule dither operations between frames, etc.

cheers,

Robin

[Grafuso]

Hi Robin,
"SharpCap does not provide deep sky guiding like PHD2 and is therefore not a replacement for PHD2." I do not understand that. I have been guiding successfully at night with PHD2 for years. I want to do a sun timelapse during the day, guiding to a sunspot and I saw this here on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbA7ZA9siZ8

Utz

[admin]

Hi,

yes, that's the feature tracking tool in SharpCap, which can guide on sunspots/solar disk/lunar craters/planet/etc. What SharpCap doesn't do is *deep sky* guiding on stars while doing long exposure deep sky imaging. I thought you were asking about using SharpCap in place of that function in PHD2.

cheers,

Robin

[Grafuso]

Robin,
many thanks for your help

Utz