feature tracking - planetary - feedbacks?

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Fafa
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feature tracking - planetary - feedbacks?

#1

Post 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!!!
Celestron Nexstar 6 SE, asi585mc, starsense autoalign, celestron focus motor
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Fafa
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Re: feature tracking - planetary - feedbacks?

#2

Post 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
Screenshot 2022-04-14 114951.jpg (260.08 KiB) Viewed 2001 times
Celestron Nexstar 6 SE, asi585mc, starsense autoalign, celestron focus motor
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Re: feature tracking - planetary - feedbacks?

#3

Post 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
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Fafa
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Re: feature tracking - planetary - feedbacks?

#4

Post 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 :-P

Being a beginner, this is a very useful tool that should be well marketed
Celestron Nexstar 6 SE, asi585mc, starsense autoalign, celestron focus motor
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Re: feature tracking - planetary - feedbacks?

#5

Post 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
cine
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Re: feature tracking - planetary - feedbacks?

#6

Post 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
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Re: feature tracking - planetary - feedbacks?

#7

Post 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
cine
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Re: feature tracking - planetary - feedbacks?

#8

Post 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
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Re: feature tracking - planetary - feedbacks?

#9

Post 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
cine
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Re: feature tracking - planetary - feedbacks?

#10

Post 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
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