Black screen - ZWO ASI462MC and Sky-Watcher Explorer-150PDS (EQ3 PRO)

[miked]

Hi there,

I'm not an absolute beginner in Astrophotography and have had previous success with the moon and M31 etc, using my Canon 650D, and Sky-Watcher Explorer-150PDS (EQ3 PRO). I do the usual PIPP, Autostakker and processing etc and so on.

But recently I bought a ZWO ASI462MC, to get some better images -

I did the moon and it worked out great -

But I have tried Jupiter over the last few days and its just a black screen -

I did manage to focus on a distant object in the daytime though.

Any pointers would be great - thanks in advance

[admin]

Hi Mike,

Jupiter is a big step up in difficulty from the moon... Even if you are out of focus and not even pointing at the moon but pointing somewhere nearby then you will see something on the screen (at least some grey fuzz) - from there you can move the pointing towards the moon, adjust focus, adjust exposure and finally get an image. With Jupiter that refinement part is much harder.

If all you have is a black screen then (assuming the camera is working properly and the frame count bottom left is going up) the most likely problems are

* wrong exposure
* not pointing at Jupiter
* bad focus

So, first brighten things up... Set 1-2s exposure, high to maximum gain. Also use the display stretch functionality in SharpCap to brighten the image on screen (https://docs.sharpcap.co.uk/4.0/#!2!Min ... %20Stretch). With a bit of luck you will now see something - quite possibly blobs or donuts of light, which will be out-of-focus stars. If you don't see anything, point towards a rich starfield for this step to increase the chances of getting some decently bright stars in view.

Once you have some blobs/donuts, adjust focus to reduce the size of them until they become pinpoints - you will now have focus on the sky.

Next challenge is to get Jupiter in view - if you have a finder scope and can align the crosshairs in the scope with the camera view using the finder adjustments, then this will help. Otherwise you may need to use trial and error.

Once you have Jupiter in view, reduce the exposure to about 1/30s (30ms), turn off the display stretch functionality and then adjust the gain to give a well exposed image. Hopefully at this point you will be good to go with maybe a few more minor tweaks.

hope this helps,

Robin

[miked]

Much appreciated help, thanks!

I will try this tonight (if the clouds permit)
MIke