Does anyone who uses a planetary and deep sky camera do a polar star alignment?

[Samantha]

I hope this is in the right section also

Hello

I was looking at a software programme called Sharpcap and as i have a Bresser planetary and deep sky camera hd. I am wondering if i need to do a polar alignment on my eq3 mount  to use the camera and software as i am a bit confused. Because i am going on youtube and seeing people attaching the cameras straight away to their newtonian reflectors and not into the guide scope, what i am wondering is as i do not have a guide scope is it ok to just put the Bresser planetary and deep sky camera hd into my newtonian reflector eyepiece and just take photos striaght away or recording images also would it be the same when doing the sun if i have to do a polar alignment or just put the camera striaght to the eyepiece ? 

I am getting bit confused as regards if i have to do a polar alignment by attaching the camera in the eyepiece or do i have to buy a guide scope or use my finder scope (if can take the weight of it being attached etc considering it is big the planetary and deep sky camera)

 

i hope this makes sense if not then i will try again as best can to explain it but thank you for help and replies apologies if i do not answer as it is late in the night for me over here in the uk)

[Gina]

If you don't polar align properly your images won't be clear - they will suffer from star trails unless your exposures are very short .

[JamesF]

Polar alignment refers to getting the RA axis (the one that the polar scope passes through) aligned with the Earth's axis of rotation.  You don't actually need to have a telescope in place at all to do this, but I believe Sharpcap, amongst other applications, can use a camera (instead of an eyepiece) with the telescope to get this alignment correct (or very close to it).  I've never done it with Sharpcap, but it's not a complicated process.  Just takes a bit of patience and practice, really.  It can help to use the polar scope to get close to correct and then use Sharpcap or something similar to complete the alignment process.

For planetary/lunar/solar imaging, "reasonably close" alignment is probably good enough.  You can always tweak things with the handset if the image starts to drift off the camera sensor (looking at your other posts it appears you have the Synscan version of the EQ3-2?).

For deep sky imaging much better alignment helps, especially if you don't have a guiding system.

I'm not familiar with the camera you have, but I suspect it may not be too hot on deep sky targets with the possible exception of globular clusters.  Things are changing however and there are cameras that can be used for both now, so I may well be wrong.  I'd recommend starting with the Moon though, as it's a large target that's hard(er) to miss and fairly obvious when it's in focus.

James

[JamesF]

Oh, I should also probably point out that in most cases you need to be able to see Polaris to be able to polar align in the northern hemisphere.  There are ways around this if you can't, but they're a little bit more work.

James

[symmetal]

To use the Sharpcap polar align, which is very quick to do once you've got the hang of it, it needs a fairly wide angle view of the polar region in order to plate solve the image, (work out the star positions and so determine where the scope is pointing to). To get the wide angle view a finderscope is ideal or a guidescope of a similar FOV. Once Sharpcap's plate solved it just rotate the rig through approx 90 degrees RA and it indicates your polar align error by a line from where your mount RA axis is pointing and where the real polar axis is and you just move your azimuth/altitude bolts on the mount to minimize the length of this error line. 

Your main scope FOV would be too narrow for Sharpcap to be able to plate solve as there won't be enough stars in view.

The benefit of this method is that the finder/guide scope doesn't have to be accurately aligned with the mount axis. The 90 degree rotation you do is via the mount so the centre of the rotation tells Sharpcap where the mount is currently pointing to.

As has been mentioned you only need accurate polar alignment for long exposure deep sky work. For planetary, sun, moon etc. short exposure videos are taken so trailing due to polar mis-alignment is not so much of a problem. If you just point the N leg of the tripod reasonably close to North and set your altidude on the altitude scale of the mount  this can be good enough for planetary imaging. This is probably why you didn't see people accurately polar aligning on the Youtube videos, and putting the camera directly on the main scope to image the target. The further out of polar alignment you are the quicker the target will move across the scope FOV so you'll need to account for this by moving the scope RA and DEC controls to keed it in view during the video.

Alan

 

[Benjam]

 

[Rusted]

You can use the SAFELY FILTERED Sun [or the Moon] to align in SharpCap.

The Sun would need an approved solar filter [Baader Foil?] covering the front of the telescope.
I used the sun because I wanted to do the alignment in daylight.
I have a very heavy mounting and use a length of scaffolding pole to turn my telescope mounting horizontally.

The idea is to align the camera's axis against a vertical crosshair first. A must do!
You move the camera's image up and down, parallel to the vertical line on the screen.
You do this by rotating the camera in the eyepiece holder as you rock the telescope tube gently up and down.

Then you can watch as the sun or moon drift up or down, or left and right, on the screen against the crosshairs.
Any drifting has to be reduced by moving the entire mounting horizontally.
Or by raising or lowering the Polar Axis of the mounting according to the rules provided in the video.

I used SharpCap to enlarge [Zoom] the filtered sun's image to fill my laptop screen to make it easier to see any drifting.
If you write down or print out the rules for changes to the mounting's orientation it will be easier than trying to remember them.

It all sounds horribly complicated but is actually very easy if you just follow the rules in the video below.

 

 

[Samantha]

16 hours ago, Gina said:

If you don't polar align properly your images won't be clear - they will suffer from star trails unless your exposures are very short .

Thank you for getting back to me and extremely sorry for the late reply back. So for example if i did not do polar alignment with the camera i would get the effect of star trails and show only polaris. I do not mind having a go at star trails as then it gives me something i can not only work with but learn ways to fix the problem to prevent it happening again.

[Samantha]

15 hours ago, Benjam said:

 

Thank you for getting back to me and sorry for late reply i will have a look at the youtube video see ways to do polar alignment with only using the mount part and use the wifi dongle to move the telescope in hope get polaris centred as best can. The other thing is as i do not have a guide scope but a finder would it be ok to link the camera through the reflector eyepiece and still i take it need to do the star alignment also.

[Samantha]

8 hours ago, Rusted said:

You can use the SAFELY FILTERED Sun [or the Moon] to align in SharpCap.

The Sun would need an approved solar filter [Baader Foil?] covering the front of the telescope.
I used the sun because I wanted to do the alignment in daylight.
I have a very heavy mounting and use a length of scaffolding pole to turn my telescope mounting horizontally.

The idea is to align the camera's axis against a vertical crosshair first. A must do!
You move the camera's image up and down, parallel to the vertical line on the screen.
You do this by rotating the camera in the eyepiece holder as you rock the telescope tube gently up and down.

Then you can watch as the sun or moon drift up or down, or left and right, on the screen against the crosshairs.
Any drifting has to be reduced by moving the entire mounting horizontally.
Or by raising or lowering the Polar Axis of the mounting according to the rules provided in the video.

I used SharpCap to enlarge [Zoom] the filtered sun's image to fill my laptop screen to make it easier to see any drifting.
If you write down or print out the rules for changes to the mounting's orientation it will be easier than trying to remember them.

It all sounds horribly complicated but is actually very easy if you just follow the rules in the video below.

 

 

Thank you foe getting can and sorry for late reply.

I have as regards the sun a coronado solar telescope with i think 10 or 15 inch blocking filter so it has all the protection it needs even though the camera i think has a cooling sensor on it not sure have to double check to be on safe side.

[Samantha]

15 hours ago, symmetal said:

To use the Sharpcap polar align, which is very quick to do once you've got the hang of it, it needs a fairly wide angle view of the polar region in order to plate solve the image, (work out the star positions and so determine where the scope is pointing to). To get the wide angle view a finderscope is ideal or a guidescope of a similar FOV. Once Sharpcap's plate solved it just rotate the rig through approx 90 degrees RA and it indicates your polar align error by a line from where your mount RA axis is pointing and where the real polar axis is and you just move your azimuth/altitude bolts on the mount to minimize the length of this error line. 

Your main scope FOV would be too narrow for Sharpcap to be able to plate solve as there won't be enough stars in view.

The benefit of this method is that the finder/guide scope doesn't have to be accurately aligned with the mount axis. The 90 degree rotation you do is via the mount so the centre of the rotation tells Sharpcap where the mount is currently pointing to.

As has been mentioned you only need accurate polar alignment for long exposure deep sky work. For planetary, sun, moon etc. short exposure videos are taken so trailing due to polar mis-alignment is not so much of a problem. If you just point the N leg of the tripod reasonably close to North and set your altidude on the altitude scale of the mount  this can be good enough for planetary imaging. This is probably why you didn't see people accurately polar aligning on the Youtube videos, and putting the camera directly on the main scope to image the target. The further out of polar alignment you are the quicker the target will move across the scope FOV so you'll need to account for this by moving the scope RA and DEC controls to keed it in view during the video.

Alan

Thank you Alan for getting back to me and sorry for really late reply back.  So everything as regards once done everything will not only be clearer and sharper images also mean if i get this right then i would have no problems at each time of using it so more i do and practice polar alignment,

15 hours ago, symmetal said:

 

 

[symmetal]

13 minutes ago, Samantha said:

Thank you Alan for getting back to me and sorry for really late reply back.  So everything as regards once done everything will not only be clearer and sharper images also mean if i get this right then i would have no problems at each time of using it so more i do and practice polar alignment,

I didn't read your first post clearly enough to realise you were doing solar imaging so polar aligning using Polaris isn't much use unless it's left out from the night before.   As others have said you can use the Sun instead for alignment with Sharpcap though I haven't tried it.

For my solar imaging on an EQ3 Pro I don't do any alignment, just place the tripod N leg to North(ish) and set my latitude on the mount scale. This good enough to keep the whole Sun's disk in the view of the camera for about 3 minutes before I need to nudge the scope to recentre the Sun before the next video. If your scope/camera combination has a narrower FOV and you can't get the whole Sun in the image then the Sun will appear to move faster in your FOV so more accurate polar aligning may be necessary.

Getting good focus is the main step to a clearer sharper image. The short video frame exposures of around a few milliseconds means the slow drift of the Sun during the video exposure won't affect the sharpness of the result as long as the area you're interested in stays somewhere in the frame during the video. The Earth's atmospheric turbulence causing the image to continuously jiggle about and go in and out of focus is the main problem to getting a sharp image. Stacking the many video frames to only select those frames that are momentarily in focus is the key to getting a sharp final result.

Alan

[Benjam]

3 hours ago, Samantha said:

Thank you for getting back to me and sorry for late reply i will have a look at the youtube video see ways to do polar alignment with only using the mount part and use the wifi dongle to move the telescope in hope get polaris centred as best can. The other thing is as i do not have a guide scope but a finder would it be ok to link the camera through the reflector eyepiece and still i take it need to do the star alignment also.

Hi Samantha, sorry I don’t know the answer to your question. I’m relatively new too. I’m sure someone more experienced will come along soon and be able to help you.  

[Samantha]

24 minutes ago, Benjam said:

Hi Samantha, sorry I don’t know the answer to your question. I’m relatively new too. I’m sure someone more experienced will come along soon and be able to help you.  

It is not a problem at all as i am a complete beginner myself in astrophotography inc imaging with something like this as i normally use my nikon B500 coolpix camera go on full zoom and get photos of the moon on automatic settings but i thought i will give a proper camera that does everything of planetary and deep sky both imaging even recording as something else to do while i carry on using my nikon camera to get photos of the moon or set it on record for slow star trails. 

[Samantha]

2 hours ago, symmetal said:

I didn't read your first post clearly enough to realise you were doing solar imaging so polar aligning using Polaris isn't much use unless it's left out from the night before.   As others have said you can use the Sun instead for alignment with Sharpcap though I haven't tried it.

For my solar imaging on an EQ3 Pro I don't do any alignment, just place the tripod N leg to North(ish) and set my latitude on the mount scale. This good enough to keep the whole Sun's disk in the view of the camera for about 3 minutes before I need to nudge the scope to recentre the Sun before the next video. If your scope/camera combination has a narrower FOV and you can't get the whole Sun in the image then the Sun will appear to move faster in your FOV so more accurate polar aligning may be necessary.

Getting good focus is the main step to a clearer sharper image. The short video frame exposures of around a few milliseconds means the slow drift of the Sun during the video exposure won't affect the sharpness of the result as long as the area you're interested in stays somewhere in the frame during the video. The Earth's atmospheric turbulence causing the image to continuously jiggle about and go in and out of focus is the main problem to getting a sharp image. Stacking the many video frames to only select those frames that are momentarily in focus is the key to getting a sharp final result.

Alan

No worries we all try something as first object as either a case of hmm what shall i target first at night which is the moon and then during the day it is only the sun or for example i am not sure when it is or was but for example the moon is supposed to be out during the day with jupiter in opposition meaning on view in daylight only way catch it is by using either a solar telescope or the night telescope and plonk a filter cover over top of it.

My mount is the EQ3 which is unfortunately not the pro model but i just wish they brought out a holder for the small power box as they have done for the other mounts so do not put stress on the cables etc as not all cables are long anyway. 

Thank you for the information about how to try aiming photos and images at the sun , the only problem is earth atmospheric turbulence which happens both day and night unfortunately when comes to at night it is even worse because yes it is more noticeable then than no doubt during the day. 

When i view the sun i turn my mount facing south just operate it that way because if i pointed it north the whole thing it would put the solar telescope upside down and i would be working out why doing that but by pointing it south makes it a lot easier the whole solar telescope is pointing upside up also moves to the right with no problems.

When comes to imaging the sun need to then even by video would have to set for example the gain and seconds of recording even imaging making sure that everything is on seconds to do things when comes to imaging the sun.

 

Samantha 

[Samantha]

20 hours ago, JamesF said:

Oh, I should also probably point out that in most cases you need to be able to see Polaris to be able to polar align in the northern hemisphere.  There are ways around this if you can't, but they're a little bit more work.

James

So extremely sorry i did not get back to you way sooner i had everyone else’s threads popping up and somehow missed yours of trying to answer back but this is the camera i have got  by clicking the link. https://www.telescopehouse.com/astro-imaging/ccd-cmos-cameras/bresser-cameras/bresser-full-hd-deep-sky-camera-guider-1-25.html

 

So if i do the right ascension and declination as little tiny movements while looking through the polar scope it should align polaris where it should be then? 

My mount is an EQ3 the basic same as my skywatcher 150p newtonian reflector (6 inches) for the primary mirror. When i put the camera into the eyepiece i do not need to worry about putting an eyepiece in first at all but just put the camera in use sharpcap muck around with it to get everything all in a straight line etc and read everything sharpcap can do to give clear crisp images in both photo and video form as regards the stacking etc? 

[JamesF]

I hadn't noticed that Bresser rebadge those cameras -- they're manufactured by a company called Touptek and rebadged by quite a few vendors, so you may see software refer to them as Touptek camera or Toupcam rather than a Bresser camera.  That's no big deal.  Definitely worth having a go at some deep sky stuff with that one though, I'd say.

To align the RA axis you look through the polar scope and use the alt and az adjusters to get Polaris in the correct place in the polar scope reticle.  A quick search found me this video that should explain the process better than I can write it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8xKnX8oKfw

There may be better ones that other people can suggest.

James

[Samantha]

32 minutes ago, JamesF said:

I hadn't noticed that Bresser rebadge those cameras -- they're manufactured by a company called Touptek and rebadged by quite a few vendors, so you may see software refer to them as Touptek camera or Toupcam rather than a Bresser camera.  That's no big deal.  Definitely worth having a go at some deep sky stuff with that one though, I'd say.

To align the RA axis you look through the polar scope and use the alt and az adjusters to get Polaris in the correct place in the polar scope reticle.  A quick search found me this video that should explain the process better than I can write it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8xKnX8oKfw

There may be better ones that other people can suggest.

James

Thank you James and no problems at all as everyone has different types of cameras for astrophotography whether it be an altair product that might have either CMOS or CCD etc. I did not know that at all about Bresser were manufactured by a company called Touptek which is the software i have got for the camera. I think got Toupcam or Touptek not sure i will have to have a look on my laptop when i next use it but if i can use for the camera maybe sharpcap or something i can be happy with no matter if results start off as bad then get a lot better as i try this is all a learning curve for me i must admit 🤔😱🙂. Also this sort of thing is also a lot of trial and error to find out not only best software to use but working out how things will work.

[JamesF]

There is indeed a lot to learn and it all takes practice and patience.  Which makes it particularly difficult when the weather has been as poor as it has recently in the UK.

James

[newbie alert]

Hi Samantha,  when you polar align you don't move the scope at all unless you need to rotate it..you move it with the Az and altitude bolts if using a German equatorial mount...the idea is to align with the earths axis ( you don't need to see Polaris to do this and you don't center on it either.. you're trying to center on the north celestial pole which is 40 plus arc mins away from Polaris .

If you could specify what equipment you have and therefore people can advise otherwise it might not work/ could be dangerous if the sun is being used as a target..

Edited November 25, 2019 by newbie alert
Added info