Help with sharpcap needed please

[DougM43]

Managed to get a go of my new ZWO120mc last night for the first time since getting it, the sky stayed clear for about an hour after sundown before the clouds moved in so it was a very quick go.  

previously I have been using a toucam pro and wx astrocapture  plus a lot of trial and error and managed to get some reasonable (to me) images. the problem I have is my ZWO wont work on Wx astrocapture so I downloaded sharpcap 2 and its almost like beginning a new learning curve again,, actually its more highlighted what I didn't know in the first place.

I'm pretty sure the equipment I'm using is capable of giving me very good detailed images, the telescope is an LX90, so coupled with the ZWO and using sharpcap, apart from the clouds and seeing, the weak link in the chain seems to be me. so hopefully someone will be kind enough to explain what a couple of the sharpcap controls are and how they affect the image I'm taking, and hopefully save me using up the few valuable clear nights we have left as Jupiter drifts further and further away on trial and error.

so starting from the top of the video control panel, I have colour space set at RGB24, (pretty sure this is the correct setting)?

The capture area I have set at 640x480,

 Now this I'm not sure about, is a smaller capture area using less of the cameras total pixels or is it just compressing the pixels into a smaller area than say 1280x720 so the resolution of the image will be greater at 640x480? or am I way off the mark here. 

Binning,

I have no idea what this means so I have left it a 1, if someone could be kind enough to explain it or point me towards a helpful link I would be most grateful.

Exposure,

(equivalent to shutter speed I assume)?

Gamma, Gain, and brightness,

I try to get the best possible image on the screen using these three while trying to  keep the gain as low as possible as to try not to introduce too much noise into the image, Is that correct? 

And finally (for now) the Histogram,

I have so far never taken any notice of this, but when any of the sliders are used the pattern of colours on the graph change, it must be telling me something useful but I have no idea what. 

Again can someone please explain what this is, I've read and heard it mentioned many many times but to me its use is far from self explanatory.

here's the image I took last night, Granted the scope was possibly not cooled down properly, but there is much room for improvement.

oh, almost forgot, I have highlighted a couple of areas where the planet looks to have cracks on it, Ive had this before on some images, can someone tell me what it is and how to avoid it. 

jupiter ZWO 1.bmp

Cheers Doug.

[DougM43]

Had a play with the image from the above post and managed to make some improvements, processed it with PIPP first, (a first for me) didn't have much idea, but I'm sure it improved it, was originally 5000 frames, PIPP sorted the best 3000 and I stacked it in Registax using the best 2500 frames So all in all still a long way from perfect but I can see the camera is an improvement on the toucam,, Just need some clear skies to get practising.   

[billym44]

Hi Doug,

Just spotted this post on SL. AS you say it's definitely a big improvement on the Toucam (not had much chance to use it the past couple of weeks!). Be interested to see what you come up with if you have more opportunity to experiment with the software.

Keep in touch

[D4N]

Doug, try stacking in AS!2 then take the stacked image into Registax for wavelet sharpening. I preferred the first image but registax messed up the stacking a bit.

You may have already worked all this out by now but:

Set the capture area to the smallest size where the planet will stay on the chip for the whole video. Small size means it doesn't use all of its pixels but that also means it can send more frames in the same amount of time. It will also make stacking faster.

Binning is when instead of using each pixel individually you combine groups of pixels, this greatly increases sensitivity at the cost of resolution. Leave it off for bright objects like Jupiter.

Yes exposure is shutter speed.

Keep the gain over 20 on that camera, 50 is a good level I find. If it is too bright reduce the exposure time. High gain will introduce noise.

Gamma and brightness I normally leave in he middle.

I don't think you need to play with the histogram.

There may be a setting for USB speed, sometimes you need to reduce this if you see frames being dropped or tearing.

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