Live Mode or Still Mode when Plate Solving?

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geoflewis
Posts: 5
Joined: Wed Jun 22, 2022 7:25 am

Live Mode or Still Mode when Plate Solving?

#1

Post by geoflewis »

Hi,
I'm still helping a friend to get plate solving working, by assiting remotely over TeamViewer. I'm gradually getting it working with an Atik CCD camera, but I'm not sure that I'm going about it correctly. Tonight I got it working with Live Mode for a few bright targets, but I don't see anyway to increase the exposure duration when trying to solve for a faint target. I've tried Still Mode, but when I hit the 'start capture' button it doesn't recognise the longer exposure that I set in the camera dialogue box, or also can't see where it saves those Still Mode images, or doesn't it save them; they certainly didn't appear in the default capture folder that SharpCao created on the desktop. I've been getting insufficient stars warnings for some solves, so I've experimented with changing the Sigma value, with some success, but I really just want to take a longer exposure when solving a faint target, say 5 secs at Bin 2x2, but I can't work out how to do that. What am I doing wrong please?
Regards,

Geof
mfratto
Posts: 19
Joined: Fri May 13, 2022 12:06 am

Re: Live Mode or Still Mode when Plate Solving?

#2

Post by mfratto »

Geof, I think you can just set the exposure in the camera settings and it will use it when you select the plate solve menu item.
geoflewis
Posts: 5
Joined: Wed Jun 22, 2022 7:25 am

Re: Live Mode or Still Mode when Plate Solving?

#3

Post by geoflewis »

Thanks mfratto, I thought that I tried that, but I was operating a remote laptop and the person I was helping was also trying stuff, so we kept clashing and I was losing track of what i did, so I will try it again. Just to be sure, are you saying that if I toggle the Live Mode to set the camera to Still Mode then set the exposre to say, 5s, then when I capture with the Plate Solve tool it will take a 5s exposure? Also does it save the captured image anywhere?
Many thanks,

Geof
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admin
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Re: Live Mode or Still Mode when Plate Solving?

#4

Post by admin »

Hi,

if you are in still mode then there are two ways to take an image....

'Framing Shot' - this captures an image and shows it on screen, but does not save it. This image can be used for plate solving

'Snapshot' - this does save the image, and the location that it has been saved will show in the green notification bar after the image has been captured. You can click on the blue underlined text in the notification bar to either open the image file or the folder containing it.

For longer exposures, you should be able to choose a time from (for instance) the 'Quick Picks' area of the exposure control - pick 8s for instance and check that the time taken to capture an image using snapshot is about 8s (might be a bit longer to allow for download of the image to the computer).

Hope this helps,

Robin
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