AstroBrian

Thanks so much. It is stakced 5 minute subs x 24 so two hours total intergration. Do you know how I can dither in SharpCap? Walking noise thats the word I was looking for! I dont do darks, probably should but have trouble taking darks. Two minute subs seem to do the trick. Walking noise is the word for it and dithering. I am not sure is there a way to do dithering in sharpcap function? I'll have to test all this Sunday night Thanks for the reply!

Hey everyone. I have a ZWO294 MC PRO using Sharpcap Pro and I am doing 5 minute subs and I get these odd streaks... 2 minutes doesn't show any but the 5 minute has. Does anyone know how I can stop this from happening? I know theres a word for this but I doni't know a fix. Image of M106 processed shows the streaks. You can see what looks like noise ribbons. This is about 2 hours worth of data. 24 images of 5 minute subs. Thanks for any help offered

Hey Robin cheers! So for the 4 seconds per sub I am at anywhere between 460-500 on the gain. It seemed to be okay. Heres a stacked 4 second x 30 (2 minute exposure total) of M33 galaxy. I am assuming the grey is okay for the background. I did the 1 hour on this and got the next result. Would you say I did good?

You bet I am, amd I know a ton of people who have successfully gotten mind blowing results too. I think I am getting better at it. I including the latest 36 minutes on M81 Bodes Galaxy below on this post. Thank you! Thanks! Yes last summer this year I did do M27 test for 30 minutes in Bortle 4-5 sky. 4 seconds per frame total 2 minutes per image x 15. This was my result. Thank you so much for that. That makes alot of sense. Although I don't process at 32 bit, I process at 16 bit as it seems thats whats best in photoshop at least. I heard from other sources exporting to 16-bit is better than 32 bit for these? I did however do a test shot at M81 and for 36 minutes exposure and a .67 reducer I am pleased with the results. I did BIN 1x1 this time with 470 gain. One stack every 4 seconds total exposure per image 2 minutes x 18 of these. NO DARKS. Fairly pleased! Would you say this is about where I should be? SharpCap seems to be working in my favor. I see what you mean though! Im going to reshoot NGC 7217 again tomorrow night (at least try to) Its a huge difference and my tracking seemed to have been better with the reducer on. Is there any proof of reducers increasing the tracking performance?

Okay thank you! I think I understand what you mean. I'll try and get my LX850 to track better.. It really is difficult in the observatory because the opening of the observatory just doesn't seem to be enough for the starlock tracking lol. I will do an experiment at 2 minute exposures and take 30 of them and see if there is a difference.

Thanks, but what about the 1 minute total time x 60 of them? Its 1 hour total stacked. Does that mean nothing?

Hi there thanks for the reply. What I mean is each photo is 1 minute exposure and its about 60 minutes on the target. But to combat poor tracking I would do 2 seconds per snap and the program live stacks it for me until it hits 1 minute total stack image and saves as a total of 1 minute stacked file. So instead of 2 seconds per image its really just a bunch of 2 second images stacked into a 1 minute final image. I would do this 60 times to get 1 minute each. Hope that helps! Thanks!

Hi, this is my first post! Thank you for having me. I am Brian, American moved to England. I own an Lx850 12" MEADE in my family observatory. I have a ZWO294MC PRO. Its a fantastic camera but I think I'm making a mistake somewhere. I might have found the issue but i'll let you know my setup. First off, I don't take longer than 5 second exposures (I heard the camera has no shutter so taking tens of thousands of exposures is okay and not like a DSLR with a limit. So how I do this is I enter SHARPCAP program and I focus the camera at the highest gain possible. Then I will put down the gain to 450-480 level and set the live stacking to 2 second exposures for 1 minute. After 1 minute it takes the live stacked image and thats the result. (Attached) the object is NGC 7217. A very interesting galaxy in Pegasus. Now, my issue is.. I take 60 total images like this and put it into DeepSkyStacker. I get the final TIFF 16BIT file saved to my computer and process in photoshop. I get the final image. To me I thought I would get more detail after an hour. I am in Bortle 4.5 zone as well. So, based off this method. Am I doing something wrong? My processing is good, there is no denying I can process because my DSLR photos were very decent but this Camera seems to lack photon intake or gathering details etc. Should I put the gain down to 200 regardless of how bright the sky is? I know my raw stacked 1 minute image has a bright sky. Is this the issue? Below is my Camera Settings and yes I do realize i've been shooting at RAW8 (Might be a significant issue). Thanks! [ZWO ASI294MC Pro] FrameType=Light Debayer Preview=On Pan=0 Tilt=0 Output Format=PNG files (*.png) Binning=2 Capture Area=4144x2822 Colour Space=RAW8 High Speed Mode=Off Turbo USB=80(Auto) Flip=None Frame Rate Limit=Maximum Gain=473 Exposure=2.000s Timestamp Frames=Off White Bal (B)=95 White Bal (R)=52 Brightness=15 Cooler Power=12 Temperature=-5.3 Target Temperature=-5 Cooler=On Auto Exp Max Gain=285 Auto Exp Max Exp M S=30000 Auto Exp Target Brightness=100 Mono Bin=Off Background Subtraction=Off Planet/Disk Stabilization=Off Banding Threshold=35 Banding Suppression=0 Apply Flat=None Subtract Dark=None Display Black Point=0 Display MidTone Point=0.5 Display White Point=1 Notes= TimeStamp=2021-11-28T19:22:57.5416930Z SharpCapVersion=4.0.7976.0