SharpCap Forums

Hi All

I have only just started using the Planetary Live Stacking feature to create time lapse animations of Jupiter. Last night (10/1/2025) I managed to capture just over 4 hours of data to produce an 11 second video. The image below is a screenshot from the video and the full video can be seen by following the link.
https://go.screenpal.com/watch/cTVXQCnemJ7

Hardware used:
Celestron 6" SCT + Celestron x2 Barlow + Altair 290C camera.
HEQ5 Pro mount

Camera settings in SharpCap:
ROI set to 800 x 600 (1920 x 1080 pixels is full sensor size)
Gain set to 1000
Exposure 15ms
RAW8

Live Stacking settings:
Target Stack 1000 frames
Frame filtering Best 50% of 2000 frames
SER video captured x1 frame every 5 seconds
Tracked planet with Camera ROI (ROI drift corrected using x1 sidereal rate in ASCOM EQMOD)

Hope someone finds this info useful

Hi Richard,

lovely - great detail for a 6" scope at the points where the seeing was at its best. It was definitely variable last night - I was setting up and focusing at about 8pm and it was lovely, but then dropped away a bit followed by fluctuation over the rest of the evening.

cheers,

Robin

Thank you Robin. You've done a fabulous job with this feature - I must confess my usual DSO imaging has taken a bit of a back seat lately and the Moon is also at an unfavourable phase just now (well, that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it ).

I've spent some time working on my post capture processing workflow this afternoon;

1.In the Live Planetary Stacking I save the video as an SER file.
2. Open the video in SER Player
3.Tools > Processing > Adjust Gain, Gamma, Saturation and colour balance as required
4.File > "Save Frames As AVI File..." Set AVI Framerate as required (150-250 fps seems about right for me)

The reason I save as an AVI file is so that I can add captions in Windows Movie Maker (old software but I find it more useful than Microsoft's latest incarnation for videos) and then save as an MP4.

One of the better Jupiter animation I've seen. Especially with a 6"

Menno

Richard

I appreciate what you have done there - my first scope was a 6SE.

Dave

Hi Menno

Many thanks - must confess I am quite pleased with it. So much easier to use SharpCap's Live Planetary Stacking feature to create an animation rather than record lots of individual videos and then all the hassle of stacking and putting them all together. To be honest, I would not have been able to get such a long video using my previous technique - I would not have had enough hard disk space!

The seeing was very variable and the frost gave me problems with a misting corrector plate on the SCT - I'm looking at remedying the latter issue now but little I can do with the former.

BTW Have you seen my other link in this forum to a cropped and enlarged version of this video? Little did I know when I posted the original video, a new feature had been spotted on Jupiter within the previous 24 hours. I looked at my video and I think I captured it. You can see the video here
https://go.screenpal.com/u/nvei/Jupiter ... ureJan2025

Focus is probably the hardest thing to achieve. I've fitted my SCT with a Crayford focuser and have motorised it - it makes life so much easier

turfpit wrote: Sun Jan 12, 2025 1:55 pm Richard

I appreciate what you have done there - my first scope was a 6SE.

Dave

Thank you Dave

Fitting a Crayford focuser and motorising it has made a big difference.

Take a look at this. It's a cropped but larger version of this video. I didn't realise when posting that I had (I'm fairly certain now) also captured a newly discovered Jupiter feature I was unaware of. It had only been found within the previous 24 hours.

https://go.screenpal.com/u/nvei/Jupiter ... ureJan2025

That is really good ! I had my first go a couple of nights ago but not anything like as good as that --although the stacking feature is really good and seems easy to use.

timh wrote: Mon Jan 13, 2025 12:17 am That is really good ! I had my first go a couple of nights ago but not anything like as good as that --although the stacking feature is really good and seems easy to use.

Hi Timh

Thank you for your compliments. There are so many factors that can affect any final result and it's not easy getting them all to come together. Indeed, the 'seeing' conditions are a big issue and little can be done about it. Focusing is also a major contributor to final poor images and achieving accurate focusing is very difficult especially with an SCT. I fitted mine with the cheapest Crayford I could find (Revelation) and the cheapest electronic focuser (SkyWatcher) and a HitecAstro DC Focus unit because I wanted to be able to control the focus from a laptop. Seems to work reasonably well. Personally, I don't see the point in spending a lot on equipment that only gives a small improvement overall.