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feature tracking - planetary - feedbacks?
Posted: Sat Apr 09, 2022 8:57 am
by Fafa
Hello dear forum
I have a celestron nexstar with Az mount , i use Sharpcap pro on regular basis and i love the possibility to manually move with the ROI when i am not in full resolution; this saved me a lot of times when planet "escaping" , considering also that i have a camera with a small sensor (asi462mc)
Recently i was looking for something that automatically could center the roi and i saw this interesting feature tracking
As i understood this function could keep planet inside ROI, and would be great for me ; i see is possible to use mount but also camera ROI only
Has anyone tried feature tracking successfully with planets and would share here a feedback or have any suggestion that could help me?
i need basically something that help me to keep planet in the ROI
I would try this function asap but weather now does not allow me .
thanks a lot!!!
Re: feature tracking - planetary - feedbacks?
Posted: Sat Apr 16, 2022 1:19 pm
by Fafa
Here my feedback - due to lack of planets in my area, i have tried to test feature tracking with sunspot: worked good with "use camera ROI" and "use imagine features"
i was not able to test other options for now
Anyway good job Robin!
- Screenshot 2022-04-14 114951.jpg (260.08 KiB) Viewed 2295 times
Re: feature tracking - planetary - feedbacks?
Posted: Sat Apr 16, 2022 2:03 pm
by admin
Hi,
glad to hear it worked - the use of the ROI option simplifies things lots as it avoids the requirement for SharpCap to perform a calibration procedure to work out which way (and how fast) the image shifts when the mount moves in a given direction. The calibration can be particularly tricky if your mount suffers from backlash...
cheers,
Robin
Re: feature tracking - planetary - feedbacks?
Posted: Sat Apr 16, 2022 2:25 pm
by Fafa
Hi Robin
one of the things i love about sharpcap is this window with "region of interest selection" that i was using when i needed to make short corrections with my pc mouse
So, since that normally my tracking is working well (despire i have an alt-az mount) this Feature tracking function is more than enough to keep the planet in the roi for the necessary time
With sunspots i tried to use "use centre of mass" option; a cross appeared to the screen, but the roi did not seem to move when objects moved; maybe with just one item (like a single planet) it will work, I'll try
about "Use mount" movement speed i tried to put 1x and 2x but apparently mount didn't move (or it moved so slowly I didn't see), consider that I had a blanket over my head to be able to watch the screen being in the sun, so I may not have noticed
Being a beginner, this is a very useful tool that should be well marketed
Re: feature tracking - planetary - feedbacks?
Posted: Sun Apr 17, 2022 1:13 pm
by admin
Hi,
the center of mass option is designed to be used when the whole object (sun/moon/planet) is visible in the camera field of view - that way when the disk of the planet/sun/moon moves, it can be tracked using the mount or ROI movement. If the sun/moon fills the field of view then center of mass will not work.
cheers,
Robin
Re: feature tracking - planetary - feedbacks?
Posted: Sun May 22, 2022 2:05 pm
by cine
Hi I can't seem to get feature tracking calibration to work. Here what happens
I find a nice solar sunspot
My telescopes connected via CPWI its a celestron mount
I get two things happen first i see it move the RA +ve and take measurement and plots a graph.
Then its seem it then just disables my mount tracking and the image drift off.
I get error Failed due to bad measurement correlation from RA -ve i would think because the mount tracking been turned off.
Can anyone help would love to get this working .
Mike
Re: feature tracking - planetary - feedbacks?
Posted: Mon May 23, 2022 12:30 pm
by admin
Hi Mike,
please can you share the SharpCap log from a failed calibration attempt - this will contain the calibration data that SharpCap was unhappy about and I can see if I can work out what is going on. Basically, SharpCap is complaining that it can't work out a good relationship between the distance the mount has moved and the distance the image has moved - doubling the mount distance doesn't seem to double the image distance is roughly it.
cheers,
Robin
Re: feature tracking - planetary - feedbacks?
Posted: Mon May 23, 2022 7:06 pm
by cine
hi robin
i will get back with some info i want to try again, it was a bad windy day and wonder if that was the issue as the sun spot poi was jumping around a lot.
mike
Re: feature tracking - planetary - feedbacks?
Posted: Tue May 24, 2022 4:40 pm
by admin
Hi Mike,
yes, a lot of jumping around could cause the problem - that would mess up the relationship between movement of the mount and distance that the image moves.
cheers,
Robin
Re: feature tracking - planetary - feedbacks?
Posted: Fri May 27, 2022 9:11 am
by cine
Hi Robin
trying again today but first i wanted to give the POI tracking ago. Have a few questions below
Does POI tracking need a calibration as i see it a seems selectable.
One feature that would be great is one that stops feature tracking if a image is lost like a odd cloud rolls in.
With mount tracking i take it the mount should be still tracking in it own right. I am still trying to get the calibration to work but again it a bit windy today. I though i would just hit the guide button see what happens but when i do that sharpcap seems to disable my mount tracking ??
Mike