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Automatic stacking, stretch and repeat for solar Ha EAA?
Posted: Tue Feb 03, 2026 4:49 pm
by scorpion136
Is it possible to set up SharpCap to stack, stretch and create an image of the sun say, every minute or few minutes (on a tracking mount) so we can broadcast "live sun" to a monitor in our Discovery Center? Camera will probably be an ASI676MM on a Skywatcher Heliostar 76mm Ha.
Re: Automatic stacking, stretch and repeat for solar Ha EAA?
Posted: Wed Feb 04, 2026 2:20 pm
by admin
Hi,
yes, I think you can do this using the solar system live stacking and the timelapse feature - unfortunately it would need to be set up manually each session, but it isn't too hard...
* Select Live Solar/Lunar/Planetary stacking from the tools menu
* On a one time basis, set up your preferred settings for stacking, including the number of frames to stack, etc
* In the Stabilization/Alignment tab, set the stabilization to 'surface' and alignment to 'multi point'
* Set the sharpening to 'Expert' mode, tick the 'Continuous auto sharpen' box, then adjust the auto sharpen strength until you feel you are getting the right amount of sharpness in the image
* If using a mono camera for H-alpha, turn on solar colorization and corona boost in the image adjustments area to the right of sharpening
* In the timelaps tab, set the output to PNG and the interval to maybe 10s
* Make any other manual adjustments until you are happy with the processed solar image, then use the 'Save/Load settings' tab to save your settings so they can be restored later if any changes are made
Now, each session, get the camera running, select the solar live stacking tool, make sure the right settings have been loaded and press the 'Start Timelapse' button - SharpCap will now create a continuous timelapse of the processed solar image, saving the latest image of the timelapse to PNG every 10s, as we configured it to do. All you need to do now is have some sort of separate program or script locate that latest new PNG file and arrange for it to be displayed on your discovery center monitor (unfortunately SharpCap can't really help with that bit of the problem). I suppose if you don't want to worry about that, you could put SharpCap into two monitor view mode, which puts an extra copy of the image only on the second monitor and have that shown live in the discovery center - no need to even worry about the timelapse then.
Hope this helps,
Robin