Recommendations for image acquisition software for VA?

[PatG]

Hi All

Having not been practicing astronomy for a couple of years, and in process of setting up a new windows 10 laptop with some software for astronomy and VA/astrophotography, I am looking for advice and recommendations for some simple to use image acquisition software for VA.

I will be primarily using lodestar X2 mono camera for deep sky VA as well as an Imaging Source DBK41AU02.AS for planetary imaging.

 

Any advice / recommendations would be greatly appreciated.

PatG

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Martin Meredith]

Hi Pat

I notice from your website that you used LodestarLive (as it then was) back in 2015. I believe it is still available (as StarlightLive) for Windows from the SX website. It is probably still one of the simplest ways to acquire images with a Lodestar for VA. I'm not a Windows user myself but iI know others are still using it.

Martin 

[PatG]

Hi Martin,

Thanks for responding. I will certainly give Starlight Live a try. Its always interesting to find out what others are currently using. 

Pat

[Bill S]

Yes, with a Lodestar X2 Starlight Live is the way to go. When you have got somewhere with that (or in your case reminded yourself what's what as you have used it in the past) then add Jocular and keep Starlight Live as the way to collect subs and feed them into Jocular (instead of live stacking and adjusting in Starlight Live).

You do not mention what scope and mount you are using. With a Meade SCT you probably want to put a focal reducer in front of the Lodestar to make the system faster.

Bill

[PatG]

Hi Bill 

Thank you for the advice. I think I now have the Lodestar II camera set up and working with Starlight Live software having hopefully ironed out some frustrating driver issues.

I will be primarily using this with a Meade ACF 200mm SCT on an equatorial mount. I have a variable focal reducer (MFR5 from Mallincam) that fits on the front of the Lodestar enables 0.8-0.3FR, from memory I think I had it set up at 0.5 FR.

I'm a bit rusty but looking forward to testing it out. I will have a read up about Jocular, thanks for the tip.

Regards

Pat