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My new Lodestar X2 - Lodestar Live


lucid

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Very excited to receive my lodestar this morning for use with Lodestar Live.

I'm right now trying to test it during the day before use tonight, but only get a grey picture when its running. I've tried several different exposure lengths and fiddled with the black and white level. Where am i going wrong? What setting should I be using to test it during the day?

Andrew

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I'm having a little more success with the 0.8 version, rather than 0.11. The image is still too bright, even with ND moon filter in the the path, but at least when i move the camera around i can see light and dark areas moving. So hopefully this eve, under a clear night sky I should have some luck.

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Yes I thought so. I took it out yesterday eve. With 0.8 I was having success (although focusing is tricky after removing the eyepiece, what do people use for that?). However, the same problem remained with 0.11 version, solid grey screen, no "real" picture coming through.

Still, I had a lot of fun with 0.8, and had a go imaging the Orion nebula. The stars were a bit blobby, as if I was not quite nailing focus, but I really couldnt get them any smaller, even with the smallest tweaks to the focus knob, so perhaps bad seeing on Saturday eve?

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Guys,

Are there any Lodestar Live users who have tried it for solar observing?

The basic requirements would be fast exposures and fast frame rates....

Just asking, as I need to determine suitable video type cameras for a spectroheliograph concept.

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Hi Merlin66

I have tried but found that Lodestar Live does not support short enough exposures for use with my INED70  and my home made Baader Solar Film filter.

I think that the problem is with getting the data from the camera quickly enough and processing it real time - Paul81 might be able to comment, but I know he developed Lodestar Live for DSO viewing only.

CS

Paul

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Guys,

Are there any Lodestar Live users who have tried it for solar observing?

The basic requirements would be fast exposures and fast frame rates....

Just asking, as I need to determine suitable video type cameras for a spectroheliograph concept.

I've prodded Paul and Nytecam around the use of other cameras - perhaps offering INDI and ASCOM.

The stacking isn't too much of a problem - the alignment that paul uses is dependant on CPU.

I think the next stage for me is to open source my OpenCL pipeline for this so people can include it. It's very capable of operating at 260 fps on a MBP with a 2011-era GPU.

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The Lodestar camera is only really suitable for DSO work as it has quite a slow download time, so it doesn't really suit any application which requires more 'video' style frame rates.

Nick's pipeline could perhaps be combined with an ASI or imaging source camera for instance to permit live stacking of planetary and solar images? Now that would be awesome, as I have dabbled in planetary imaging with my ASI but I struggle with enthusiasm to process the data the next day... I much prefer observing something live... (just my funny ways).

Sounds like a future project...?

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