New Feature : SharpSolve - SharpCap's new built-in plate solver

[admin]

Hi Chuck,

glad to hear that you are enjoying 4.1

I think you will find that SharpSolve is a good deal faster than PS3 - in one test I have done, PS3 takes 16s to solve a particular image and SharpSolve takes less than 0.5s. These figures are for SharpSolve using the index that goes down to 0.5 degree FOV - the larger index that goes down to 0.25 degree FOV is ~4 times slower.

PS3 may provide higher accuracy - SharpSolve was designed to be quick and accurate to within a few arc seconds, not to provide accuracy at the sub-arc-second level.

PS3 is hampered by the fact that there is no way to specify limits on the search area on the command line, so it will always search the whole sky. SharpSolve, Astap and Astrotortilla can all restrict the search to a certain area of the sky, speeding things up in certain plate solving operations.

cheers,

Robin

[Menno555]

Hi Robin

Just did a test with captures I made with my Meade LX200 8" f/10 (20232mm) and Zwo ASI482MC camera. Theoretical this gives small values for all:
- resolution: 0.59"x0.59" per pixel
- field of View: 0.31° x 0.18°
- Dawes Limit: 0.57 arc/secs

But this new 0,25 FOV has no problems with it at all!!
Within a second I got:

Solution : RA=03:10:19,Dec=+61:18:55 (J2000)
Field of View : 0,2070x0,1172 degrees
(checked the solution in case of false positieve and it's correct)

Very, VERY impressive what you are doing here!

Menno

[Tony Vale]

Hi Robin,
I've been using the new plate solver for the last couple of sessions. I was using ASPS before but the new one is so much faster, a huge improvement, - Many Thanks.

Tony

[nigeld]

Hi

the new sharpsolve works well. Last night I accidentally did my polar alignment using my main scope rather than guidescope. My main scope is a C6 with a focal reducer and an imx585 based camera (not a good combo for a beginners I suspect people will think but I’m having fun) giving a fov of 0.57 by 0.43 deg.

Now I think I’m about at the lower limit of the default set of indexes would downloading the indexes improve it in some way or just slow things down from near instant? Around the north pole it didn’t seem to have much problem just wondering if there’s other less star dense areas it’s likely to have problems with.

[admin]

Hi,

glad it's working well for you. If you are getting a high success rate then using the higher resolution index probably isn't worth it. There may be some sparse areas of the sky where it will help, but if you start to come across problems like that you can download it later. Note that once downloaded you can still switch back and forth between the faster default index and the slower 0.25 degree index.

cheers,

Robin

[Fabioibirru]

Hi Robin,
I've tested the new SharpSolve and on my setup it works flawlessly.

Borg 500 mm F5 and asi 294 MC Pro.

I would like to ask kindly if into the solve information could be added also the estimate/calculate FL

Thanks a lot

Fabio

PS: I bought the 1000 years licence and it is much appreciate the 2 months more expiry date

[admin]

Hi,

yes, calculating the focal length from the solve results should be easy if the pixel size is known (and it is for most cameras). Thanks for the suggestion.

Glad you are enjoying the new plate solving and your lifetime license. It's great value at only £0.12 per year!

cheers,

Robin

[RMSQueenMary]

Hope to try this soon.

[mikenoname]

Been using SharpSolve with my 6" imaging newt (610mm focal length) and it works way better than ASTAP in terms of both reliability and speed.

The real test was last night with my Canon camera lens widefield setup (200mm focal length, f/2.8) with my Antlia ALP-T filter installed (5nm dual band). With ASTAP I have never been able to solve reliably with less than 16 second exposures, some times requiring double that. With SharpSolve I can reliably solve at 4 seconds! Incredible.

Between SharpSolve and the new Goto Catalog function in SharpCap I can now uninstall ASTAP and stop using Stellarium to drive my scope as it is now all in-house so to speak (and working far faster and more reliably too).

You do amazing work, sir.

Mike

[admin]

Hi Mike,

glad it's working nicely for you. Remember that Astap can do a *lot* more than just plate solve, from photometry to a feature I only spotted the other day - 'unknown star detection' - which will look at your images and try to spot any bright stars that are not in the catalogs and might be Novae/SuperNovae/etc

cheers,

Robin