SharpCap Forums

This open star cluster NGC 2451 is also known as the "Electric Guitar Cluster". Using the "Brain" in SC, I changed "Unity Gain" to "Max. Dynamic Range" which gave me a gain of 0 and an exposure 3.8 seconds at Raw16 color space. I took 412 frames in the fits format. I focused using the Bahtinov mask in SharpCap 4 Pro. Since SC newest version incorporated dithering without guiding I decided to give it a try. I kept all the default parameters as recommended. I have visited many YouTube videos on the subject of dithering, most requiring guiding which I don't do. There are some who have claimed that dithering takes the place of calibration frames and therefore they no longer take dark frames. My curiosity got the best of me and on the 15th of March, I slew to the above star cluster to determine if the final processing result would show up any cold or hot pixels or artifacts. After processing using PhotoShop, I zoomed into several online photos to compare by matching the number and position of the stars. I was pleasantly surprised to see no cold or hot pixels present and the background appeared to be free of artifacts. I believe this is a very important addition to SC. and as one youtuber from Australia said you can "dither or die". Thanks Robin!

Thanks for sharing and I'm glad that the new dithering functionality worked well for you

cheers,

Robin

Hi Rick,

Struggling to see an electric guitar - sometimes wonder how these names catch on. Also wondered whether it lost some colour during processing ?

TimH

Hi Tim,
I too find it difficult to make out the electric guitar but if you focus diagonally from northwest to southeast you will notice the rough outline of a guitar with the large colorful center star acting as the near center cutout hole of the guitar. At first I had been looking at other images online to help me understand how in the world they came up with that name, but I suppose it requires a lot of imagination and deep meditation and once you see it you will never forget it.

Rick