ASI120MC question

[Gavin1234]

Hi, my wife is using a ZWO ASI120MC on a Celestron 5SE through sharpcap. After a lot of trial and error we now have it focused with the gain and other settings apparently about right.

She has a problem with the moon filling up too much of the  frame however so she can only see or photograph a portion of it. It’s like it’s zoomed in on it?

Is there any way to zoom out through sharpcap or other software or is it the nature of the scope and camera? Would a focal reducer do it?

[Anthonyexmouth]

theres no way to zoom out. a focal reducer will help a little but not much. a DSLR would give a wider field. A Canon cropped sensor would give a view of the whole moon 

[Marky1973]

Yeah, if you check out the astronomy tools site

https://astronomy.tools/calculators/field_of_view/

you can see how your telescope and camera will perform in terms of field of view. The small sensor on the 120 and the longer FL of the 5Se will combine to give you a small field of view.

The reducer will give you more view in comparison, but still not the whole thing....but you can take a number of videos, convert to images and then stitch them together in a programme like Microsoft ICE to create a full disc image. Takes more time, but you can get some nice detail.

 

 

[cjdawson]

To get the full disc of the moon, your best bet is to make a mosaic.   It's also something that I'm planning on doing as well.    You can add a focal reducer, but that'll only work up to a point.

[Star Struck]

I use one of these: https://www.altairastro.com/0.5x-reducer-for-autoguiding-video-astronomy.html

It uses a standard 1.25" filter thread.

Works very well for my setup, but you need to follow the advice given above to see the effect in the  astronomy tools site.

 

Tony