Cant find any stars

[woldsweather]

Last night I spent 5 hours trying to Polar align (my first use of Sharpstar) using Altair GPCAM2 . I eventually got SS finding 10 stars but it wouldn't process with the rest of PA. I was using 30s exposure to get that far. Tonight I can even find one star thereds no proper focusser as I can see it on the Altair GPCAM2 I set it up this afternoon focusser on a transmitter 7 miles away on a hill. I could see 4/5 stars at first this evening on the screen but SS didn't recognise these. SO I tried to focus better and thats when I lost all the stars and now have no idea how to get them back. My gain slider is greyed out and I cant adjust it - is this right? Should I need 30s exposure to find stars? It will take forever to find focus if I have to take 30s between minor adjustments of the GPCAM.

[admin]

Hi,

no, you shouldn't need 30s exposures...

I think the gain may be disabled if you have set the 'Auto Gain with Auto Exposure' control to anything other than the default value of 'Off'. Set this back to Off and you should then be able to turn up the gain to maximum and set the exposure to about 2-4s.

Capture.PNG (11.51 KiB) Viewed 1327 times

Of course, the one thing that you don't mention is what telescope you have the camera attached to. For that particular camera you will need a telescope with a focal length of less than about 400mm for the polar alignment to work.

See this page for more useful info : https://www.sharpcap.co.uk/sharpcap/fea ... leshooting

Robin

[oopfan]

Adding my thoughts:

I've got a Altair GPCAM2 290M. My main scope is 418mm focal length but the FOV is too narrow, so I purchased an inexpensive 162mm finder/guider. Polar alignment works great. Two-second exposures at around 2000 gain.

Brian

[woldsweather]

My main scope is Altair EDF 72 Focal length just over 400mm and the guide scope 60mm Altair.

[woldsweather]

Thanks Robin. I hadn't knowingly set anything but autogain with auto exposure was set at 200 so thats that sorted. I didn't realise that the exposure called quick pics was different to the other exposure either till just now.

[oopfan]

Is this what you have?
https://www.altairastro.com/altair-60mm ... t-75-p.asp

It's got a focal length of 225mm. That should be good.

Unless I misread your original post, you didn't specify if you were using your main scope for PA or your guide scope. I believe that your main scope will not work, but your guide scope will.

Brian