SharpCap Forums

I"m a new user trying use SharpCap. This may sound stupid but I can't get stars to appear in Live View.

With my OTA pointing to the NCP, I start up SharpCap 4.1. I go to Cameras and find my camera in the list, ASI071MC Pro, I select it and Live View starts up and a black screen is presented. The exposure is set to 4 seconds, gain 150 and yet I don't see any stars. I want to use Polar Alignment in SharpCap to hav it tell me the error. When selecting Polar Alignment, I get an error "Could Not Solve".

The camera is focused.

On my test bench If I remove the dust cap off the camera I see a change in the Live View window and the histogram changes.

If I disconnect the camera and then connect it with NINA, with exposure 4 seconds, gain 90 and take a test image I can see stars and the test image will plate solve. So why isn't SharpCap behaving?

I've read the user manual for camera details but no matter what I change the screen is still not showing stars.

What am I doing wrong?


Thanks for any assistance.

KJR

Hi,

Probably the best thing to do here is to open the camera once with the CTRL key pressed down - this stops SharpCap from loading the previously used settings for the camera and sets everything back to default. It's quite possible that you have previously adjusted something that is now being rememebered and restored every time you open the camera in SharpCap, and that setting is contributing to the problem.

Once you have reset the settings, go back to 4s exposures, 150 gain, and RAW16 and try again. You can also try turning the gain way up to see if that helps show anything that is too faint to see with gain=150. Another thing worth trying is using the display stretch function in SharpCap to brighten the image seen on screen (NINA may be doing this by default) - see https://docs.sharpcap.co.uk/4.1/#Display%20Stretch

Hope this helps,

Robin

I have the same camera and for initial use like plate solving, I always use the maximal Gain of 600 and exposure around 2 sec.
This on a 8" 2000mm SCT, so a fairly small FOV.

Menno

Thank you for your advice.

I'll try these suggestion next time out if a few days.

I'll report back.

KJR