I love the idea of using my Star Adventurer mount for live stacking, but locating DSOs without any GOTO capability in the mount takes a lot of time.
Is there a way to tell Sharpcap that I want to look at a DSO and have it give me guiding directions in Dec and RA to center the DSO in the same technique that it helps me polar align?
It seems like that shouldn't be impossible given how good it is at plate solving for polar alignment.
LT
Can Sharpcap Platesolve to locate DSOs using a mount without goto??
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Re: Can Sharpcap Platesolve to locate DSOs using a mount without goto??
Hi,
the plate solving for Polar Alignment is a separate algorithm that is built into SharpCap - it only copes with the area within about 6-7 degrees of each pole, so it can't be used for general plate solving. For general plate solving, you will need a full plate solving application like Astap or Astrotortilla.
Once you have Astap/Astrotortilla set up and working in SharpCap, you can use the 'Plate Solve (Solve Only)' option from the tools menu - that will try to find the current view and display the resulting co-ordinates in the notification bar (and in the log). It can be slow because it has to search the whole sky, but there are things you can do to speed it up:
1) Tell SharpCap the focal length of your telescope (Plate solving settings) - this reduces the amount of work to be done as SharpCap can calculate the field of view and pass that to the plate solving application as a hint
2) Connect SharpCap to the ASCOM 'Telescope Simulator for .NET' mount - this is a software emulation of a GOTO mount. It might sound useless, but if you adjust the RA/Dec of that simulator to roughly where you are pointing then SharpCap will use those co-ordinates as a hint for the plate solving application.
Once you see the plate solve co-ordinates, you can compare them to the target co-ordinates and adjust in RA and Dec as required - if necessary doing another round of plate solving.
hope this helps,
Robin
the plate solving for Polar Alignment is a separate algorithm that is built into SharpCap - it only copes with the area within about 6-7 degrees of each pole, so it can't be used for general plate solving. For general plate solving, you will need a full plate solving application like Astap or Astrotortilla.
Once you have Astap/Astrotortilla set up and working in SharpCap, you can use the 'Plate Solve (Solve Only)' option from the tools menu - that will try to find the current view and display the resulting co-ordinates in the notification bar (and in the log). It can be slow because it has to search the whole sky, but there are things you can do to speed it up:
1) Tell SharpCap the focal length of your telescope (Plate solving settings) - this reduces the amount of work to be done as SharpCap can calculate the field of view and pass that to the plate solving application as a hint
2) Connect SharpCap to the ASCOM 'Telescope Simulator for .NET' mount - this is a software emulation of a GOTO mount. It might sound useless, but if you adjust the RA/Dec of that simulator to roughly where you are pointing then SharpCap will use those co-ordinates as a hint for the plate solving application.
Once you see the plate solve co-ordinates, you can compare them to the target co-ordinates and adjust in RA and Dec as required - if necessary doing another round of plate solving.
hope this helps,
Robin
Re: Can Sharpcap Platesolve to locate DSOs using a mount without goto??
#2 is exactly what I do. It works great with my 50 year old, non-go-to mount. SC connects to Computer Assisted Astronomy (C2A) planetarium software (free) via ASCOM driver that Robin mentioned. The plate solves are fast.
Brian
Brian