New Feature : Planetary Live Stacking

[AngeloM]

Forgive me but I'm late getting to the party.
Question about the Live Solar Imaging 'Corona Boost'.
Are the images shown taken with special Ha solar prominence filters or is it achieved using a basic common White light sun filter (with the 'sun color' box checked) ?

I may as well ask my other burning question while I'm here. I'm a 1st year newbe; been shopping ZWO cameras and was just wondering....
Would I ever need a Cooled Camera if I always use SharpCap live stacking?

Thank you.

Michael

[Altocumulus]

Forgive me but I'm late getting to the party.
Question about the Live Solar Imaging 'Corona Boost'.
Are the images shown taken with special Ha solar prominence filters or is it achieved using a basic common White light sun filter (with the 'sun color' box checked) ?

I may as well ask my other burning question while I'm here. I'm a 1st year newbe; been shopping ZWO cameras and was just wondering....
Would I ever need a Cooled Camera if I always use SharpCap live stacking?

Thank you.

Michael

Regarding seeing proms - you need either a Ha filter or, if lucky, a Ca filter. White Light won't show any proms.

[admin]

Hi,

the images shown are taken with an H-alpha filter (Daystar Quark), which brings the brightness levels of the disk and the prominences close enough together to do this. As altocumulus says, you won't see anything in white light.

cheers,

Robin

[PeterC65]

Do you think it would it be possible to see prominences using a standard solar filter (fitted to the end of a standard scope) together with a Halpha filter fitted to the camera?

[Altocumulus]

Do you think it would it be possible to see prominences using a standard solar filter (fitted to the end of a standard scope) together with a Halpha filter fitted to the camera?

Standard solar filter? Baader Film? That's still only White light.
If you mean a Ha etalon that can be attached to the end/front, then yes.

What do you mean by a Halpha filter? If one designed for deep sky, then NO. It has to be a filter designed for Ha Solar use : Lunt/Daystar

[admin]

Hi,

sadly, that won't work either... A solar h-alpha filter has a bandwidth of about 0.1nm, but deep sky h-alpha filters are typically either 3nm or 12nm bandwidth. So, even the best deep sky filter will let through 30x more 'non h-alpha' light than a proper solar filter, drowning out the prominences in the glow of the disc.

cheers,

Robin

[Akira Ishizaki]

I am using Live Solar/Luner/Planetary Stacking/Enhancement in SharpCapPro!
In previous versions (4.1.12455), when I checked the "Show unprocessed frames" checkbox, I could see the real-time image and when I moved the object in that state, I could see the position change in real-time, but in later versions, the image is not displayed properly However, in later versions, the image is not displayed properly and is only displayed as shown in the Stack image. Is this a specification?
When taking a timelapse of the sun, it is necessary to change the position of the sun that has become misaligned, and it is easier to change the position if the unprocessed frame can be checked in real time.

[admin]

Hi,

I had a look to see what has changed, and it looks like the newer versions are now consistently showing the stabilized version of the raw frame (ie roughly aligned with the current stack) rather than the truly raw frame. In previous versions there was some randomness in whether you got the stabilized or fully raw frame, depending on what other things were enabled/active in the stacking options, so the change was to allow for consistency.

What you should notice in the recent versions is a box drawn on top of the raw frames, which indicates how far the stabilization is having to move the frame. Actually, you will typically only see a maximum of two sides of the box, since the other two will be out of view. If that box is near the edge of the frame then the alignment is still good, if it has moved a long way from the edge then you may want to adjust the mount to re-align.

Screenshot 2024-08-23 095509.jpg (29.82 KiB) Viewed 3764 times

Here you can see an example of the box being overlaid on the unprocessed frames, visible at the bottom and right of the image. This shows that the frame from the camera has been moved up and left to align with the stack. If the offset of the box was larger then it would be time to adjust the mount.

Hope this helps,

Robin

[donstim]

Over a year late in trying out this feature (for various reasons), but was getting the typical .ser video of Jupiter last night for later processing when I remembered this feature had been added. Found it easily enough without consulting any documentation was blown away by how nice a shot you can get real time. It reminded me of the first time I used live stacking on a deep sky object, which seemed like a bit of magic to me at the time. Anyway, just wanted to say kudos and thanks Robin for this very useful feature to now be able to show a good planet view in real time. It's not all that far off what I get after AutoStakkert/Registax processing a SER video of 5000 frames, especially considering it was the first time I tried using it.

Don S

[admin]

Hi Don,

great to hear that it worked so well for you and that you were so impressed

It will likely fall a little short of Autostakkert/Registax processing for a couple of reasons:

* The processing has to happen in real time, so in some cases faster but less accurate algorithms might be used
* SharpCap can't wait to look at all the frames in a video to decide on whether to keep (or drop) a frame based on the quality filter - it has to decide straight away. That makes the quality filtering less accurate.

On the other hand, because you see instant feedback on the final results, it may help you get better focus or better camera settings than you would otherwise achieve with capturing to SER file and then post-processing. It also has great facilities for easily capturing timelapse animations, particularly good for Jupiter and the sun, like this...



That was straight out of SharpCap timelapse capture, with the only post processing being conversion to animated gif with the reverse section added and a bit of a speed boost.

cheers,

Robin