SharpCap Forums

Hi

I'm fairly new to SC, but its been working remarkably well for me in the past few months. I have been using my 14" GOTO Dobson with an ASI224MC to image M82 using various filters.

Last night, the the maximum rotation I was able to get alignment for was about 30 degrees - see attached JPEGS of first and last aligned image (originals were 1.3MB TIFFS).

The aligning stars were still clearly visible, so just wondering if SC reached its max for rotation alignment at 30 degrees, or were there perhaps other image quality issues at play?

FYI These M82 images were taken with a ZWO IR pass850 nm. For the final image go to: https://astrob.in/g4eb2q/0/

For M82 images taken with IR cut:https://astrob.in/db2trc/0/ and no filter https://astrob.in/knxypc/0/

Thanks for your help!

Mike

Hi,

there should be no real limit to the rotation provided enough stars are found to guide the algorithm. I think a lack of stars might be the cause of your problem - I can see about 3 with the naked eye on those images - maybe SharpCap picked up some more faint ones. If one or more of the fainter stars that SharpCap was using have moved out of view you could find a situation where there are not enough left to make the alignment work. Overall, the best thing to do is keep an eye on the contents of the 'Alignment' tab in the live stacking area to see if that is the problem..

thanks,

Robin

Hi Robin
Thanks - yes last night I used the highlight alignment stars feature to keep track of stars being used. That helped a lot, and basically kept going until I was bored and cold! 3000 x 2 sec stacked and a few hundred dropped so something close to 2 hrs! Whilst tapping away with right index finger to keep the tracking stars in FOV.

Thanks again for a great program!
Mike