SharpCap Forums

I've got this new SvBONY SV105 electronic camera I'm trying to set up.
I've done a rough collimation. I've roughly aligned my finder scope. I've set up the camera in SharpCap.
I got an image during the day, so I know the camera is functional.
I was surprised it was so dim, seeing as this is an astrocam, but I'll worry about that later.

So now it's night and I'm pointing it at the Moon, and I'm getting black.
I know it's a live image because the pixel noise is dancing.
And If I pull the camera out of the eyepiece mount, or shine some light down the tube, it lights up.
(Also means I haven't forgotten to remove the lens cap!)
Focusing in and out, nothing.
Still no Moon. Waving the scope all over to see if its misaligned, nothing.

So I gave up on the Moon and am focused on a bedroom window across the street. Giant target.
This is out of my min focal range, so I have to brace the camera just a 1/4" out of the eyepiece mount for any focus at all.

Still black noise!
I've got gain adjusted to 90%.
Exposure set to 4 seconds.
Still black noise.

Is there a way of cranking the gain up even higher so I can at least see what I'm looking at?

I'm about to give up on this camera as a bad loss.

Hi

Evidently the Moon was not pointed correctly.

Normally for the Moon that is very bright you use a short exposure under a second for sure and a very low gain
If with 4s the field is black then the telescope does not point the Moon

Try moving the telescope here and there, you should see that the light in a certain direction increases. The Moon is there!

Carlo

Hi,

it's possible that you've adjusted something while playing with the camera that is leading to black (or nearly black) images. SharpCap may also be restoring the last used camera settings each time you open the camera - great if you have the settings you want from last time, less helpful if it is restoring some 'wrong' setting causing a problem.

Close the camera and re-open it with the CTRL key pressed down - that will stop SharpCap from restoring settings and put everything back to default. Then try setting the highest gain the camera will take and an exposure of 1-2s (or the maximum if less than that) the next time you go looking for the moon. Like that you have a good chance of picking up the glow around the moon even if it is out of view or out of focus, so you can move the telescope to make the glow brighter until you find the moon.

cheers,

Robin